Tag: mass surveillance

Meet Toka, the Most Dangerous Israeli Spyware Firm You’ve Never Heard Of

This past Sunday, an investigation into the global abuse of spyware developed by veterans of Israeli intelligence Unit 8200 gained widespread attention, as it was revealed that the software – sold to democratic and authoritarian governments alike – had been used to illegally spy on an estimated 50,000 individuals. Among those who had their communications and devices spied on by the software, known as Pegasus, were journalists, human rights activists, business executives, academics and prominent political leaders. Among those targeted political leaders, per reports, were the current leaders of France, Pakistan, South Africa, Egypt, Morocco and Iraq.

The abuse of Pegasus software in this very way has been known for several years, though these latest revelations appear to have gained such traction in the mainstream owing to the high number of civilians who have reportedly been surveilled through its use. The continuation of the now-years-long scandal surrounding the abuse of Pegasus has also brought considerable controversy and notoriety to the Israeli company that developed it, the NSO Group.

While the NSO Group has become infamous, other Israeli companies with even deeper ties to Israel’s intelligence apparatus have been selling software that not only provides the exact same services to governments and intelligence agencies but purports to go even farther.

Originally founded by former Israeli Prime Minister and Jeffrey Epstein associate Ehud Barak, one of these companies’ wares are being used by countries around the world, including in developing countries with the direct facilitation of global financial institutions like the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the World Bank. In addition, the software is only made available to governments that are “trusted” by Israel’s government, which “works closely” with the company.

Despite the fact that this firm has been around since 2018 and was covered in detail by this author for MintPress News in January 2020, no mainstream outlet – including those that have extensively covered the NSO Group – has bothered to examine the implications of this story.

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“Nothing To Hide” – A Poor Excuse To Justify Surveillance

Many people claim they have nothing to hide and use that as the reason they don’t object to the expanding web of surveillance being weaved over them. These people ignore the fact we are surrendering our right to freedom when we as a society go down this path. The reality is that when someone knows all about you and your deepest thought they gain tremendous power over you. This is directly linked to the ability to control you.

This weekend on a short trip I came across a couple of annoying examples of the government dirtying the waters and making our lives more difficult and less free. These include turning parts of the interstate system into a toll road then not taking cash as payment and so-called “photo enforcement” of traffic laws. While many states have gone to using cameras to some extent for enforcing traffic laws, the practice remains highly controversial. Whether it is incorporated in the notion of reducing labor, streamlining the system, or ending counterfeiting or money laundering, the above can complicate our life. Tech is not the gift of freedom many people think. It could be said we are being boxed in and many of our options are not being preserved.

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SURVEILLANCE STATE: “Identify and Disrupt” Bill will Give Australian Authorities Access to Any Citizen’s Social Media, Email Account Without Consent; Allow Them to Add, Delete Information and Send Messages

If you were wondering what a tyrant like Stalin or Mao would do in the age of technology, take a look down under.

The Australian parliament passed unprecedented legislation that gives federal police near-unrestricted powers to spy on any Australian citizen – by gaining access to their social media and email accounts without their knowledge – if they have been ‘suspected of criminal activity.’

The totalitarian “Identify and Disrupt” bill creates 3 new types of “data disruption” warrants that the Australian Federal Police and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission can use to copy, delete and modify content on individuals online accounts. 

Federal authorities will be able to impersonate the account holder and send emails or messages to their online correspondents. 

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World Economic Forum pushes new form of surveillance – turning your heartbeat into a digital ID

The World Economic Forum (WEF), that gave us the “Great Reset” concept, is at it again, “glimpsing” into the future, this time trying to predict the consequences of the response to the pandemic.

The WEF went to the trouble of creating a video to illustrate a write up on its site that talks about what the organization calls long-term effects of the COVID pandemic, divides these into five categories, and stresses the central role of “digital transformation” affecting economies, people, and governments.

A new, innovative form of invasive mass surveillance features in passing in one of the categories of these long-term effects.

The predictions touch on the way office workers forced to work remotely will live and work going forward, suggests that people will be increasingly boxed in and physically constrained in their everyday activities to what’s referred to as “15 minute (away from home) spaces” like restaurants and gyms we’ll be likely to go to in the future.

Other points concern the rise of food delivery and what the WEF, which teamed up with US consulting firm Cognizant to produce this, calls “ghost kitchens,” then the future of education, which is said to likely be a hybrid of homeschooling and students attending classes in schools.

But what’s particularly interesting is how the WEF envisages the future of security: putting to use a little-thought-of unique biometric marker: the human heartbeat.

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DHS considers using January 6 to justify mass social media surveillance of citizens

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is considering hiring private firms to analyze public social media posts for extremism “red flags”, sparking debate on such threat monitoring without violating the civil liberties of citizens.

The DHS and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies were blamed by the media for ignoring the signs of the Jan. 6 riot in Capitol Hill through content shared on social media platforms.

