INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FORCULTURAL PROPERTY PROTECTION
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Reposted from NPR
Antisemitic text implying that Anne Frank's diary was a forgery was projected onto the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam this week, the museum announced in a statement.
"The Anne Frank House organisation has learned of this with shock and revulsion," the museum said.
The projection on the house where the Frank family hid during World War II read, "Ann Frank [sic], inventor of the ballpoint pen."
It alludes to a debunked far-right conspiracy theory that the diary was a forgery because part of it was written in ballpoint pen, which were not yet in use while Anne lived. The theory was meticulously and scientifically disproven by the Dutch government, The New York Times reported in 1989.
This false claim is used to question or deny the Holocaust.
Footage of the projection appeared in a hate video in a private Telegram group from the U.S., the museum's statement says.
Dutch police said they are investigating the incident, according to the Associated Press. The museum says it is in touch with authorities and the Amsterdam City Council.
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the projection "reprehensible" and said there's "no place for antisemitism in our country" on Twitter.
Anne was a Jewish girl who kept a diary while in hiding with her family for about two years during World War II. The journal chronicled her life, feelings and thoughts.
She died in a concentration camp in 1945.
Her father, Otto, survived the Holocaust and published her diary, which has since sold more than 30 million copies and been translated into dozens of languages.
"The diary of Anne Frank is one of the most important testimonies of the persecution of the Jews during the Second World War," the museum's statement says.
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Reposted from Security Management Magazine
In his landmark TED Talk in 2009, author and inspirational speaker Simon Sinek introduced the world to Start with Why, a premise that people don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it. As of this writing, it is the third most watched TED Talk of all time. His book of the same title has sold millions of copies.
In both, Sinek says that every single person and organization on the planet knows what they do, some know how they do it, but few know why they do what they do. By “why,” he asks: What’s your purpose? What’s your cause? What’s your belief? Why should anyone care? Why does your team, group, or organization exist? Sinek argues that we go from the clearest thing (what we do) to the fuzziest thing (why we do it). In contrast, inspired leaders and organizations—regardless of their size or their industry—all think, act, and communicate from the inside out.
As physical security risk managers, we tend to be very clear as to what we do on a daily basis—we safeguard people, property, processes, and information. Most of us know how we do it—we implement pragmatic, risk-driven, high-value controls to mitigate near miss and loss events. But when was the last time you asked yourself why you do it?
It’s a simple question, isn’t it? So simple, perhaps, that you’ve never taken the time to ask it. If you’re struggling to answer this, it should then come as no surprise that your peers and senior leaders may have the same questions of you, your department, and its position within your organization.
Several years ago while meeting with a regional business leader I was challenged when he asked, “Once we have our security standards and governance program developed, why do we need you or your department?” I was both stunned and a little humiliated. If his objective was to provoke emotion and to revel my discomfort, he almost succeeded. But in a rare display of wisdom and candor, I replied, “One could ask the same about your legal, HR, or finance departments. There are plenty of options for outsourcing those responsibilities, yet you don’t. Why? Because nothing beats a trusted in-house advisor with skin in the game who is invested in and understands the organization, the strategy, the product, and the people.” He seemed satisfied with the answer, and I managed to avoid walking into a minefield.
This should not have been an issue for him to raise nor a challenge for me to answer. If he was genuine in his curiosity—and it wasn’t just a cheap thrill to see how I tap-danced—there was a gap I needed to address. I needed to make it abundantly clear why our department needed to exist.
“The corporate security graveyard is littered with the corpses of failed security programs in which roles weren’t defined, terminology wasn’t established, and methods for measuring success weren’t disclosed,” says Ray O’Hara, CPP, former president of ASIS International. “If we don’t define this early, clearly, and often, we’ll be misunderstood at best and dismissed at worst. Alignment with your internal customers is critical for success.”
The most foundational governance products every department should first establish are program standards. This is the “why” document. At a high level, it establishes credibility and trust and answers the questions: “Why do we need a security department within our organization,” “What are our responsibilities,” and “How do we intend to achieve success?” It’s an impactful document that establishes your jurisdiction and tells the organization what they can expect from you.
What might a department standard look like? This is by no means a comprehensive listing, but your why might be codified within the following elements:
It’s critical to take a collaborative approach when creating program standards, so enlisting the support from colleagues in departments like legal, HR, cybersecurity, risk management, and safety will aid in buy-in and deconfliction, and you might be able to even borrow similar style, terminology, and processes from them. After all, few of us can claim our standards, procedures and governance products are truly proprietary. They are usually blends of other products from various organizations which can apply best for our industry, organization, location, and culture. Consult codified standards from organizations like ISO, ANSI, NIST, and ASIS. Benchmark drafts with peer organizations.
Further, you will likely be sharing risk with various departments, so it’s critical to understand existing jurisdictions. Finally, to have any status, this document should be reviewed and approved by senior leadership. There will be challenges to your authority and you will need support to defend against this.
This sounds like a lot to consider, but remember, this is not a prescriptive “how-to” manual. Those are your security procedures, a separate governance product. This is a high-level manifesto of sorts which is intended to tell the world of your organization’s purpose—your why—and it should be written such that non-security colleagues and the lowest common elements within your organization can understand it. I’ve found department standards can be adequately communicated in 100 pages or less.
Once you have established why you need a security department within your organization, the next logical question is “How should your associates carry out their responsibilities?” This tactical and operational product will likely be the most consulted governance document within your arsenal, and the establishment and contents of this are the subject of the next article in this series.
But first, start with why.
The comments and views expressed in this article are the author’s alone and may not reflect those of his employer.
Reposted from The Boston Globe
While the soup-wielding climate activists of Europe have yet to target the Museum of Fine Arts, the Huntington Avenue collection has been under a different kind of threat recently: Over the past two years there have been a pair of troubling water leaks in the building, including one earlier this month, caused by freezing pipes that burst in the attic, sending water pouring into the galleries below.
No artworks were damaged in either incident, MFA officials said. That’s in part because the museum’s in-house security guards were quickly on the scene, deploying plastic coverings to protect masterpieces and using garbage cans to catch falling water — work praised by MFA officials, who said the museum was “grateful for their action.”
“They want to end our employment with the museum,” said John Moore, president of the Museum Independent Security Union, known as MISU. “In order to stay working at the museum, we would have to undergo a background check from an outside company that would take on our union and become our employer.”
The number of in-house security guards at the MFA has plummeted in recent years, and the museum already relies often on outside guards to fill any shortfalls.
In a pair of letters addressed to the union’s roughly 50 security officers, MFA director Matthew Teitelbaum sought to assure them the museum will “keep the security unit whole.”
We “are committed to ensuring that all members of the MISU would remain in their current positions even if there was a transfer of employment,” Teitelbaum wrote in a letter dated Feb. 7 and shared with the Globe. “Above all, we are committed to working only with a partner that shares the MFA’s values and understands the role of each member of the security team.”
The museum’s director of public relations, Karen Frascona, said the MFA needs to outsource guard duties and management because it faces “increasingly complex security issues.” She added that outsourcing guards would free up managers to focus on “a more global and strategic approach to ensuring the safety of our staff, visitors, and the collection.”
