Tag: data

MASSIVE SPYWARE BREACH: Spain’s President Lost Millions of Messages, Emails, Photos and Audio to Pegasus

A new assessment of the Pegasus spyware attack on Spanish President Pedro Sánchez has revealed the extraordinary scale of information extracted from his cellphone, reigniting questions about who was behind the operation and what may have happened to sensitive government data.

Spain’s National Intelligence Centre, known as the CNI, has acknowledged that Pegasus extracted approximately 2.7 gigabytes of data from Sánchez’s phone during the 2021 cyberattack.

To illustrate the enormous volume of information represented by that amount of data, the CNI estimates it could correspond to roughly 5 million text messages, 100,000 emails, 1,200 photographs or 40 hours of recorded audio, according to reports published in Spain.

A Spyware Attack on the President

Sánchez’s phone was compromised by Pegasus in May 2021, with investigators determining that approximately 2.6 gigabytes of information were extracted during the first attack and another roughly 130 megabytes during a subsequent intrusion.

The phone of then-Defense Minister Margarita Robles was also targeted.

The Spanish government said at the time that the attacks were external and had not been authorized by Spanish authorities. But the identity of the person or organization responsible for the attacks has remained a major unresolved question.

Pegasus, developed by Israeli technology company NSO Group, is among the world’s most sophisticated commercial surveillance tools. Once a device is successfully compromised, attackers can potentially gain access to highly sensitive communications and information stored on the phone.

For a sitting president, that could include private conversations, diplomatic communications, government documents, photographs, contacts and information involving national-security matters.

One of the most troubling questions surrounding the case is not simply how much data was extracted, but what the attackers obtained.

Spanish authorities have previously acknowledged that forensic investigators could establish the amount of data removed from the devices but could not necessarily determine exactly which documents or pieces of information were taken.

That means the 2.7-gigabyte figure provides an indication of the scale of the breach without answering the more consequential question: What did the attackers actually see?

The uncertainty has fueled political controversy in Spain and prompted renewed scrutiny of the government’s handling of sensitive communications.

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Farmer Hailed as Hero for Rejecting Huge Payment to Turn His Land Into a Giant Data Center

The immense hype surrounding AI has caused enormous data centers to crop up across the country, triggering significant opposition. It’s not just the loss of land: enormous power needs are pushing the grid into meltdown and driving up local electricity prices, catching the attention of politicians and their irate constituents.

One 86-year-old farmer in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania, has heard enough. As local Fox affiliate WPMT reports, Mervin Raudabaugh, who has farmed the surrounding land for more than 60 years, turned down more than $15 million from data center developers in a package deal that involved three neighboring property owners as well.

The farmer was offered $60,000 per acre to build a data center on his property. But giving up his family legacy wasn’t in the cards for him.

“I was not interested in destroying my farms,” he told WPMT. “That was the bottom line. It really wasn’t so much the economic end of it. I just didn’t want to see these two farms destroyed.”

Instead, he sold the development rights in December for just under $2 million to a conservation trust, taking a significant loss but guaranteeing that it would stay farmland in perpetuity.

Users on social media called him a “legend,” and argued he had “more integrity than the whole government.”

“Now that is a real hero in these gutless times!” another user tweeted.

“$15M is huge, but clean water, quiet land, and legacy don’t have a price tag,” another user argued.

The sheer amount of land being earmarked to construct enormous energy and water-sucking data centers is remarkable. A data center in Mount Pleasant, Wisconsin, is set to take up 600 acres, which could cost local residents their land, as ABC News reported this week. Another octogenarian farmer, the 83-year-old Tom Uttech, who has lived on his 52-acre Wisconsin property for almost 40 years, told the broadcaster that he “couldn’t believe” that a local utility company was looking to build “power lines that are 300 or something feet tall, taller than apparently the Statue of Liberty,” through his land to power the data center.

Per ABC, there are more than 3,000 data centers in the US, a number that will soon grow by 1,200 more, which are currently being constructed.

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ACTIVIST JUDGE STRIKES AGAIN: Clinton-Appointed Judge Who Claimed Trump “Likely Committed Crimes” in Challenging 2020 Elections Now Blocks DOJ’s Voter Data Request — Calls It “Unprecedented and Illegal”

Another day, another radical ruling from the federal bench.

Federal District Judge David O. Carter, the same Clinton-appointed judge who previously made headlines by claiming President Trump “likely committed crimes” during the 2020 election challenges, has now moved to block the Department of Justice from securing election integrity in California.

