Enlarge / An FBI agent takes a photo of a memorial for victims of a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School on May 27, 2022, in Uvalde, Texas. Police were criticized for delaying for more than an hour confronting the shooter. Such criticism has led some police to respond more aggressively to hoax school shooting calls. (credit: Michael M. Santiago / Staff | Getty Images North America )

Within the past year, there have been approximately five times more school shooting hoaxes called in to police than actual school shootings reported in 2023.

Where data from Everytown showed "at least 103 incidents of gunfire on school grounds" in 2023, The Washington Post recently uncovered what seems to be a coordinated campaign of active shooter hoaxes causing "swattings"—where police respond with extreme force to fake crimes—at more than 500 schools nationwide over the past year. In just one day in February, "more than 30 schools were targeted," The Post reported.

Education safety experts and law enforcement officials told The Post that this "wave of school shooting hoaxes" is unprecedented. And Drew Evans, the superintendent of the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, warned that just because there's no shooter, that does not mean these schools aren't endangered by the hoaxes.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images)

“Women, life, freedom” became the protest chant of a revolution still raging in Iran months after a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, died while in custody of morality police. Amini was arrested last September for “improperly” wearing a hijab and violating the Islamic Republic's mandatory dress code laws. Since then, her name has become a viral hashtag invoked by millions of online activists protesting authoritarian regimes around the globe.

In response to Iran's ongoing protests—mostly led by women and young people—Iranian authorities have increasingly restricted Internet access. First, they temporarily blocked popular app stores and indefinitely blocked social media apps like WhatsApp and Instagram. They then implemented sporadic mobile shutdowns wherever protests flared up. Perhaps most extreme, authorities responded to protests in southeast Iran in February by blocking the Internet outright, Al Arabiya reported . Digital and human rights experts say motivations include controlling information, keeping protestors offline, and forcing protestors to use state services where their online activities can be more easily tracked—and sometimes trigger arrests.

As getting online has become increasingly challenging for everyone in Iran—not just protestors—millions have learned to rely on virtual private networks (VPNs) to hide Internet activity, circumvent blocks, and access accurate information beyond state propaganda. Simply put, VPNs work by masking a user's IP address so that governments have a much more difficult time monitoring activity or detecting a user's location. They do this by routing the user's data to the VPN provider's remote servers, making it much harder for an ISP (or a government) to correlate the Internet activity of the VPN provider's servers with the individual users actually engaging in that activity.

Enlarge / A child who escaped from under debris on February 8, 2023, in Hatay, Turkey. (credit: Getty Images News )

Search and rescue efforts continue after earthquakes struck Turkey and Syria on Monday, displacing thousands and killing more than 11,000, AlJazeera reported . Amid this ongoing emergency, a new report suggests that Twitter access has been restricted in Turkey, cutting off a critical social media tool that rescue efforts rely on to quickly communicate needs and request assistance globally.

The independent global Internet monitor NetBlocks reported Wednesday morning that network data confirmed that Twitter has been restricted on multiple network providers, including TTNet and Turkcell. There has been “no formal explanation” from Turkey authorities, but NetBlocks notes that Turkey often acts to prevent alleged disinformation during national emergencies, as it did last year following a terrorist attack , and it has “an extensive history of social media restrictions” during such events.

Alp Toker, NetBlocks’ director, told Ars that this is the first time NetBlocks has detected what appears to be social media restrictions in response to a natural disaster, though. Toker says the negative impact of imposing such a restriction at this moment “can’t be understated.”