Reducing Gang Activity with a $50m a Year Law

On June 18, 2018, President Trump signed the "Project Safe Neighborhoods Grant Program Authorization Act of 2018" into law (Act: H.R.3249, Public Law No: 115-185). It allocates $50m a year from 2019 to 2021 to the prevention and reduction of gang violence and crime. The law sponsored by Rep. Barbara Comstock (R-VA) was approved with 394 votes to 13 in the House, and by a unanimous voice vote in the Senate. From a WJLA article:

"We have a large number of unaccompanied minors in the area and they are very vulnerable to these gangs recruiting them," he said. MS-13 habitually targets young immigrants, often forcing them into the gang through threats and intimidation. 

"If I had my way, I'd spend the bulk of the money on intervention, prevention efforts," Lanham added, "because it's much cheaper to go that route and prevent them from joining the gangs than arrest your way out, which we're not going to do." [...] 

"The amount of money should really assist in the coordination of local and federal law enforcement to target the worst of the worst using the best science we have," he said.

I penciled out brief outline summaries of both the Act and the article below.

Status Update: North Korea's Sony, WannaCry hack

Motherboard reports on the North Korean Sony, WannaCry hack.

Hearing: The Monetization and Illicit Use of Stolen Data

In March 2018 the U.S. House Financial Services Committee held a hearing via their Terrorism and Illicit Finance Subcommittee. The hearing was titled “After the Breach: The Monetization and Illicit Use of Stolen Data”.

Dr. James Lewis of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) is one of the four testifying witnesses. The other witness hail from RAND, McAfee, and Carnegie Mellon University. Dr. Lewis answers a question from Chairman Pearce regarding the countries best at handling cybercrime (minute 45):

Thank you Mr. Chairman. There's a good correlation between countries that have strong law enforcement systems and punishment for cybercrime. So if you're a cybercriminal and you live in the US or the UK or France or Germany your life expectancy is probably only about three years before you're caught and go to jail. In places that have weak cybersecurity laws like Brazil or countries other developing countries um you see a growth in criminal activity. So the effort here is to have strong cyber security laws -- the U.S. leads in that with the Budapest Convention -- and to develop new ways to cooperate on the exchange of evidence and on efforts to take down networks. So currently there is no central place that does this. The UN has a committee on crime that is trying to develop a more common approach but the differences among nation make it hard to get... cooperation. Thank you.