“We believe this is the most effective way for MFA security to remain strong in the years ahead,” Frascona said via e-mail. She added that the museum would only move forward once it has identified a firm that “can match the compensation and generous benefits that our protective services staff enjoy today and will continue to enjoy under our proposed contract.”
The conflict arrives at a critical moment for museums, as their workers across the country have sought to unionize and pandemic-era ticket sales remain anemic. Meanwhile, museums have been under pressure to reduce their overt security presence, even as climate activists target their galleries for high-profile stunts, including throwing food at artwork.
In Boston, the recently formed MFA Union went on strike before signing its first contract agreement last summer. Meanwhile, museum visits remain far below pre-pandemic levels, with 550,000 fewer visitors in 2022 than in 2019, a decline of nearly 45 percent. The museum’s operating budget is also diminished, off some $8.5 million between fiscal years 2019 and 2022.
Then there are the leaks.
On Jan. 3, 2021, a computer malfunction caused HVAC coils to freeze and burst in the attic above a large gallery devoted to Impressionism. The rupture, which occurred while the museum was shuttered by the pandemic, sent water flowing down a gallery wall, coursing behind prized masterworks by Manet, Gustave Caillebotte, and Degas.
In the second incident, on Feb. 4, as temperatures in the negative double digits wreaked havoc on pipes around the city, a mechanical failure caused a coil in the same attic to freeze and fracture. Water cascaded from the ceiling into one of the museum’s newly renovated galleries for Dutch and Flemish art, dripping near Golden Age splendors including a pair of beloved Rembrandt portraits.
Though the affected artworks emerged unscathed from both flooding events, the 2021 leak caused minor damage to several frames, which have been repaired.
Frascona said the MFA continues to “review and identify” the building’s needs, including “best options to condition the attic climate so that extreme temperatures do not cause future issues.” She added that the museum installed internal alarms following the 2021 leak, which “immediately notified the engineers,” who then located the leaks and turned off the valves during the more recent incident, in February.
Even so, guards say it was partly their experience and expertise that helped ensure the artwork remained safe.
“The reason we knew what to do is that it happened two years ago,” said one guard who requested anonymity out of concern of professional reprisals. “After the first leak, I thought they would take it seriously and have a better response.”
Frascona praised the guards’ work, noting “the officers acted quickly and followed our protocol of observing and reporting any security issues they see to a supervisor.”
Currently, the MFA augments its in-house security with guards from a pair of security firms on an “as needed” basis. Meanwhile, the number of in-house guards has dwindled: just 52 now, compared to more than 100 at the end of 2014, according to the museum.
The remaining guards tend to skew older, said Moore, who estimated more than 70 percent of them have been at the MFA a decade or longer.
“We’re experienced, we know that building, we bring commitment and loyalty,” said Moore, who after 35 years makes $21.76 an hour, plus benefits. “Nothing personal against subcontractors, but if they’re working at the museum one day and a department store the next, I can’t imagine them being all that committed.”
MISU’s diminished ranks worry other museum employees as well.
“With fewer MFA guards circulating in the galleries, staff have noticed an increase in the number of visitor interactions with artwork,” MFA Union leadership wrote in an open letter. “We do not believe the MFA is best served by contract guards who are unable to adequately protect staff, visitors, and the collection.”
Low guard numbers are due in part to the pandemic, said Frascona, who added that the museum has struggled to fill open positions after it lifted pandemic-induced hiring freezes.
“This is another reason we are considering partnering with an outside organization that possesses the scale, resources, and expertise to invest in our protective services team,” she said. The museum is seeking a firm that can offer “expanded professional development, training, and educational opportunities,” Frascona said.
Until recently, the MFA paid guards a starting hourly rate of $15.75, plus benefits. It now offers new guards $18.50, and its current proposal includes annual pay raises.
“Everybody’s having trouble finding people,” said Steve Keller, a Florida-based cultural property security consultant. “The solution to that is simple: Pay what the market requires.”
Some guards have considered going on strike, but their contract, currently on extension, has a “no-strike” clause, said Moore, who’s been organizing a leaflet campaign outside the museum each weekend.
And while the MFA has sought to assure them that any change would have minimal effect on their day-to-day jobs, benefits, and pay, the question remains: What happens when the contract ends and guards must negotiate with their new employer?
The “MFA’s strong preference would always be to keep the MFA family together,” said Frascona. But “responsibility to negotiate for future collective bargaining agreements would fall primarily to a potential future employer.”
Clifford Cunningham, who’s worked for a decade as an MFA guard, said the sense of acrimony over the issue is “palpable.”
“It’s mind-boggling,” he said. “Our people have been there 20, 30 years — you can’t just bring somebody on and gain all that experience back.”
Asian elephants are one of the largest mammal species on the planet. At birth, they can weigh 200 pounds and will drink more than four gallons of milk a day. At around age 14, male elephants in the wild will leave their mothers and join a group of other male elephants—a bachelor squad—that they will spend a great portion of their lives with before beginning to spend more time alone.
They will form attachments to other male elephants in their group and adhere to a hierarchy that serves to reduce conflict over the resources in their ecosystem. They also continue to grow until age 25 when they will weigh between 7,000 and 13,250 pounds and eat for about 16 hours a day. Along with creating a rich life, these habits also mean that male elephants require a great deal of space to thrive—one of the reasons they are not typically housed together in captivity.
But where many zoos saw an enormous challenge, the Denver Zoo saw an opportunity to create a space where multiple male elephants in different life phases could cohabitate. Located in downtown Denver, Colorado, the zoo opened in 1896 with a small collection of caged animals before becoming the first zoo in the world to feature animals at eye level in their natural habitats without bars or fences separating them from humans. The zoo now spreads across 84 acres and is home to more than 3,000 animals from around the world, living in unique habitats designed to support their natural instincts.
“We knew we’d have a younger elephant as well as older ones, so we had to think about how could we build a building that can have a 50-year-old and a 5-year-old? A building where as they mature and go through their hormonal cycles, where they’re big and powerful, they can still be together?” asks Leslie Chenaille, director of guest safety and operations at the Denver Zoo.
That thought process led to the creation of the Toyota Elephant Passage, which features two miles of interconnected trails on 10 acres of terrain where a rhinoceros, Malayan tapirs, and five male Asian elephants live. It has six yards, five of which can open into each other, and five pools of 1.1 million gallons of water for swimming. It is one of the largest and most complex elephant habitats in North America.
The habitat has been open for 10 years now and encapsulates the innovative approach that the Denver Zoo takes to creating exhibits, designs, and experiences for the animals in its care and its guests who visit, Chenaille says.
That innovation has seeped into how the zoo approaches safety and security, from investing in new video equipment to access control systems to—more recently—designing and conducting an active shooter drill with local first responders. This investment is not surprising, given the zoo’s location.
“I’ve lived in Colorado my whole life. I witnessed Columbine as it happened, and the Aurora movie theater shooting,” Chenaille says. “We’ve had a lot of big shootings. I felt we needed to test our infrastructure and make some of those connections with our first responders.”
