I am teaching COMM 5610 – IT & Global Conflict this semester at the University of Utah. I’ve started putting together a weekly newsletter for my students with updates on topics covered during the semester. Here are the updates from this week:
Online Disinformation & Fake News
- Playing on Kansas City Radio: Russian Propaganda https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/us/russian-propaganda-radio.html
- Iranian Digital Influence Efforts: Guerrilla Broadcasting for the Twenty-First Century https://atlanticcouncil.org/in-depth-research-reports/report/iranian-digital-influence-efforts-guerrilla-broadcasting-for-the-twenty-first-century/
- Removing Coordinated Inauthentic Behavior From Russia, Iran, Vietnam and Myanmar https://about.fb.com/news/2020/02/removing-coordinated-inauthentic-behavior/
SOCMINT & Online Investigations
- From Russia With Blogs https://www.graphika.com/reports/from-russia-with-blogs/
- He Combs the Web for Russian Bots. That Makes Him a Target. – The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/09/technology/ben-nimmo-disinformation-russian-bots.html
Privacy, Surveillance & Espionage
- How Apple ‘Intercepts’ And Reads Emails When It Finds Child Abuse https://www.forbes.com/sites/thomasbrewster/2020/02/11/how-apple-intercepts-and-reads-emails-when-it-finds-child-abuse/
- The CIA secretly bought a company that sold encryption devices across the world. Then its spies sat back and listened. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/national-security/cia-crypto-encryption-machines-espionage/
China
- U.S. Charges Huawei With Racketeering, Adding Pressure on China – The New York Times: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/13/technology/huawei-racketeering-wire-fraud.html
- US finds Huawei has backdoor access to mobile networks globally, report says – CNET: https://www.cnet.com/news/us-finds-huawei-has-backdoor-access-to-mobile-networks-globally-report-says/