NEW: Assange ally who once processed payments for WikiLeaks now masterminds a global phone surveillance system.
Andreas Fink helps shady actors & governments track phones, intercept texts & compromise accounts.
It gets worse 1/
By @cr0ft0n & @omerbenj
haaretz.com/israel-news/se…
2/ This is Mexican Journalist & editor Fredid Román Román.
He was assassinated last August.
Hours before the murder, his phone was pinged & poinpointed using a loophole in the global telecom system (commonly called #SS7).
So, who was tracking him? And who was helping them?
3/ Andreas Fink gets access to the world's phones through Global titles in far flung places, like Fiji.
One of them was used to poinpoint the slain journalists phone
Fink alleges he'd recently lost access to that title..
Without a criminal investigation, we may never know.
4/ Andreas Fink should not have the keys to YOUR account.
But he does... if you use text messages as a way to authenticate & log in.
Which he sells to all manner of shady players. Who do all sorts of bad things.
5/ Andreas Fink makes every single person with a phone less safe.
Yet he operates openly from #Switzerland.
Where is Swiss law enforcement? This kind of operation single handedly tarnishes the reputation of the country's tech sector.
CC @fedpolCH @SwissMFA.
6/ This may describe a criminal act.
Torture is widespread in the DRC.
As are extrajudicial executions.
7/ Andreas Fink = one-man-band-of-badness.
But the industry selling access to #SS7 for surveillance & interception is big & lucrative.
Like Circles, which we @citizenlab investigated.
Until governments & big telcos act, the harms will keep coming.
8/ Fink's shady surveillance dealings may be lightly obscured, but on Twitter at @kiwi66 he's retweeting content about activists at risk from security flaws...
And promoting a West African telco he's involved with: @cajutel.
Which seems like it deserves serious scrutiny.
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