Tag: surveillance

How Israel’s Spy-built Apps Silently Fund Genocide While Infiltrating Your Device

The digital tools millions trust daily—photo editors, casual games, taxi hailers—hide a dark secret: They were crafted by Israeli spies turned tech moguls, funneling profits into apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. As Israel wages war under the banner of Zionism, its militarized economy thrives on apps that mine your data, normalize surveillance, and bankroll atrocities. This bombshell investigation exposes the covert Israeli app empire, revealing how even the most innocent downloads fuel a regime built on occupation and bloodshed.

Key points:

    • Hidden owners: Major apps like Facetune, Moovit, and Waze were developed by ex-Israeli military intelligence operatives, laundering their spycraft into Silicon Valley fortunes.
    • Data harvesting risks: These apps often demand intrusive permissions, feeding personal images, locations, and identifiers into Israel’s surveillance-industrial complex.
    • Funding genocide: Companies like Playtika and Crazy Labs openly funnel billions in taxes to Israel’s war economy, with staff actively enlisted in Gaza massacres.
    • Global spyware threat: Behind the apps lies Israel’s Pegasus spyware, sold to dictatorships to crush dissent, murder journalists, and silence Palestinians.
    • Boycott urgency: The BDS movement urges users to purge these apps, breaking Israel’s stranglehold on tech and its economy of occupation.

From military intelligence to your smartphone

Israel’s Unit 8200—a surveillance unit comparable to the NSA—acts as a feeder program for the country’s tech elite. Graduates infiltrate app development, weaponizing civilian software to extract data and revenue. ZipoApps, founded entirely by Unit 8200 veterans, controls photo-editing tools like Collage Maker Photo Editor and Instasquare, boasting over 100 million downloads. Users on Reddit accuse Zipo of bait-and-switch privacy violations, turning open-source apps into paid spyware traps.

Similarly, Facetune, an AI photo editor with 50 million installs, was co-developed by Yaron Inger, who spent five years in Unit 8200. Apple Store reviews warn it’s a “scam,” demanding location tracking and device identifiers. Even ride-hailing apps like Gett and Waze were built by ex-spies, embedding Israel’s military ethos into everyday tech.

“These developers are digital conscripts,” explains a Tel Aviv-based tech whistleblower who requested anonymity. They don’t leave the battlefield—they just monetize it.

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Chinese Lab Creates Mosquito-Sized Spy Drones

Chinese state media reported on Friday that the National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) in Hunan has created a surveillance “microdrone” the size of a mosquito.

“Here in my hand is a mosquito-like type of robot. Miniature bionic robots like this one are especially suited to information reconnaissance and special missions on the battlefield,” NUDT student Liang Hexiang told the state-run China Central Television (CCTV).

The device Liang showed off had a stick-thin body, three hairlike “legs,” and tiny leaf-shaped wings. The report did not go into details about its range, endurance, control systems, or surveillance capabilities.

Drones that could be mistaken for insects are a holy grail for the fast-growing surveillance robot industry. The Wyss Institute at Harvard University unveiled its “RoboBee,” a microdrone with superficial similarities to China’s mosquito drone, in 2019.

RoboBee is allegedly about half the size of a paper clip, weighs a tenth of a gram, and flies by contracting tiny artificial “muscles “ with jolts of electricity. At present, the microdrone can only operate within the carefully controlled confines of its laboratory, but its developers hope it will someday be capable of navigating in the outside world with senses comparable to a real bee.

The designers of RoboBee hope the fully independent version of their creation could assist with environmental monitoring, search and rescue, and even pollination of crops, much as real bees do. Of course, it requires little imagination to see how microdrones could be weaponized for surveillance or assassination.

According to Chinese state media, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) already has some drones that weigh less than a kilogram, fly in AI-controlled swarms, and can carry small explosives.

Under current definitions, a “microdrone” is any unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that weighs less than 250 grams (a little under 9 ounces).

Most existing microdrone designs are fairly slow because their tiny frames cannot carry engines that generate much thrust, but in May a student at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in Shenzhen set a world speed record with a palm-sized drone that flew at over 211 miles per hour.

