by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
An ABI Research press release says:
“Europe is emerging as a global leader in national cybersecurity enforcement. The European Union (EU) and countries connected to the Council of Europe and the European Economic Area, including Norway and Switzerland, have been most successful in implementing binding legal instruments in the area of cybercrime and cybersecurity. With impending EU legislation in place to mandate the protection of critical infrastructure, Europe will spend $35 billion in cybersecurity in this space by 2021, forecasts ABI Research.
“The new Network and Information Security (NIS) Directive demands that critical infrastructure operators—including agriculture, energy, transport, pharmaceuticals, and even water and waste management—address cybersecurity, and will push them toward allocating budget to protect their infrastructure. Non-compliers will face significant financial repercussions.
“Europe remains a lucrative target, as it is a prosperous and highly-connected region,” says Michela Menting, Research Director at ABI Research. “The new directive will force operators to tackle cybersecurity issues in operational technologies, and notably in industrial settings, which is a huge step for many organizations.”
To read the whole statement, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | Initiative
The New York Times reports that “there is a widespread recognition that the Western alliance has yet to develop a strategy” to counter Russia’s increasingly aggressive actions against NATO members in cyberspace.
“While there are frequent conferences and papers, there are no serious military plans, apart from locking down the alliance’s own networks. Russia, China and Iran have increasingly sophisticated offensive cyberforces; NATO has none, and no established mechanism to draw on United States Cyber Command or its British equivalent.”
To read the entire story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | World Leaders in AIWS Award Updates
(June 21st, 2016) A BBC World Service poll funds that people in general are increasingly identifying themselves as global rather than just national citizens. (The Boston Global Forum has been heavily involved in global citizenship education programs.)
The news service says that that the trend “is particularly marked in emerging economies, where people see themselves as outward looking and internationally minded.”
However, in some advanced industrialized nations, perhaps most notably Germany, “fewer people say they feel like global citizens now, compared with 2001,” in what points to the effects of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s decision to open borders to a flood of migrants from the Mideast. That decision has spawned much anxiety in Europe.
The poll founds that “more than half of those asked (56 percent) in emerging economies saw themselves first and foremost as global citizens rather than national citizens.
In Nigeria (73 percent), China (71 percent), Peru (70 percent) and India (67 percent) the data were particularly marked.
“By contrast, the trend in the industrialised nations seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
“In these richer nations, the concept of global citizenship appears to have taken a serious hit after the financial crash of 2008 {and with the start of the refugee crisis}. In Germany, for example, only 30 percent of respondents see themselves as global citizens.”
For the entire BBC story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
The Guardian reports that “‘Anonymous’ has launched another wave of hacking attacks against Islamic State (ISIS), taking over social-media accounts associated with the group and giving them an LGBT-flavored makeover.”
“The loose hacking collective, which grew out of the infamous 4Chan forum in the late 2000s, announced its war on ISIS in 2015, taking control of almost 100 twitter accounts following the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris that year.”
“Now, after the murder of 49 people in a gay club in Orlando, Florida, a hacker who goes by the name WauchulaGhost says he has taken control of more than 200 accounts belonging to ISIS supporters. This time, rather than simply lock the users out of the accounts or report them to Twitter, the cybervigilante has given the accounts a gay-friendly makeover.”
ISIS members say they hate gay people, and they treat them with great brutality. But some ISIS people are (self-hating) gays themselves.
To read the full story, please hit this link
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
(June 21st, 2016) Bloomberg News reported on June 17 that Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign said, in Bloomberg’s paraphrase, that “there’s no sign that hackers have broken into its computer systems, but it’s well aware that Russian cyber operatives may be trying.”
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks at her first-in-the-nation presidential primary campaign rally, Tuesday, Feb. 9, 2016, in Hooksett, N.H. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)
“We continue to have no evidence that HFA’s information systems have been compromised,” Glen Caplin, a spokesman for Hillary for America, the campaign organization, said.
The news service reported that on on June 26, SecureWorks Corp., an Atlanta-based cybersecurity company, “said its researchers found a group of hackers linked to the Russian government targeted Clinton’s campaign, ‘including individuals managing Clinton’s communications, travel, campaign finances and advising her on policy.”’
Earlier, the Democratic National Committee had disclosed that hackers believed to be working for the Russian government had gotten into its servers.
To read the Bloomberg article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said that the United States will maintain its military presence in the Black Sea despite, in Reuters’s words, “a Russian warning that a U.S. destroyer patrolling there undermined regional security.”
The USS Porter entered the Black Sea this month, drawing heavy criticism from Moscow. Turkey and Romania are expected to seek a bigger NATO presence in the sea at the NATO summit in Warsaw next month.
Mr. Mabus told Reuters that it was the U.S. Navy’s job to deter aggression, presumably meaning Russian aggression, and keep international sea lanes open.
Relations between Russia and NATO have been very strained over Moscow’s attack on Ukraine and military support of Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad.
For more details, hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | Initiative
The Guardian looks at the “gun-control terror gap” in the United States, which the news organization defines as “the notion of a legislative hole whereby U.S. citizens can purchase deadly firearms even if they are under investigation for suspected terrorist activity. The Government Accountability Office found that between 2004 and 2014, some 91% of suspected terrorists who attempted to buy a gun – 2,043 out of 2,233 – succeeded.”
To read the article, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 17, 2016 | Initiative
51 U.S. mid- to high-level diplomats have signed an internal memo critical of U.S. policy in Syria. They call for military strikes against President/Dictator Bashar Assad’s government to stop its persistent violations of a civil war ceasefire.
The memo calls for “targeted military strikes” against the Syrian government in light of the near-collapse of the ceasefire brokered earlier this year, The Wall Street Journal reported, citing copies of the cable it had seen.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told Reuters on Friday: “It’s an important statement and I respect the process, very, very much. I will … have a chance to meet with people when I get back (to Washington).”
To read The Wall Street Journal story, please hit this link.
To read the Reuters story, please hit this link.
by Robert Whitcomb | Jun 16, 2016 | AI World Society Summit
Reynoldo Gonzalez, whose daughter Nohemi was among the 130 people murdered by Islamist terrorists in Paris last November, is suing Google, Facebook and Twitter, saying that the companies gave “material support” to extremists in violation of the law.
Mr. Gonzalez filed the suit on June 14 in the U.S. District Court in the Northern District of California. The suit asserts that the companies “knowingly permitted” the Islamic State to recruit members, raise money and spread “extremist propaganda” via their services.
For more information, hit this link.