On Thursday, Judge Carter issued a scathing order dismissing the DOJ’s lawsuit against California Secretary of State Shirley Weber and the State of California, effectively shielding the state’s voter rolls from federal scrutiny.

Judge Carter granted all of their motions to dismiss, ruling that the DOJ’s request violated the Civil Rights Act of 1960, the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA), and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA). He went so far as to accuse the Executive Branch of trying to “usurp the authority over elections.”

The DOJ had sued the Golden State to obtain unredacted voting records to ensure compliance with federal election laws, but Carter has slammed the door shut, calling the government’s request “unprecedented and illegal.”

The 14 states that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has sued for refusing to provide their full, statewide voter registration files are: 

  • California
  • Delaware
  • Maine
  • Maryland
  • Michigan
  • Minnesota
  • New Hampshire
  • New Mexico
  • New York
  • Oregon
  • Pennsylvania
  • Rhode Island
  • Vermont
  • Washington

The Department of Justice, under Trump administration, launched this legal battle to enforce “voter roll maintenance enforcement and compliance”.

The goal was clear: to investigate potential non-citizen voting and ensure that California’s voter lists are accurate and up to date. The DOJ requested standard data found in voter files, including names, voting history, and Social Security information, to verify eligibility.

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“Emergency Intervention”: Trump To Cap Residential Electric Bills By Forcing Tech Giants To Pay For Soaring Power Costs

Back in August, when the American population was just waking up to the dire consequences the exponentially growing army of data centers spawned across the country was having on residential electricity bills, we said that the chart of US CPI would soon become the most popular (not in a good way) chart in the financial realm.

One month later we added that it was only a matter of time before Trump, realizing that soaring electricity costs would almost certainly cost Republicans the midterms, would enforce price caps.

Turns out we were right.

And while Trump obviously can not pull a communist rabbit out of his hat, and centrally plan the entire US power grid, what he can do is precisely what he is about to announce. 

According to Bloomberg, Trump and the governors of several US Northeastern states agreed to push for an emergency wholesale electricity auction that would compel technology companies to effectively fund new power plants, effectively putting a cap for residential power prices at the expense of hyperscalers and data centers. Which, come to think of it, we also proposed back in October.

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Data Centers Use Lots of Electricity. This Bill Would Let Them Go Off the Grid.

Tech companies are building data centers as quickly as possible to run AI. These facilities are controviersial because they use copious amounts of electricity and might tax an electrical grid that in some areas is already straining.

In a bill introduced last week, Sen. Tom Cotton (R–Ark.) proposed an idea: letting these companies get off the grid altogether.

“Power officials have been raising concerns that the grid isn’t equipped to handle the sheer number of data centers tech companies are seeking to build,” Katherine Blunt wrote last week at The Wall Street Journal. “They say it will take many years to build new transmission lines and power plants needed to support the surge in demand while keeping the lights on for other customers.” Some officials, Blunt noted, “have proposed either requiring or encouraging data centers to stop using [the grid] when there is a risk of blackouts, either by powering down or switching to backup electricity supplies.”

Jowi Morales of Tom’s Hardware reports companies are “looking at alternative power sources to bring their projects online, regardless of the availability of power from the grid.” Microsoft, for example, is recommissioning the Three Mile Island nuclear plant in Pennsylvania to generate 835 megawatts of energy for its data centers (though not without a $1 billion loan from U.S. taxpayers).

“These initiatives will take years to take off, though,” Morales adds. “The Three Mile Island plant is expected to be operational only by 2028.”

Last week, Cotton introduced the Decentralized Access to Technology Alternatives (DATA) Act of 2026. Under the bill, “a consumer-regulated electric utility” would be “exempt from regulation” under federal law so long as it doesn’t connect to the overall electrical grid.

When one company contracts to sell electricity to another company, “that retail transaction presently would put you under the jurisdiction of a bunch of people” at the state and federal levels, says Travis Fisher, director of energy and environmental policy studies at the Cato Institute.

And that brings a cumbersome level of red tape. “The rapid pace of innovation means the AI revolution won’t wait for multi-year permitting fights, cost-of-service hearings held by regulators, or planning processes built for the analog era,” Fisher pointed out last year in an article co-written by Cato’s Jennifer Huddleston. “And yet those are the structures that still govern electricity in much of the country. Building a new transmission line in the US now takes about 10 years, while generation projects spend multiple years stuck in interconnection queues, with more than 2,600 gigawatts of capacity now in queues nationwide.”