The smallest drone currently employed by Western armed forces is the Black Hornet 4, a Norwegian design that looks like a palm-sized toy helicopter. The Black Hornet 4 boasts thermal imaging and low-light optics. It comes in a travel case that is small enough for soldiers to carry on their belts.

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Radio trick secretly turns laptop into a spy speaker that talks through walls

Security researchers at the University of Florida and the University of Electro-Communications in Japan have revealed that modern digital microphones used in laptops and speakers can leak audio as electromagnetic signals.

This could lead to the creation of a new network of wireless eavesdropping without needing any malware, hacking, or even physical access to your device.

In the aftermath, this vulnerability could affect billions of devices worldwide, exposing private conversations to corporate spies and government surveillance.

How does this attack work?

All devices, such as speakers and laptops, have MEMS microphones, which are a tiny part of the system tasked with converting audio into digital pulses that contain remnants of the original speech. These pulses create weak radio emissions that can be captured by invisible broadcasts.

“With an FM radio receiver and a copper antenna, you can eavesdrop on these microphones. That’s how easy this can be,” said Sara Rampazzi, a professor of computer and information science and engineering at the University of Florida who co-authored the new study. “It costs maybe a hundred dollars, or even less.”

The experiment that proved it all

The team of researchers proved their theory using eerie sounds. A woman’s distorted voice emerged from the radio equipment as she spoke test sentences like “The birch canoe slid on the smooth planks.” and “Glue the sheet to the dark blue background.” Each transmission penetrated through concrete walls up to 10 inches thick.

Laptops proved to be the weakest link as their microphones are connected through long internal wires that act as antennas, amplifying the leaked signals.

Now comes the dangerous part. For the leak to happen, your microphone does not necessarily need to be in an active state. Simply having applications like Spotify, Amazon Music, or Google Drive – can enable the microphone to leak radio signals.

AI in the scenario

The researchers didn’t just stop at this stage. They went beyond and processed the intercepted signals with AI speech-to-text tools from OpenAI and Microsoft. These LLMs then cleaned the audio and converted the recordings into clear, searchable text.

Surprisingly, in tests, the attack had recognized spoken digits with 94.2% accuracy from up to 2 meters away, even through a concrete war. It kept a 14% transcription error rate, making majority of the conversations understandable.

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Department Of Homeland Security Q-9 Reaper Drones Are Orbiting Over Los Angeles

U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has been flying its Predator B drones, also known by their military designation as MQ-9 Reapers, over Los Angeles as part of the U.S. government’s response to the unrest there, the agency confirmed to us on Wednesday. The flights are in response to protests that escalated to violence on multiple occasions, following a massive operation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) last Friday.

Persistent aerial surveillance like this has long been controversial, with civil rights advocates saying it violates the right to privacy and undermines the Constitution. At the same time, the fact that a drone is doing it largely evokes a uniquely upsetting response. While using the Reapers over urban locales is rare, it’s not unprecedented, and manned platforms do this kind of work every day across the country.

CBP’s Air and Marine Operations (AMO) “MQ-9 Predators are supporting our federal law enforcement partners in the Greater Los Angeles area, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement, with aerial support of their operations,” spokesman John Mennell told us Wednesday afternoon in response to our query earlier this week. “Additionally, they are providing officer safety surveillance when requested by officers. AMO is not engaged in the surveillance of First Amendment activities.”

CBP had been mum about the issue for days, even though open-source reporting on social media had already presented compelling evidence of the drones’ orbits. On June 9, user @Aeroscout on X posted air traffic control (ATC) audio stating that two “Q-9s” – call signs TROY 703 and TROY 701, had passed each other in airspace over Yuma, Arizona, as one was replacing the other over Los Angeles. @Aeroscout had previously posted ATC audio of TROY 701 checking in on Los Angeles Center Sector 09. A short time later, Alaska Flight 1020 was given a traffic advisory for “drone traffic.”

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Notorious ‘LAScanner,’ Who Doxxed ICE Officers and Released Live Information of ICE Operations, Is a Felon and Stalker Who Was Ordered by a Court This Year to NOT USE Surveillance Equipment and Radio Scanners

LA Scanner on X made headlines this week after the account started publishing the location of ICE raids in Los Angeles and doxxed ICE agents in the area.

It was then revealed that far-left activist Jack Quillin was the man behind the “LA Scanner” on X account.