When Alex Jadrich, manager of public safety, security, and emergency management, joined the zoo’s security team in January 2021 after seven years at Disney, he was looking forward to continuing to work in a joyful environment. The zoo “bridges what I was experiencing at Disney as a happy, fun type of environment to also the serious manner of having live assets and a large campus” to protect, he says.
Jadrich reports to Chenaille, as well as the senior director of operations, the chief operating officer, and the CEO, and he oversees a team of entry level security specialists, lead security specialists (shift supervisors), and two security coordinators. They are responsible for key control, staff access control, perimeter control, guest behavior, and containment of the animal exhibits, as well as special projects to keep up with the changing needs and footprint of the zoo.
Jadrich leads the crisis management team, which he says is “about making sure every individual is able to handle a crisis and the incident command that might arise—whether it is an active shooter event or an animal escape event.”
In Jadrich’s previous role at Disney, the security team ran full-scale active shooter drills. But at the Denver Zoo, this exercise history did not exist. And given its location in the downtown core of Denver, Jadrich recognized that parts of the zoo were soft targets.
So, he pitched the idea internally to conduct an active shooter drill at the zoo with local law enforcement and first responders. Chenaille was almost immediately onboard.
“Unfortunately, it’s a reality of our world,” she says of active shooter incidents in public spaces. “I felt we owed it to our zoo guests and staff to ensure their safety in this situation.”
After presenting the concept to the zoo’s CEO and the board of governors, who approved of the plan, Jadrich set a timeline of one year to design the drill, coordinate with first responders, and hold the exercise.
To kick off the effort, Jadrich assembled an internal stakeholder design team that included executives from animal care, guest experiences, and operations to provide input, support, and help in creating and designing the final drill. Then, the team reached out to Denver’s Office of Emergency Management to connect with local commanders, chiefs, and captains in charge of agencies that had jurisdiction over the zoo and would collaborate with the team on the drill.
“From that first meeting with those leaders—from Denver Police, Fire, Health, and the FBI—there was immediate support,” Jadrich says. “Our local agencies aren’t given the opportunity and space and properties to do these full-scale trainings. They usually don’t work in a unified space. So, they were grateful that we were providing one.”
With all the players on board, the design team began developing a scenario to build the active shooter drill around. It decided to use the unique environment of being a zoo as the leading component.
“We wanted to include a component of an active shooter coming here, causing chaos, and taking hostage an employee—an animal keeper—with the intent to release animals into the public,” Jadrich says. “From there we tied in the animal terrorist group, the Animal Liberation Front, active in the past, and we designed the drill around it wanting to free animals from containment.” Then, using that scenario, the design team conducted a tabletop exercise in September 2021 with internal and external stakeholders.
“We wanted to make sure we could talk through things in a tabletop forum and learn some things prior to doing the full-scale exercise,” Jadrich adds. That tabletop exercise led to an understanding about access control needs for first responders, such as how they might get into an area of the zoo that uses an electronic proximity card system instead of a hard key system.
The exercise also helped the design team finalize the necessary stakeholders for participating in the drill and others that needed to be informed about it—such as the Denver mayor and the Colorado governor—because they would be notified if a real incident occurred.
“That helped us think through the brand damage and what that might look like—what our process of communication would be to the public and to our staff,” Jadrich says.
Meanwhile, Chenaille says she was engaging in regular discussions with zoo staff about why conducting this active shooter drill was important for the entire team while also respecting the fact that it might be difficult for staff to participate in the drill.
“We have survivors of mass shootings on staff who chose to opt out,” Chenaille says. “We weren’t going to force anyone to do something that made them uncomfortable.”
At the same time, the zoo also focused on providing access to mental health resources to staff—both before and after the drill.
“We know we’re in a mental health crisis, so we wanted to recognize that this could spur something later—especially as more shootings have happened in the United States,” she adds.
In the lead-up to the drill, Chenaille worked to provide Jadrich and his team with all the resources they would need to exercise it. They also worked on fine-tuning some of the details.
One of the major considerations in creating the drill was how the animals would respond. The planned scenario had a gunman firing a shot near the entrance to the zoo, which was near the lions’, hyenas’, and penguins’ exhibits.
“We weren’t so concerned about the penguins,” Chenaille explains. “But when you have giant predators, you worry that you could scare an animal and create a situation—whether that be an animal runs and gets hurt or creates an emergency where they get into areas they shouldn’t.”
To better understand how the animals might react, the security team held a practice session. The group came in after hours and fired off a blank gunshot near the lions’ and hyenas’ enclosures. “And they slept,” Chenaille says. Another consideration was ensuring that the ammunition used for the drill—blanks—was properly handled to guarantee that no live rounds were accidentally used. This became top of mind following a fatal accidental shooting on a movie set in October 2021, involving a prop gun and a live round introduced into the blank ammunition used on set.
As a safeguard, the design team created a procedure where an initial safety check would take place at the police precinct and then a visual and physical blank round verification would be conducted. Additionally, a witness would watch blank rounds be loaded into the shooter’s rifle—clearly marked with red tape around the magazine and barrel. All other firearms on site would be verified cleared, with no blank rounds fired other than those by the individual playing the role of the drill gunman.
Finally, the design team focused on ensuring that the message was out to the community that the zoo would be closed on the day of the active shooter drill, as well as providing messaging to staff via an internal document on what to expect with the drill.
In the last 24 hours before the drill, the team prepped its incident command post and made sure everyone was ready to go for the following day, 26 April 2022.
To make the drill seem more realistic, 17 staff volunteered to be crisis actors—pretending to play members of the public who normally would be at the zoo in the morning to see the animals. These staff members signed liability waivers before participating and then arrived on drill day to have their makeup done to help set the tone, Jadrich says.
The first responder agencies and stakeholders observing the drill also arrived that morning. Jadrich did a safety walk-through to make sure everything was set, and then it was time to start.
A Denver police officer posing as the terrorist gunman arrived at the zoo in a vehicle, driving up to the security bollard infrastructure. He then exited and fired off blank rounds at the crisis actors in the main entry plaza near the lions, hyenas, and penguins.
The posing gunman then walked through the main gate to the zoo, made his way to the Pahali ya Simba building, where a guest viewing area for Predator Ridge is located, and took a member of the animal care staff hostage with the intent to gain access to release animals.
Meanwhile, a security alert went out, and local law enforcement—including Denver’s SWAT team—responded to the zoo to negotiate with the gunman and stop further violence from occurring. Then, medical response teams provided triage and aid to the crisis actors injured by the drill gunman.
The team ran the drill three times, with the incident commander rotating each time to give multiple first responders the opportunity to participate in the training. The animals were—surprisingly—unfazed by the blanks fired. They were, however, very interested in drones that law enforcement used to surveil the scene, Chenaille adds.
The design team then held a hotwash debrief immediately after the third drill to allow participants to provide feedback while the experience was still fresh. “We included every stakeholder—crisis actors, first responders, and other internal and external folks that were involved,” Jadrich says. “We wanted everyone to have a forum where they could constructively provide feedback to everyone.”
One of the main takeaways was the external agencies—fire, EMS, and police personnel—were able to identify some gaps in their processes for responding to the shooting that they might otherwise not have known about because of the scale of the drill.