The DATA Act would lower the level of regulatory intrusion for enclosed systems that don’t connect to the grid. “It just serves data centers that are probably going to be clustered around it without taking electricity supply off the market for Arkansas families and businesses,” Cotton told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

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Bernie Sanders Wants To Pause New Data Centers To Stop the Economy From Growing Too Much

The United States is leading a global data center boom. Investors are plowing some $7 trillion into the infrastructure necessary to support AI development, with 40 percent of that investment happening here in the United States.

This boom in data center investment is so pronounced that many analysts argue it’s propping up an economy that’d otherwise be wobbling under the strain of tariffs and high borrowing costs.

Some skeptics credibly argue that the money flowing into AI research and the physical infrastructure needed to support it is a bubble that will eventually pop.

Unconvinced by the skeptics is Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), who seems to believe that data center investment will generate large profits, produce technological innovations, and drive economy-wide productivity growth.

Therefore, he wants to shut it down.

In a video posted to Instagram, the socialist senator called for a federal moratorium on data center construction until our politicians can figure out just what the hell is going on.

According to Sanders, the development of artificial intelligence and robotics technologies powered by data centers “is moving very, very quickly, and we need to slow it down.”

He warns that the current boom, if left unchecked, could well end up enriching already wealthy billionaires investing in the technology, leading to job automation and powering a distracting and alienating technology.

A “moratorium will give democracy a chance to catch up with the transformative changes that we are witnessing and make sure the benefits of these technologies work for all of us,” Sanders concludes.

Given general bipartisan support for “winning the AI race” and the amount of growth being generated by data center investment, it’s unlikely that any such moratorium will come to pass.

The fact Sanders is proposing it anyway is reflects just how much anxiety he and other members of the socialist left feel whenever capitalism is working.

Whether it’s driverless cars or choices in deodorant brands, Sanders cannot stop worrying and learn to love it when capitalists make productive investments and give consumers what they want.

Any economic growth that is not planned by the bureaucrats and approved by the electorate is inherently suspicious and perhaps downright malicious.

Sanders’ call for a data center moratorium is to prevent investment in this infrastructure from yielding productive fruit.

He’s worried that investors will reap profits from data center construction. Those same profits would be a signal that their investments were a prudent use of capital that’s driving real growth in the economy.

Likewise, the job automation Sanders worries about would be another sign that data center investments were well-placed. A primary purpose of capital investment and technological innovation is to shift more labor off the backs of human beings and onto machines.

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Twin Brothers Charged with Plotting to Delete Government Databases and Steal Private Info

Two Virginia twin brothers were arrested for their alleged roles in destroying government databases hosted by a federal government contractor, the Justice Department said on Wednesday.

Muneeb and Sohaib Akhter, both 34 years old, were indicted in November for allegedly plotting to destroy databases used to store government information.

Muneeb was charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud and to destroy records, two counts of computer fraud, theft of government records, and two counts of aggravated identity theft, while Sohaib was charged with conspiracy to commit computer fraud, destroying records, and computer fraud.

Bloomberg News reported in May how the two former federal contractors had compromised data across many government agencies, which includes the Internet Revenue Service (IRS) and the General Services Administration (GSA).

The Akhter brothers also pled guilty in 2016 to federal charges of conspiracy regarding data breaches at the State Department and a cosmetics company. The two worked at Opexus, a federal contractor that helped process government records.

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Amazon Data Center Linked to Cluster of Rare Cancers

For the hundreds of communities who’ve been saddled with data centers in recent years, the bulky fixtures are sources of unbearable noise, soaring energy prices, and plenty of electrical fires.

Add another grim possibility to that list: debilitating rare cancers.

Reporting on the “data center boom” in the state of Oregon, Rolling Stone tells the story of Jim Doherty, a cattle rancher and former county commissioner of Morrow, in eastern Oregon.

Doherty’s story began when he noticed a rise in bizarre medical conditions among the county’s 45,000 residents, linked to toxins in the local water. Working with the county health office, the rancher-turned-official began a survey of 70 wells throughout his jurisdiction — 68 of which, his testing found, violated the federal limit for nitrates in drinking water.

Of the first 30 homes he visited, Doherty told RS that 25 residents had recently had miscarriages, while six had lost a kidney. “One man about 60 years old had his voice box taken out because of a cancer that only smokers get, but that guy hadn’t smoked a day of his life,” he told the publication.

But the spike in cancer-causing pollution wasn’t just the fault of local farms, as Doherty expected. It had its roots in a 10,000 square foot data center by the commerce giant Amazon, which first went online in Morrow County in 2011.