According to Amuse on X, Quillin who runs the LA Scanner account “doxxed federal agents and directed protesters to federal buildings before and during the riots. As a result, both the agents and the buildings were repeatedly attacked. Last night he began to realize that he was putting lives in danger stating, “I genuinely hope this doesn’t end in anyone losing their life” after posting the address of a federal agent. When he provided a list of federal offices in the LA area to protesters he made sure to remind them to remain peaceful. Quillin’s operation, NightSunTV, LLC, collected the names, addresses, photos of federal officials going as far as to build an interactive map that provided a real-time view of their locations throughout the LA area.”

Quillin was reportedly running his operation from Texas.

It now appears that Quillin was illegally operating his online operation and likely broke his court-ordered stipulations defined in his docket earlier this year, just five months ago.

Earlier this year, in January, Jack Quillin was ordered by a court not to use or have access to surveillance equipment or radio scanners.

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Catholics fight government surveillance in confession after wins against abortion mandate, tax

Catholic physicians and social service workers won over the Trump administration and Supreme Court, respectively, last week against their compelled participation in emergency room abortions and a state unemployment compensation program that costs more than their own church’s.

Bishops hope to make it a trifecta against a Washington state law that violates the seal of confession, threatening priests with imprisonment and fines if they don’t report suspected child abuse or neglect when “penitents” confess, but not lawyers who learn the same from clients.

Diocesan leaders filed a motion for preliminary injunction Thursday against Democratic Gov. Bob Ferguson, Attorney General Nicholas Brown and county prosecutors in federal court in Tacoma to block SB 5375 at least 10 days before it takes effect July 27.

The Justice Department also quickly opened a civil rights investigation into the law as a prima facie First Amendment violation after Ferguson signed it, expanding the category of mandatory reporter to “member of the clergy,” defined as any regularly licensed, accredited or ordained minister, priest, rabbi, imam, elder, or similarly positioned religious or spiritual leader.

Denial of an injunction would likely fast-track the case to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and, if also rejected by the historically most liberal appeals court, to SCOTUS, which has rarely struggled to reach lopsided rulings upholding religious liberty.

The high court Thursday unanimously overturned the Wisconsin Supreme Court‘s ruling that found that a local Catholic Charities bureau’s work is primarily secular and hence it can’t get a religious exemption from paying into the state unemployment compensation system.

Justices unanimously ruled for Gerald Groff two years ago after the U.S. Postal Service threatened to fire the evangelical Christian for refusing to work Sundays under an Amazon delivery agreement, junking the “de minimis cost” standard that let employers easily deny religious exemptions but only appeared in a footnote in a 1977 ruling.

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Army surveillance balloons spotted over Tucson raise privacy concerns from advocates

The U.S. Army and a private company are flying high-altitude surveillance balloons over the Tucson area, raising concerns among privacy advocates. 

Multiple high-altitude balloons have been spotted over the Tucson and Sierra Vista area for more than a week, with one balloon in particular staying over the area longer than any of the others. That balloon, with the registration number N257TH, has made headlines in the past. 

The balloon is owned by South Dakota aerospace company Aerostar, and in 2023 was mistaken for a Chinese spy balloon. The balloon is actually part of Aerostar’s “Thunderhead” balloon system, which has been doing multiple tests with the military and other contractors across the nation and around the globe. 

“It is a technology that should not and constitutionally cannot be applied to the American people,” Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst at the American Civil Liberties Union, told the Arizona Mirror. “Even testing for eventual overseas use in legitimate combat theaters raises a lot of questions about what kind of data is being collected.”

Aerostar would not answer specific questions about what type of testing was being done. The company referred additional questions to the U.S. Department of Defense and the Army, neither of which responded to multiple requests for comment. 

Aerostar confirmed that the flights were not connected to U.S. Customs and Border Patrol or Department of Homeland Security programs, “however high-altitude balloons would be ideal for that type of mission,” Aerostar Culture and Communications Director Anastasia Quanbeck said in an email to the Mirror. 

“By leveraging directional wind patterns at high altitudes, Aerostar’s Thunderhead Balloon Systems offer groundbreaking capabilities for navigation and persistence over areas of interest,” she said. “Aerostar Thunderhead Balloon Systems are capable of supporting intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance missions, as well as extending communications across wide distances, environmental monitoring, earth observation, and scientific research.” 

