MI6 and GCHQ may have illegally authorized informants to commit serious crimes in the UK, Britain's spy court said in a newly disclosed judgment.
theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/d…
Earlier this year it was revealed that MI6 had approached the same court and asked it to suppress potentially relevant material.
There's a reckoning of sorts happening in the UK over the abuse of undercovers.

The past few years have carried eye-popping revelations about the UK's army of police spies, many of whom tricked women they were targeting into having sex with them.

scotsman.com/news/crime/und…
Last year a challenge to MI5's power to authorize its informants to commit crimes was narrowly defeated by the Investigatory Powers Tribunal (Britain's intelligence-and-surveillance court.)
bbc.com/news/uk-508703…
But the idea that MI6 (a foreign intelligence agency!) or GCHQ could have authorized informants to commit crimes *domestically* was new to me - and not a little disturbing.

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More from @razhael

16 Dec
I'm watching the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs' hearing on "Irregularities in the 2020 Election"

Chairman Johnson speaking now.
Johnson now rereading letters sent by other senators raising issues with voting machines - correctly notes that there've been longstanding concerns with electronic voting.
Donald Palmer of the EAC speaking now. I'm liking what looks like the engraving of a fighter jet behind him. He should put his laptop on a pile of books, though.
Read 14 tweets
16 Dec
Scoop: Technicians at the African Union discovered in Jan. that suspected Chinese hackers have been stealing security camera footage from their campus.

"We cannot estimate the quantity and value of the data which have been stolen," an internal memo says. reut.rs/3oPlgsa
The Chinese response to my reporting: 🇨🇳

“China is a staunch upholder of cybersecurity”

“We never interfere in Africa’s internal affairs.”
Reuters' report about the @_AfricanUnion follows a blockbuster 2018 report in Le Monde that alleged that the showpiece conference center built by the Chinese was honeycombed with bugs: lemonde.fr/afrique/articl…
Read 4 tweets
15 Dec
Recently SolarWinds' CEO boasted about his company's reach:

“We don’t think anyone else in the market is really even close in terms of the breadth of coverage we have [...] We manage everyone’s network gear.”

Our look at the firm at the center of it all:
reuters.com/article/global…
(deleted the previous tweet because of a formatting error.)
Here’s the (redacted) screengrab of researcher @vinodsparrow alerting @solarwinds to their upload server being vulnerable. cc @zackwhittaker
Read 5 tweets
14 Dec
New: Here's the retraction demand sent Friday to @FoxNews by voting tech company Smartmatic - featuring nearly 20 pages of eye-popping claims floated by guests and hosts alike.
documentcloud.org/documents/7338… ImageImageImageImage
The conspiracies vary, but most have already been debunked by fact checkers, including those at @Reuters - for example here: uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fac…
and here: uk.reuters.com/article/uk-fac…
My interview published this morning with Smartmatic's CEO - now updated with news of similar retraction letters sent to @OANN & @newsmax.

Read 4 tweets
13 Dec
Huge scoop from ⁦@Bing_Chris⁩: the US Treasury and the US NTIA have been breached by hackers. A foreign government is suspected and the National Security Council met Saturday to discuss the fallout. reut.rs/3oP3FAs
Just got this from @solarwinds:

reut.rs/2IJw7V1
Read 8 tweets
11 Dec
Facebook has connected the 'Ocean Lotus' hacking group to an IT firm operating out of Ho Chi Minh City.

In a chat with me today (over FB) the firm insisted that wasn’t true.

“We are NOT Ocean Lotus,” they said.

Story by ⁦@jc_stubbs⁩ & @pearswick reut.rs/2KdbDo2
Ocean Lotus doesn’t get the same press as Chinese, Russian, or North Korean hacking groups but they’ve posed particular menace to Vietnamese exiles. Would love to learn more about this particular actor.
Here’s Facebook’s blog post on the group — and some IOCs:
about.fb.com/news/2020/12/t… Image
Read 7 tweets

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