Additionally, the staff volunteers shared that the experience was enlightening on how law enforcement responds to an active shooter. In these situations, police officers generally do not provide first aid or information to individuals who might be injured or on the scene. Instead, their focus is to engage and eliminate the shooter.
“One of the things we had to help the crisis actors understand is that the police are there to address the threat,” Jadrich says. “Things like that were brought up, and we were able to help them understand some of the roles first responders were taking in the drill.”
The experience also highlighted the need when planning a training scenario to create a large drill space for the scene for first responders to move through. “When we were building the drill—the scene and the space for it—we thought it would take two hours for first responders to triage,” Jadrich says. “We quickly realized that first responders and law enforcement, when responding in a real time situation, were very quick to take out the bad actor and save lives.”
The drill provided a “huge security training opportunity” for the team and was an “eye-opening experience” for the zoo staff, Chenaille says. It also showed how the zoo can continue to move its standards forward by understanding what its weaknesses are, addressing vulnerabilities, and identifying the resources required to fix them.
Since holding the drill in April, the Denver Zoo has received requests from other zoos in the area for guidance on crafting their own training scenarios. Chenaille says one of the most important things to keep in mind when responding to these requests is to understand what their true goals are in holding a training exercise.
“Our goal was focused on first responders having access to do this,” Chenaille says, explaining that 80 percent of the actual drill was carried out by first responders, with 20 percent conducted by Denver Zoo staff in the form of security support and crisis actors. “You have to pick your goal, then know your steps, and get your staff on board—then you can go to your first responders.”
Along with sharing the Denver Zoo’s experience, Jadrich also recommends that security practitioners at zoos—and other facilities—take advantage of U.S. federally funded opportunities for training from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
“FEMA and DHS have incident command training, and then there are other courses they provide where you can invite facilitators out to have training onsite to develop internal training and knowledge,” he adds.
Jadrich also recommends using the relationships already established. For instance, the local Office of Emergency Management Personnel was able to provide the Denver Zoo with documentation from FEMA about planning, implementing, and documenting after-action reports for emergency drills. “All those items were things we could use, and we didn’t have to create them,” he says. “It was a timesaver in the sense of putting everything together on paper.”
Additionally, the exercise acted as a conversation starter on what existing drills the zoo conducts that first responders should be more engaged in—such as animal emergency drills, called Code Reds.
“That’s when a dangerous animal gets into a place it shouldn’t be—a moat, over a fence, on a main path,” Chenaille says. “One of the things I want to do, especially in light of the active shooter drill, is bring our first responders into that. This drill showed us why that’s important and that we have partnerships now to do it.”
The active shooter drill has also opened the door to planning drills for bomb threats, fire situations, and hostile vehicle scenarios, Jadrich says. “We absolutely want to do this again in the future,” he adds. “We found that by working with these agencies, we really built those relationships to make the zoo as safe as it possibly can be.”
Reposted from ArtNews
A 50-year-old man who was accused of stealing three artworks from Greece’s National Gallery in Athens in January 2012 received a suspended prison sentence of six years on Friday.
The works stolen included Pablo Picasso’s painting Head of a Woman (1934), Piet Mondrian’s painting Stammer Windmill with Summer House (1905), and Guglielmo Caccia’s sketch St. Diego de Alcala in Ecstasy with the Holy Trinity and the Symbols of Passion.
The man, Giorgos Sarmantzopoulos, was found guilty of aggravated theft; the court, however, recognized his good behavior following the heist and suspended his sentence pending his appeal on the condition that he wears a monitor and stays within approximately two miles of his house.
Dubbed the “heist of the century,” the theft occurred on January 9, 2012, when Sarmantzopoulos entered the National Gallery through an unsecured balcony door. He tricked guards by triggering repeated false alarms. He then took the paintings and fled to a staircase leading to the basement, where he removed the paintings from their frames using a pocketknife. Though he maintains that he acted alone, another account detailed a second person who supposedly kept watch.
After the heist, the thief remained at large for nearly a decade.
Sarmantzopoulos was finally arrested in June 2021. Sarmantzopoulos told authorities then that he had been working in construction as a painter and that he stole the paintings out of a self-described “passion for art.”
At the time of his arrest, Sarmantzopoulos handed over the paintings by Picasso and Mondrian to the authorities and claimed the third by Caccia was destroyed.
“The irreversible damage was seen during the inspection. The color consistency was damaged. These works must be kept in special conditions so that they are not damaged,” Eftychia Agathonikou, the director of the museum’s collections, testified in court.
Lawyer and art collector Stelios Garipis said in court that he does not believe that Sarmantzopoulos committed a crime of passion. “He is a member of an international ring. A Dutch detective contacted me and told me that he has a lot of information about him… It was no coincidence that two works were returned,” he said.
“The painting [by Caccia], which is supposed to have been destroyed, was rumored to have appeared in an auction in Florence. I contacted the National Gallery to see what actions they had taken,” Garipis continued. “The simplest thing would have been to send documents [to the auction house] and see who received the painting. Because it wasn’t sold. They [the National Gallery] did nothing.”
It is unclear if the Caccia was actually destroyed. According to Garipis, foreign experts subsequently identified the work in Florence as the same Caccia piece that had been stolen from Athens.
Reposted from Hyperallergic
An image of a swastika was found taped up to a fence near the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) on Monday, February 13. LACMA security officers saw the sign near a service entrance around 7:15am and proceeded to remove it before reporting the incident to the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD). In a video posted on Twitter by CBC Radio journalist Samira Mohyeddin, the design as seen from one angle appears to depict the emblem of the Islamic Republic of Iran, transforming into the swastika as one walks by it.
A LACMA spokesperson told Hyperallergic that the museum has since increased security protocols. “LACMA strongly condemns all forms of hate, racism, and antisemitism,” the spokesperson said.
An LAPD detective, Ozzie Delgadillo, told the Shalhevet High School newspaper The Boiling Point, which first reported the story, that video surveillance showed an individual placing red, white, and black adhesive materials on the bars of a fence at S Fairfax Avenue and 6th Street.
The LAPD has not yet responded to Hyperallergic’s request for comment.
Initially, there were questions about whether or not the vandalism had actually taken place. Security officers at the Academy Museum told Boiling Point that they investigated one complaint that morning but were unable to locate the swastika image. LAPD wondered if the design had been doctored or projected. LACMA later confirmed that one of its security guards found and removed the banner.
Jacqueline Stewart, director and president of the Academy Museum, condemned the presence of the symbol on the fence, which is next to the institution’s campus.
“We are firmly against all forms of hate speech and are committed to creating a welcoming and respectful environment for all our visitors,” Stewart told Hyperallergic. “We have turned over all evidence to the Los Angeles Police Department, [which] has opened an investigation into this hate crime.”
There have been 40 mass shootings in the United States so far this year. These attacks left 73 people dead and scores injured, according to data from the Gun Violence Archive through the morning of 25 January. The archive defines a mass shooting as an incident in which four or more people were injured or killed.