Quanbeck said she was not able to discuss the work the company does with the DOD or the Army. 

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NJ to Consider Bill that Would Mandate Monitoring and Publishing Data of Homeschoolers

The New Jersey Senate is set to consider a bill on Thursday that would require families who homeschool their children to register with their local governments and the governments to publish their data.

Senate Bill 1796 (SB 1796), sponsored by New Jersey state Sen. Angela McKnight (D) would require a “parent or guardian to annually notify” their local school district, in written form, of their intention to homeschool their children.

“The letter shall include the name, date of birth, and grade level of the child, and the name of the person who will provide instruction to the child,” the latest version of the bill’s text reads.

Under SB 1796, the school district will be required to “annually compile and make available for public inspection on its website information concerning the number of children who reside in the district who are being home-schooled” and what grades they are in. It does not include any provisions to protect the privacy of the individual children or families in question and does not provide a legal definition for the term “homeschool,” which opponents have observed does not formally exist in New Jersey law.

The Home School Legal Defense Association (HSLDA), which opposes the bill, alerted its members on Tuesday that on Thursday, June 5, a legislative hearing will be held regarding SB 1796. The bill appears on the docket for a New Jersey Senate Education Committee hearing scheduled for that day.

The HSLDA opposed the bill on the grounds that it would create “pointless and burdensome red tape”:

Senate Bill 1796 would require every homeschool family in New Jersey to file a letter with their public school superintendent expressing their intent to homeschool their children. The birth date and grade level of each child would be required as well, and the bill provides no privacy protection.

In a post on X, HSLDA encouraged homeschool families in the state to “call or email” their state senator and to ask them to oppose SB 1796.

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T-Mobile Faces Backlash for Auto-Enabled Screen Recording in T-Life App Without User Consent

T-Mobile is facing renewed backlash over its T-Life app, this time for quietly introducing a screen recording feature that is automatically activated on some devices. The tool, labeled “Screen recording tool,” has been discovered by users in the app’s settings, prompting immediate concerns about transparency and user consent.

Described as a means of gathering behavioral data to help enhance the app’s functionality, the tool is being deployed without upfront notification in many cases.

Though T-Mobile insists it does not collect personal data and only monitors activity within the app itself, the feature’s default-on status has unsettled many customers. The company told CNET, “This tool records activities within the app only and does not see or access any personal information,” and noted that users can deactivate it under the Preferences section.

While this type of telemetry is not uncommon in the tech world, the method of deployment here has caught attention. Unlike the app’s pre-existing Screen Share function, which allows support reps to view a user’s screen during troubleshooting, but only with explicit approval, this newly introduced screen recorder operates passively in the background.

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The UK’s Digital ID Era Starts This Summer

A sweeping transformation of the UK’s identity systems is underway, with the government poised to launch a digital identity wallet this summer. Beginning with a digital version of the Veteran card and expanding to include driving licenses later this year, the initiative is designed to eventually consolidate all government-issued credentials into a single, centralized app by 2027.

While pitched as a modernization effort, this dramatic shift toward a digital-first ID system has sparked serious concerns about surveillance, data security, and individual autonomy in an increasingly watchful society.

To enroll in the system, users will be expected to provide personal documentation.

The Gov.uk Wallet, as it is known, represents a fundamental redesign of the relationship between the state and its citizens.

This overhaul comes at a time when nearly 50 million people across the UK could be affected by the new digital infrastructure. While specific instructions on how to apply for or access the wallet have yet to be detailed, the direction is clear: the UK is moving toward a society where physical IDs may soon be relics of the past.

The government frames the change as part of its larger digitization strategy, yet the scale and permanence of eventual biometric data collection call into question the long-term implications for individual freedoms.

The introduction of digital driving licenses has also been tied to broader regulatory reforms, including newly proposed rules for e-scooter purchases. Buyers will need to provide license details as a form of identity verification, reinforcing the idea that access to everyday services will increasingly hinge on digital ID systems. This entrenchment of digital identity into daily life carries substantial consequences: it embeds surveillance mechanisms into transportation, access to benefits, and public services in ways that may be difficult to reverse.

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