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, the DHS is considering hiring private firms to analyze public social media posts.
Sources claim that the effort, which is still under discussion and has not received funding, would involve sifting through public social media posts for narratives providing leads in potential attacks, whether by domestic or foreign actors.

“What we’re talking about now is dramatically expanding our focus,” said John Cohen, the DHS official spearheading the project.
However, the project has sparked debate within the agency and the White House on the balance between security efforts and the protection of civil liberties. Some feel that sifting through social media posts is governmental overreach, a concern shared by civil and digital rights advocacy groups.

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Will $500M for Smart Cities in Historic US Senate Spending Bill Fund Biometric Surveillance?

Half a billion dollars was written into the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill passed Wednesday by the U.S. Senate to pay cities to experiment with technologies for ‘Strengthening Mobility and Revolutionizing Transportation,’ which could include remote biometric systems, sensors and drones.

Reaction to the inclusion was rapid. The Intercept spoke with a senior staff attorney of the Electronic Frontier Foundation who said the ‘SMART’ money will buy more surveillance using facial recognition. The industry has yet to convince critics alleging face biometrics introduce racial and gender bias and misuse by law enforcement of the technology’s safety.

Also of concern is how this technology, if not the funding, will become tangled with relevant military programs as has happened with other software and hardware being deployed to monitor and quell dissent.

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Scanning your iPhone for Pegasus, NSO Group’s malware

In collaboration with more than a dozen other news organizations The Guardian recently published an exposé about Pegasus, a toolkit for infecting mobile phones that is sold to governments around the world by NSO Group. It’s used to target political leaders and their families, human rights activists, political dissidents, journalists, and so on, and surreptitiously download their messages/photos/location data, record their microphone, and otherwise spy on them. As part of the investigation, Amnesty International wrote a blog post with their forensic analysis of several compromised phones, as well as an open source tool, Mobile Verification Toolkit, for scanning your mobile device for these indicators. MVT supports both iOS and Android, and in this blog post we’ll install and run the scanner against my iOS device.

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National Park Service To Surveil Picnics, Family Outings, Weddings

According to a notice published in the Federal Register, the Department of the Interior (DOI) is turning the National Park Service (NPS) into a mirror image of the NSA, FBI, DHS and every other three-letter spy agency you can think of.

“Pursuant to the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974, as amended, the Interior DOI is issuing a public notice of its intent to modify the National Park Service (NPS) Privacy Act system of records, INTERIOR/NPS-1, Special Use Permits.”

This so-called modification of special records permits will allow law enforcement to collect a disturbing amount of personal information on national park visitors.

As Nextgov points out, anyone wishing to get a permit to use one of America’s 423 national parks will have all their personal information sent to the White House.

“The NPS is making it easier to share more data with the White House and other federal agencies on applications and approvals of special use permits for parks spaces.”

America’s absurd War on Terror is now targeting picnics, family gatherings, weddings etc.

“People interested in using a park for a specific purpose at a specific time generally have to obtain a special use permit. NPS issues permits for three types of uses: standard events like weddings, sports, picnics and family gatherings; special events like demonstrations, races, tournaments and the like; and construction, research and utility work.”

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Company tied to Obama Foundation spying on Americans’ online activity – for the government?

This is chilling. We have seen over the past several months the Biden administration putting out continuous dog whistles about “white supremacy,” going so far as to claim that “domestic white extremism” is the biggest threat to our country since…well since forever.

Newly discovered information however shows to what extent the administration and the Pentagon are going in trying to “root out” alleged extremism.

 According to numerous sources including Fox News, the Pentagon is apparently working with a company, Moonshot CVE which has ties to—surprise, surprise—the Obama Foundation—is currently working on data which would provide military leaders which military bases and branches have the most troops searching for so-called “domestic extremist” content.

So what does Moonshot consider to be a “search for domestic extremist content?” How about if you put the following into your web browser: “The truth about Black Lives Matter.”

According to Moonshot, that along with a number of other seemingly innocent searches shows signs of either interest in or engagement with white supremacism, according to Defense One.

In June, Moonshot released a report in collaboration with the far-left Anti-Defamation League in which they identified so-called “white supremacy trends in the United States.”

Moonshot, based in the U.K. noted it “monitored a list of almost 1,600 indicators of interest in or engagement with white supremacism, focused specifically on anti-black and anti-Semitic narratives used by extremist groups.

Other “problematic” search phrases included “George Floyd deserved to die,” “Jews will not replace us” and “the truth about black lives matter.”

The latter in particular got the attention of Moonshot, which noted that: “This search suggests that the BLM movement has nefarious motives and is a disinformation narrative perpetuated by white supremacist groups to weaponize anti-BLM sentiment.”

It would seem the fact that the founders of BLM, who are admitted Marxists might draw the attention of people who care about the country, especially given the fact that politicians and businesses have allowed themselves to be shaken down by BLM.

Moreover, questions about the organization’s finances are fair game, especially since one of the founders, Patrisse Cullors has managed to acquire for herself a tidy little real estate portfolio.

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