In the past week alone, there were eight mass shootings, including at a ballroom dance hall in California; at a club in Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and during an allegedly targeted home invasion in Chicago, Illinois. Another California shooting—this time at two mushroom farms in Half Moon Bay—left seven people dead after the suspect allegedly targeted his own workplace.
While many of these attacks were on a smaller scale, “attracting little to no attention beyond the areas where they took place,” The New York Times noted, the number of mass shootings in the United States seem to spawn more attacks, whether driven by copycats, radicalization, or the vast number of weapons available. Researchers and government officials are continuing to track these incidents and look for trends to help communities mitigate risks and respond to potential threats.
While no two mass attacks are the same, half of these incidents in the United States from 2016 to 2020 were sparked by personal, domestic, or workplace disputes or grievances, according to a U.S. Secret Service National Threat Assessment Center report released today.
The report, Mass Attacks in Public Spaces: 2016-2020, analyzed 173 targeted attacks in public or semi-public locations, such as schools, houses of worship, and businesses, and the attack types included shootings, vehicle ramming attacks, and other methods of mass violence. These attacks resulted in physical harm to 1,747 people—including 513 who were killed.
Attackers’ grievances were most often related to a personal factor (27 percent), such as bullying, stress related to health or finances, ongoing feuds with neighbors, or feelings of victimization. In 17 percent of cases, grievances were related to current or former domestic relationships; in 10 percent of cases, grievances were workplace-related. Other motivations included ideological, bias-related, or political beliefs (18 percent); psychotic symptoms (14 percent), a desire to kill (7 percent), and fame or notoriety (6 percent).
The report found that the majority of attacks (69 percent) occurred in public locations that are freely accessible, 34 percent occurred in semi-public spaces such as workplaces or educational institutions. The most common locations for mass attacks were businesses (51 percent, or 88 attacks), followed by open spaces (35 percent) like outdoor events, streets, sidewalks, and parking lots. Thirteen attacks took place at educational institutions.
In 53 percent of the attacks, the attacker had no known affiliation with the location—some appeared to open fire randomly while others selected target locations for what they represented or offered. In the remaining cases, though, the attacker was affiliated with the site—13 percent were current or former employees, and 9 percent were customers or clients.
“In some cases, attackers were affiliated with a site indirectly through another person, for example, by selecting a family member’s restaurant or the workplace of a former romantic partner,” the report said.
In 68 percent of attacks, the perpetrator did not appear to aim at specific individuals and instead directed harm toward random people. In some cases, however, the targeting was based on gender, religion, race or ethnicity, or toward members of specific groups such as police officers or homeless people. In the remaining third of incidents, attackers had one or more specific targets in mind. In nearly all of these attacks, at least one preselected target was harmed, and in most (45 out of 55) at least one random victim was harmed.
“The specific targets included current or former romantic partners, current or former coworkers, and family members,” the report said. “In some cases (n = 10, 6 percent), the attackers targeted people were connected to one of these individuals, such as their ex-girlfriend’s current boyfriend, their wife’s divorce attorney, or their in-laws. Other targets included bullies at school or individuals with whom the attackers had a grievance, such as neighbors.”
How did these incidents end, though? It depends on who was being targeted.
The researchers found that attackers targeting specific individuals were more likely to end the attack on their own (78 percent vs. 42 percent of attackers without named targets). The majority of attackers who were stopped by external forces—law enforcement or bystanders—were targeting random individuals (86 percent vs. 60 percent of attacks ended by other means).
One of the goals of the report is to promote proactive behavioral threat assessment to prevent targeted acts of violence.
The researchers outlined a variety of observable, concerning behaviors along the pathway to violence, indicating that “targeted violence is preventable when communities are equipped with the appropriate tools, training, and resources to intervene before violence occurs. Behavioral threat assessment programs are critical components of these community violence prevention efforts. These programs are not designed to predict who will become violent, but rather to identify, assess, and intervene with individuals who display threatening or other concerning behaviors that indicate they may pose a risk of harm to themselves or others.”
This upsetting behavior is common—most attackers exhibited signs that elicited concern from family members, friends, neighbors, classmates, coworkers, and others. In many cases, those individuals feared for their safety or the safety of others. Many attackers also had a history of physically aggressive or intimidating behaviors, and many experienced stressful events across various life domains, including family or romantic relationships, personal issues, employment, and legal issues, the report found.
The 180 attackers studied in the report had a few traits in common. Demographically, 96 percent were male, 47 percent were white non-Hispanic, and 34 percent were Black. One-third were known to be employed at the time of the attack, and 21 percent were unemployed (employment status could not be determined for 47 percent of attackers).
Regarding job loss, 29 percent of attackers had at least one voluntary or involuntary job loss prior to their attacks; most within five years of the attack and eight within one month. For three attackers, their employment ended the same day as the attack. One attacker “opened fire during a disciplinary meeting after being told he was going to be fired,” the report said.
Nearly two-thirds of attackers had prior criminal histories—not including minor traffic violations. More than one-third had faced charges for violent offences, such as domestic violence, aggravated assault, robbery, or animal cruelty. Many of the attackers (43 percent) exhibited criminal behavior that was unknown to law enforcement, including domestic violence. Across all 180 attackers included in the report, 73 had a history of engaging in at least one incident of domestic violence.
Fixations (intense or obsessive preoccupations with a person, activity, or belief) were also frequently seen among attackers—29 percent engaged in these behaviors, primarily aimed toward current or former romantic partners, the attackers’ beliefs, personal delusions, and prior mass attacks. In addition, 21 percent of attackers showed an excessive or inappropriate interest in violence—including an obsession with weapons.
Conspiratorial, topic-specific, or hate-focused belief systems were observed in 26 percent of attackers (note: these beliefs were not always related to the attacker’s motive). Gender-based biases and extreme misogyny were observed in 19 percent of attackers; 8 percent engaged in online misogynistic behavior. At least six of the attackers became radicalized through online engagement, but overall 23 percent of attackers were “found to have conveyed concerning communications online, such as threats to harm others and posts referencing suicidal ideations, previous mass shootings, violent content, and hate toward a particular ethnic group.”
In addition, 15 of the attackers engaged in known hate speech toward an individual or a group—most frequently focused on white supremacist or anti-Semitic beliefs. The report found that “most of the attackers who engaged in hate speech were motivated by their ideology to commit their attack.”
Fifty-two of the attackers were socially isolated. More than one-third had a history of bullying or harassing others.
One-third of attackers had a history of using illicit drugs, misusing prescription medication, or abusing a substance (including alcohol or marijuana). In 12 percent of attacks, the perpetrators were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of the attack.
While the report is careful to note that the vast majority of people in the United States affected by mental health issues do not commit acts of crime or violence, researchers found that 58 percent of the attackers experienced mental health symptoms prior to or at the time of their attacks. A quarter of the attackers had suicidal thoughts prior to their attacks.
“For one-quarter of the attackers, others expressed or demonstrated concern over their mental health, having observed behaviors that appeared indicative of depression, paranoia, anxiety, or a deterioration of their general mental or emotional well-being,” the report said.