Basically, the allegations go like this: industrial megafarms operating in the area are responsible for churning out millions of gallons of wastewater, laden with nitrates from fertilizers. All that waste has to go somewhere, which is one way of saying it mostly ends up in the ground.

Amazon’s hulking data center, thirsty for water to cool its blazing hot computer chips, supercharged this process, adding millions of gallons of wastewater a year to the heavy volume of farm runoff, which Morrow County was already struggling to keep up with. Soon even the deepest reaches of the local aquifer were tainted, according to RS, as huge volumes of data center and agricultural wastewater saturated the water table.

This meant that the data center itself began taking on the toxic sludge as it drew on groundwater to cool its electronics. When it did, evaporation only further concentrated the wastewater, which occasionally contained nitrate levels eight times higher than Oregon’s safe limit. The super concentrated data center water then made its way back into the waste system, where it ostensibly piled up all over again.

In response to the allegations, Amazon spokesperson Lisa Levandowski said that “our data centers draw water from the same supply as other community members; nitrates are not an additive we use in any of our processes, and the volume of water our facilities use and return represents only a very small fraction of the overall water system — not enough to have any meaningful impact on water quality.”

Morrow County residents, however, beg to differ.

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German States Expand Police Powers to Train AI Surveillance Systems with Personal Data

Several German states are preparing to widen police powers by allowing personal data to be used in the training of surveillance technologies.

North Rhine-Westphalia and Baden-Württemberg are introducing legislative changes that would let police feed identifiable information such as names and facial images into commercial AI systems.

Both drafts permit this even when anonymization or pseudonymization is bypassed because the police consider it “impossible” or achievable only with “disproportionate effort.”

Hamburg adopted similar rules earlier this year, and its example appears to have encouraged other regions to follow. These developments together mark a clear move toward normalizing the use of personal information as fuel for surveillance algorithms.

The chain reaction began in Bavaria, where police in early 2024 tested Palantir’s surveillance software with real personal data.

The experiment drew objections from the state’s data protection authority, but still served as a model for others.

Hamburg used the same idea in January 2025 to amend its laws, granting permission to train “learning IT systems” on data from bystanders. Now Baden-Württemberg and North Rhine-Westphalia plan to adopt nearly identical language.

In North Rhine-Westphalia, police would be allowed to upload clear identifiers such as names or faces into commercial systems like Palantir’s and to refine behavioral or facial recognition programs with real, unaltered data.

Bettina Gayk, the state’s data protection officer, warned that “the proposed regulation addresses significant constitutional concerns.”

She argued that using data from people listed as victims or complainants was excessive and added that “products from commercial providers are improved with the help of state-collected and stored data,” which she found unacceptable.

The state government has embedded this expansion of surveillance powers into a broader revision of the Police Act, a change initially required by the Federal Constitutional Court.

The court had previously ruled that long-term video monitoring under the existing law violated the Basic Law.

Instead of narrowing these powers, the new draft introduces a clause allowing police to “develop, review, change or train IT products” with personal data.

This wording effectively enables continued use of Palantir’s data analysis platform while avoiding the constitutional limits the court demanded.

Across North Rhine-Westphalia, Baden-Württemberg, and Hamburg, the outcome will be similar: personal data can be used for training as soon as anonymization is judged to be disproportionately difficult, with the assessment left to police discretion.

Gayk has urged that the use of non-anonymized data be prohibited entirely, warning that the exceptions are written so broadly that “they will ultimately not lead to any restrictions in practice.”

Baden-Württemberg’s green-black coalition plans to pass its bill this week.

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We’ve Obtained Data That Could Decommission mRNA Once and for All

We have just stumbled upon a goldmine of new data — the kind of evidence that could decommission mRNA technology once and for all.

For the first time, long-term immune function can be directly compared across four key exposure groups within high-quality electronic medical record datasets from thousands of real patients — capturing every possible combination of vaccination and infection status:

  1. Vaccinated and infected
  2. Vaccinated and uninfected
  3. Unvaccinated and infected
  4. Unvaccinated and uninfected (baseline control)

These data span YEARS before and after COVID-19, giving us the clearest picture yet of how the genetic injections and the virus itself have altered human immunity on a global scale.

The early signals are alarming.
What we are seeing points to a progressive, possibly irreversible immune collapse — a vaccine-acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (VAIDS) — accompanied by surges in autoimmune conditions, chronic infections, cancers, and cardiometabolic disease.

This is not speculation. This is measurable — in lymphocyte counts, antibody profiles, T-cell exhaustion markers, and verified clinical outcomes.

The implications are staggering. And that’s why we need your help.

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