The Office of Civil Rights Examination (OCRE) presented the results of a study into police use of force in the United States in a report and briefing before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR). The report, “Police Use of Force: An Examination of Modern Policing Practices” comes as a...
New In Focus available with resources on Wildfires. Each HSDL In Focus brings together short lists of resources in the HSDL collection that are highly relevant to current events. This list includes recently released reports on wildfires as well as information specific to the Camp, Woolsey, and Hill Fires. More...
The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency released its 2018 National Preparedness Report which details the nation’s readiness to address emergency incidents. FEMA uses a capabilities-based approach to establish the National Preparedness Goal that focuses on 32 core capabilities and five specific Mission Areas: prevention, protection, mitigation, response and recovery. Focusing...
The 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act, 28 28 U.S.C. § 534, requires the U.S. Attorney General to collect data and report on crimes that derive from “prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity”. The Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) collects and...
A report from Data & Society—Data Craft: The Manipulation of Social Media Metadata—examines methods used to create disinformation campaigns on social media; in particular, the collection and manipulation of metadata to create content that appears authentic and legitimate. Amelia Acker, a researcher in critical data systems and information infrastructures at...
The U.S. House Committee on Homeland Security released its monthly Terror Threat Snapshot, detailing terrorist activities around the world. The November assessment highlights terrorist activity since 2013 during which time thirty states have identified jihadist movements; there have been 248 ISIS-linked incidents in 18 European countries; and, the predominant weapons used...
Though the United States has made significant progress in addressing Islamic extremism since 9/11, there has been a rise in right-wing extremism in recent years. Seth G. Jones explores this phenomena in a Center for Strategic and International Studies Brief titled The Rise of Far-Right Extremism in the United States....
A new report from Freedom House—Freedom on the Net 2018: The Rise of Digital Authoritarianism—raises concerns that excessive fake news is resulting in a general trend toward decreased internet freedom. Disinformation and propaganda has the potential to incite violence and undermine democracy, but it is frequently used purposefully to compel...
Last month, Ridge Global LLC released a report titled “Potential Electric Grid Vulnerability from Cyber Enabled Foreign Actors: A Risk Assessment Study of Solar Inverter Technology,” detailing critical vulnerabilities in the U.S. electric grid. In particular, the report centers on the concerns of photovoltaic inverters, whose use could significantly increase in the...
In recent years, Western liberal democracies have witnessed a dramatic uptick in terrorist attacks from a broad range of extremist groups, a newly-released report from the Henry Jackson Society states. Titled “Terrorism in the West: An Age of Extremes,” the report provides a statistical analysis to assess the level of terrorism...