Three-quarters of attackers exhibited behaviors that elicited concern in others before their attacks. In 64 percent of cases, the behavior was so objectively concerning or prohibited, it should have been met with an immediate response, but for 22 percent of attackers, “the behavior or communication was not reported to anyone in a position to respond, demonstrating a continued need to promote and facilitate bystander reporting,” the report noted.
Overall, two-thirds of attackers engaged in threatening or concerning communications—both online and offline—prior to their attacks. One-third of attackers who made threatening communications directed those threats toward the intended target.
But not all communication or behavior reaches that level of direct concern—52 percent of attackers displayed concerning activity that would require additional information and analysis to understand the level of concern needed.
“These contextually concerning behaviors can be described as part of a constellation of lower-level behaviors,” the report said. This includes unusual statements, erratic behaviors, increased anger, and uncharacteristic changes in appearance, demeanor, or behavior.
The report listed specific categories of concern, noting that 54 percent of attackers exhibited behavior from three or more of these categories, and 46 percent exhibited behaviors from one or two:
Who was most likely to notice risk factors and demonstrate concern? Family members are the primary force here, with 70 percent of attackers eliciting concern from family, followed by others known by the attacker (employers, coworkers, neighbors, or school staff).
But did these groups take action? In many cases, yes—before 93 percent of the attacks studied, someone took overt action. In 68 percent of cases, someone confronted the attacker about their behavior or discouraged those behaviors; in 61 percent of cases, someone reported the behavior to a person in a position to respond. In 58 percent of cases, people took more cautious action, including expressing concern, asking others to help, or protecting themselves or others.
The report concluded that for more than 25 years, research from the National Threat Assessment Center has “demonstrated that these acts of violence are rarely spontaneous and are almost always preceded by warning signs that are observed by family members, coworkers, classmates, neighbors, and others across the community. Future tragedies are preventable if the appropriate community systems are in place to identify and intervene when community members report these concerns, and the U.S. Secret Service stands ready to support our community partners in this vital public safety mission.”
Reposted from CNBC
More than a dozen abortion opponents sued the National Archives and Records Administration and the National Air and Space Museum after security guards there ordered them to remove or hide clothing with “pro-life” messages during separate visits while attending the March for Life in Washington, D.C., last month.
Both NARA and the federally funded Smithsonian Institution, which operates the museum, issued statements on the lawsuits and apologized for the incidents, which occurred months after the Supreme Court overturned the federal right to abortion.
Both statements admitted that the security guards were wrong on Jan. 20 to demand they hide or remove the “pro-life” messages while touring the archives and the museum.
NARA is home to the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution and other historically significant documents. The Air and Space Museum is the largest of the Smithsonian’s museums. Both entities are located along the Mall in Washington.
“As the home to the original Constitution and Bill of Rights, which enshrine the rights of free speech and religion, we sincerely apologize for this occurrence,” NARA said.
“NARA policy expressly allows all visitors to wear t-shirts, hats, buttons, etc. that display protest language, including religious and political speech,” the statement said. “We are actively investigating to determine what happened,” NARA said it would not comment on the suit itself.
The Smithsonian in its statement said, “A security officer mistakenly told young visitors that their pro-life hats were not permitted in the museum. Asking visitors to remove hats and clothing is not in keeping with our policy or protocols. We provided immediate retraining to prevent a re-occurrence of this kind of error.”
“The Smithsonian welcomes all visitors without regard to their beliefs,” the statement said. “We do not deny access to our museums based on the messages on visitors’ clothing.”
The suits, filed earlier this week in Washington, D.C. federal court, allege the plaintiffs’ civil rights under the First and Fifth amendments of the U.S. Constitution were violated by the NARA, the museum and unidentified security officers on Jan. 20. The March for Life, which opposes abortion, was occurring the same day.
The First Amendment prohibits governments and their agencies from restricting free speech, and the Fifth Amendment guarantees citizens equal protection under the laws.
The plaintiffs in the suits are being represented by lawyers from the American Center for Law & Justice, a conservative, Christian organization.
The suit against the Air and Space Museum said the nearly dozen Catholic plaintiffs were students, parents or chaperones of Our Lady of the Rosary Church and School in Greenville, South Carolina.
All of the plaintiffs were wearing blue hats with the inscription “Rosary Pro-Life,” the suit says. The complaint said they were told to remove those hats are various times and locations in the musuem.
One guard allegedly told several of the plaintiffs, Y’all are about to make my day,” and added, “You’ve been told multiple times to take your hats off, and you have not taken them off. You need to take them off or leave.”
That guard allegedly said, the First Amendment “does not apply here.”
The suit against NARA says, “On January 20, 2023, each of the Plaintiffs visited the National Archives to view those documents that affirm their God-given right to free speech, expression, and their exercise of religious beliefs.”
The adult plaintiffs did not know each other before the lawsuit was filed, the suit says.
Two of the plaintiffs, a Michigan woman identified as Tamara R., and her 17-year-old daughter L.R., were there with a group of about 15 students and parents from L.R.’s Catholic high school, the suit says.
The mother is suing on behalf of her daughter, who “holds a deeply religious belief that she has a religious and moral obligation to speak out against the abortion of innocent babies,” the suit says.
Another plaintiff, Wendilee Walpole Lassiter, is a Virginia resident and Protestant who was with a group of students from her private religious school, Liberty University School of Law, the suit says.
The other plaintiff, Terrie Kallal, is an Illinois resident and a “devout Catholic,” according to the suit.
When L.R., her mom and fellow classmates were in the building’s Rotunda, where the Bill of Rights is housed, a security guard approached them and told L.R. and the other students “to remove all pro-life attire,” the suit says.
L.R. was specifically told to cover her shirt, which said, “Life is a Human Right,” and not to unzip the jacket over it until she left the National Archives, according to the suit.
The guard told her classmates to remove buttons and hats carrying pro-life messages, the suit alleges. One hat said “LIFE always WINS,” and another said, “ProLife,” according to the suit.
“Plaintiff L.R. communicated to a friend via Snapchat while still inside the National Archives, ‘he told me to take off my pro-life pin as I was standing next to the constitution that literally says Freedom of Speech on it,’” the suit alleges.
L.R. later says three different National Archives employees inside the gift shop confronted her classmates and told them to “immediately” remove their pro-life clothing.
During Lassiter’s visit, a guard approached her when she passed through a metal detector and ordered her to remove her sweatshirt, which said, “I am the post-Roe Generation: Law Students for Life,” according to the lawsuit.
The guard told her: “You have to take your shirt off. Your shirt will incite others,” and “would cause a disturbance. You’re disturbing the peace,” the suit says.
Lassiter, who complied, said she later saw two other Archives visitors wearing what appeared to be messages supporting abortion rights, one of which said, “My Body, My Choice,” and “Pro-Choice,” according to the suit.
The other plaintiff, Kallal, said she and her granddaughter likewise were told to cover up their t-shirts, one of which said “MARCH 4 LIFE 2014: Saint Cecilia’s Youth Group, Glen Carbon, IL,” the other which said, “Pro-life generation.”
One guard told them, “Your clothing is offensive. You must zip up your coats or take off your shirts,” the suit said.
Kallal later saw other students leaving the building after being told to cover their pro-life message clothing, saying “they would rather leave than give up their right to free speech,” according to the lawsuit.
NARA, in its statement Friday, said “early indications are that our security officers quickly corrected their actions and, from that point forward, all visitors were permitted to enter our facility without needing to remove or cover their attire.”
NARA said it has reminded all of its security staff at locations nationwide “of the rights of visitors in this regard.”
Reposted from ArtNet News
Three members of a prominent German crime syndicate have admitted to playing parts in the historic Green Vault heist.
The confessions came in a regional court in Dresden, where six suspects are on trial for their alleged participation in the night-time theft of $123 million worth of jewels from the city’s Grünes Gewölbe—or Green Vault—museum in 2019.
As part of sentencing deal, one of the defendants, Rabieh Remmo, admitted in a statement that he and an unnamed accomplice broke into the institution in the early hours of November 25, 2019, according to the Associated French Press.
“My contribution to the crime was larger than I first said,” Remmo said, alluding to a partial confession he gave last year. “I was, myself, in the rooms of the Green Vault.”
Inside, Remmo and his partner used an ax to smash a vitrine holding numerous prized jewels, many of which date back to the late 1700s and were once owned by Saxony’s 18th-century ruler, Augustus the Strong, who founded the museum.
The thieves stashed the jewels in a sack, then used a fire extinguisher to erase traces of their DNA at the scene. Remmo and his co-conspirator fled the scene with other accomplices, burned their getaway car in a parking garage, then drove to Berlin in a vehicle disguised as a taxi.
Authorities in Germany announced last month that they retrieved 31 items stolen in the Green Vault heist after being pointed to their location as part of a deal with the suspect on trial. Other historically significant objects stolen in 2019—including the 49-carat Dresden White Diamond—remain missing.
“I didn’t keep the loot. I didn’t have access to it,” Remmo said in court. “I don’t know what happened to it. I did all I could to ensure that what was left came back to Dresden.”
Two other suspects on trial, Wissam and Mohamed Remmo, also confessed to aiding the robbery. In statements read by their respective attorneys, the men explained that they didn’t enter the museum but instead waited outside as lookouts.
A fourth defendant is expected to present a statement of his own in court this week, as part of a sentencing deal. Another suspect rejected the deal, while a sixth and final suspect on trial claims he did not participate in the theft.
The defendants, all members of the extended Remmo crime family, have been on trial since January 2022. They face charges related to aggravated gang theft and serious arson, according to Dresden’s public prosecutor’s office.
Last week, the court recommended jail sentences that ranged in time from four years and nine months to six years and nine months. Hearings will continue later this week.
The official report concerning the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy—The Warren Commission Report—was published in 1964 by a special commission established by President Lyndon B. Johnson. The commission’s investigation and subsequent report determined that, acting alone, Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from a sniper’s nest on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository in Dallas, Texas.
However, the JFK assassination has generated one of the largest enduring conspiracy theories, with theorists asserting that Oswald did not act alone, or that the CIA, the Italian Mafia, the KGB, or several other individuals or organizations were the true perpetrators behind Kennedy’s death. With the exception of Kennedy’s death, few other details of the incident are considered a certainty by conspiracy theorists. In fact, an Amazon search for books related to “jfk kennedy assassination” produces more than 2,000 results.
It’s safe to say that investigators and security professionals are not unused to conspiracy theories and the attraction they can hold over many. But a growing number of modern-day conspiracy theories have been weaponized and widely spread through social media.
During the 2016 U.S. presidential election, conspiracy theorists claimed that secretly coded messages via emails to or from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chair connected various officials in the Democratic party to a human trafficking and child sex ring. One of the restaurants was Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, D.C.
The allegations against the pizza joint (which also sometimes hosts live music events) found fertile ground on social media sites, including Twitter, Reddit, and 4chan. Social media posts included speculations and allegations that the pizzeria was running the trafficking operation out of the basement, launching a conspiracy theory known broadly as Pizzagate.
Pizzagate has been extensively—perhaps even exhaustively—discredited and debunked by several organizations, including law enforcement. However, the theory connected with so many believers that the restaurant’s owner and staff were harassed and threatened. In December 2016, Edgar Welch traveled from his home in North Carolina to Comet Ping Pong with an automatic-style rifle, and he opened fired in the restaurant, hitting the walls. Welch ultimately surrendered to responding law enforcement, and no one was injured in the incident. He received a four-year prison term and was later released in May 2020.
But Pizzagate remains. Gen Z users on TikTok discovered this conspiracy theory in 2020, right at a time when many people could not go to work or school and could only connect online due to COVID-19 pandemic lockdowns.
Disinformation—false information intentionally spread—is not a new concern for businesses and organizations. However, the ability to spread disinformation globally, aggressively, and abundantly is a more recent development thanks to the Internet and social media.
Multiple recent studies have found that there is a correlational relationship where social media use is positively associated with conspiracy theories and belief in misinformation or disinformation.
“Opinion polarization and echo chambers appear as pivotal elements of communication around conspiracy theories.…The insurgence of echo platforms is a new online phenomenon that…could foster many dangerous phenomena that we observe online, including the spreading of conspiracy theories,” according to a study published in the October 2022 issue of Current Opinion in Psychology.
In part, social media platforms’ ability to operate as an echo chamber that can pull users into a specific narrative, such as a conspiracy theory.
“Disinformation is as old as time. But now, with social media, anybody has a platform,” says Jeremy Plotnik, who previously worked in corporate communications and crisis communications and has studied the ramifications of fake news on businesses. “If they’re clever and know how to use hashtags effectively and they can do some basic SEO techniques, they can make much bigger noise than they normally would.”
By June 2020, the World Health Organization coined the term “infodemic” to describe a glut of disinformation and misinformation about COVID-19 that spread globally, Security Management reported.
In 2021, QAnon—a political conspiracy theory group whose origins stem from Pizzagate—once again took up the call to save children from a Satanic cabal. This time the group alleged that online retailer Wayfair was trafficking children in the furniture depicted on the website.
The theory gained traction as price anomalies for various pieces of furniture appeared on the e-seller’s website. And just like with Pizzagate, Wayfair employees were soon receiving threats, but the company was not the only organization that suffered from the disinformation campaign. According to The Washington Post, anti-trafficking organizations were flooded with false tips and accusations while law enforcement investigating active and legitimate human trafficking rings were pulled into these allegations. This gained the conspiracy theory more media attention, exacerbating the stress on Wayfair and other organizations.
Harassment of a business or organization via social media disinformation or Internet rumors has not been solely directed at Wayfair or Comet Ping Pong. Nor are these tactics exclusively used by groups like QAnon. Instead, the Internet has been weaponized by various groups and people, displaying a wide array of different agendas. Quite simply, Plotnik says, “Social media has really democratized the ability for people to attack a company.”
With social media, an attacker no longer has to rely solely on breaching an organization’s physical or cyber perimeter—Twitter trolls can get the ball rolling, damaging a group’s reputation while the additional stress creates cracks that other attacks can widen.
“In the social media realm, you have this environment where people are angry, are actively distrustful, cynical, and that give credence to what would otherwise be ridiculous rumors or stories without any evidence whatsoever. And then it builds on itself,” says Plotnik.
Janet Lawless, CEO and founder of the Center for Threat Intelligence, adds that any organization should assume that it has a target on its back—whether it’s a competitor, nation state, or other organization fundamentally opposed to the organization.
The Center for Threat Intelligence aims to support companies as they build strategies and frameworks that can help identify and buffer against a sophisticated attack. Such attacks often include some combination of elements of cyber, social media, insider threat, and physical security.
“We try to get people to realize that it’s not just one thing,” Lawless says. With numerous tactics and potential social media sources or platforms for disinformation campaigns to leverage against an organization, it’s no easy task to protect an organization. But it is possible.
“As more and more adversaries become more sophisticated, it becomes important for companies to become more sophisticated and for boards and executives to focus intention on it,” says Lawless. “You have to anticipate things.”
Although reputation is its own form of currency for an organization, security expert Michael Gips, CPP, of Global Insights in Professional Security, LLC, notes that most companies lack a person or department that is clearly responsible for crafting and protecting brand reputation. “Reputation risk goes beyond security. It kind of touches upon every department in an organization, and no one is really responsible for it,” Gips says.
This means security must reach out to other departments as part of an organization-wide campaign to create a holistic response against threats to the organization’s reputation. The issue, Gips says, needs to be addressed as one that affects and is affected by the organization’s entire culture.
“You have to have an intelligence to track everything going on in your organization,” Lawless adds. “You can’t have silos anymore.”
Stepping out of a siloed structure can do more than inform all staff how they can either support or damage an organization’s reputation with their words or actions. If done right, coordinating with marketing, human resources, or other departments could potentially identify appropriate language to use in response to various scenarios, recruit employees who can double as grassroots advocates, or even help identify and curb potential insider threats.
And when it comes to misinformation or disinformation attacks lobbed from social media platforms, Lawless suggests that an organization should create a team tasked with identifying and responding to such threats.
Given both the breadth and depth of social media platforms, security experts agreed that monitoring for threats in such environments is best left to machines and software. There are several services that can provide regular and tailored reports on emerging threats identified via social media and elsewhere on the Internet.
However, at least one person should be responsible for analyzing the intelligence received from such services. Plotnik recommends that this person or team have a security background and be accustomed to running threat assessments.
Beyond this team, all employees should be trained on how to spot and report a potential threat, even on social media, says Lawless.
“If your staff isn’t trained in how to deal with the problem and how to give accurate answers and no misleading answers, you can open a Pandora’s Box,” says Gips.
Gips pointed to a recent example where medical providers and other employees of Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C., were harassed and threatened after a now-defunct TikTok account claimed the healthcare group performed hysterectomies on transgender minors.
Adding fuel to that fire, one of the hospital’s staff seemed to publicly indicate that such procedures have been performed on minors. A hospital spokesperson later told Fox News that the staffer was not someone who delivered care to actual patients.
Both Gips and Lawless noted that the more successful responses to such attacks were ones where security teams coordinate with other departments, addressing the issue as a matter that impacts an organization’s entire culture.
What was true when Sun Tzu wrote The Art of War in the 5th century BCE remains true in the 21st—it is essential to understand your enemy, even on the virtual battlefield where the ammunition is tweets, likes, and shares.
“It’s important to understand who the adversaries are and what their motivations are,” says Lawless. An organization’s response to damaging disinformation or misinformation is going to be very different if the attack is coming from a competitor or a disgruntled employee or a nation state.
“There’s a plethora of channels that anybody can access; there’s a wide range of technologies that people can use, too. And the idea of making a deep fake of a corporate executive...is not outside the realm of possibility,” says Plotnik.
While all hypothetical attackers might spoof a CEO’s account on social media in an effort to tarnish the organization’s brand, the motivations behind such an attack can vary. If, for example, a competitor is responsible, perhaps its interest is in influencing customers.
But perhaps more importantly, once motivations behind an attack are made clear, an organization can tailor its recovery plan.
The organization needs to understand which stakeholders were targeted and impacted by a disinformation attack, as well as what platforms these stakeholders are using. With that awareness, the messaging the organization delivers after an incident can help rebuild trust and reemphasize its culture and priorities.
But it’s not a solution that appears by simply throwing money around. True efforts to rebuild trust with stakeholders go beyond corporate social responsibility (CSR) announcements. “If I had a dime for every time an executive told me, ‘Well, we’re doing CSR to rebuild trust,’ I’d be a wealthy person,” says Plotnik. CSR efforts after an organization’s brand has been damaged might make a stakeholder see the group as generous, but liking someone is not the same as trusting that person or group.
“They might like you, they might think you’re nice people, but they might think that the local mafia boss is a nice person, too, because he gives a lot of money to the community. But they don’t necessarily trust him,” Plotnik says “...CSR only helps you with one element of trust.”
Instead, identifying what kind of trust may have been lost can help in determining how trust is rebuilt or regained. Touting a product’s quality will not mitigate the social media blasts against a company that stands accused of violating labor laws. Directly tailoring the response to the issue will be much more effective.
Depending on the issues, organizations can also work with certain partners to help rebuild trust with stakeholders. “Coordinate and work with groups that are respected by your stakeholders,” Plotniks says.
Once a rumor goes viral, it’s hard for it to slow down—even more so online. Which is why there should be a chapter in an organization’s crisis management book on responding to social media disinformation campaigns.
“In this environment, speed is very important, which is why you should—as much as possible—have your protocols down for responding first,” Plotnik says.
This section of the handbook should detail the team tasked with responding to the incident, include any pre-written documents that can help in a response to the public or other stakeholders, and identify which significant stakeholders should be contacted and in what order.
The response team should also identify or include certain people within the organization who can act as a spokesperson, depending on the nature of the incident. While it might be appropriate for a company executive to represent an organization in one instance, the organization might make greater strides in regaining public trust in a different incident if a company scientist or engineer is answering media questions. In fact, according to the 2023 Edelman Trust Barometer, more people today trust scientists over CEOs, journalists, and government leaders.
But along with having an established set of protocols for a serious disinformation problem, an organization should be training its staff and running drills. When companies host crisis training events, disinformation should be one of the practiced scenarios, readying potential spokespersons and staff at-large, according to Plotnik.
It’s unlikely that an organization can prepare for every aspect of a disinformation incident, but this kind of preparation can allow a company to generate a faster and more effective response.
And when it comes to determining whether something will evolve into a full-blown incident, Plotnik recommends not instantly writing off what seems to be a ridiculous post, pointing to Pizzagate, the Wayfair scandal, and other conspiracy theories. “Companies might make the mistake that people are acting rationally and thinking rationally,” he adds.
But rational thinking and behavior, especially in a security lens, should never be taken for granted. Instead, try to remember some of the more outlandish claims that went viral and damaged a business’s reputation, such as Wayfair, or societal or national campaigns, like the COVID-19 vaccine, he notes.
People can concoct bizarre stories, and other people will listen to them, Plotnik says. “You might have important things on your mind…and yet you’re going to have to take time to deal with what you might reasonably consider to be lunacy. But take it seriously and deal with it. Otherwise, it will not go away.”
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