Thread by @bywillpollock

Transnational Surveillance Goon Squad will be experiencing things soon

@DavidManOnFire @WendyBugliari @clearing_fog @sisu_sanity @YDanasmithdutra @arapaho415 @ThomasS4217 @MelissaJPeltier

VERY MESSED UP THREAD™ incoming

first some business: THANK YOU @danapriest @craigtimberg & @smekhennet for this HUGELY important piece of interactive-data journalism

washingtonpost.com/investigations…

also I'm working on 3 consecutive nights of sleep deprivation due to my stubborn toddler's discovery of free will and choices so please bear with me

Pegasus is definitely "eloquently nasty" software (credit: @HowHackersThink) but keep in mind owners/funders/defenders are pretty terrible too

allegedly conspiring to murder/dismember Jamal Khashoggi wasn't sufficient for Pegasus goon squad, no sir

"let's keep momentum going by spying on Khashoggi's widow" was the thought bubble

trend I'm seeing: Surveillance Goons facilitate transnational crimes then immediately proceed to *SPY ON VICTIMS AND INVESTIGATORS*

on what planet is this legal

filed to: recipe for disaster

#Pegasus #PegasusProject

*waves dismissively in direction of ethics*

good times.

Viktor Orban is Putin-humping fascist dictator but sure tell us more about ur cool "by the book" Pegasus stuff

spying tech can be exploited and also

deserts/dry
water/wet
Crocs/ugly

#Pegasus' attempt at ToS noted 🤣🤔🖕🖕

if FBI has information that would safeguard Americans' data privacy WE HAVE A RIGHT TO KNOW

(early-2020 Reuters story barely made a ripple cuz TFG was busy firing Pentagon folks)

reuters.com/article/us-usa…

that's basic framework of WaPo piece; pausing here for "me time" so please send prayers/juju for sleep

you'll want to pull up a chair for tomorrow's 🧵 continuation which will include

- Rod Rosenstein
- TFG
- Peter Thiel
- Robert Maxwell

& more

https://twitter.com/arapaho415/status/1309663086043783168?s=20

*Pegasus/spyware dirtbag thread continues*

5th day of sleep interruption and my beloved toddler shape-shifts from beautiful #DragRace Linda Blair to head-spinning levitating Exorcist Linda Blair

with a h/t to my dear sweet @YDanasmithdutra our first garden-variety Evil Tech dickhead is Rod Rosenstein who's currently landing planes at NSO Group (Pegasus parent)

cyberscoop.com/rod-rosenstein…

saying this until I'm blue in the face: installing political operatives in power positions = no bueno

when did Rod's NSO consulting start? how did he snag that plum gig? so many questions

https://twitter.com/ericgarland/status/1416809057202151429?s=20

in light of Rosenstein's choices his Mueller "management" gets DOUBLE side-eye today

how does #RoRo (cc: @jzikah) *actually* feel about Bonesaw Mafia's Khashoggi op 🧐

joining forces with NSO is tacit approval, no?

your ire should always be bipartisan

https://twitter.com/arapaho415/status/1309663086043783168?s=20

.@DavidManOnFire followers already hip to Surveillance Dirtbags cuz he done been sounding alarms since oh I dunno maybe before Cavemen Times?

huge h/t to David for this piece

theguardian.com/world/2021/jul…

oh.

h/t @BaddCompani

https://twitter.com/jsrailton/status/1417157571006316548

“People with power can do whatever they want to anyone" including murdering Mexican journalist relaxing in a hammock

NSO's surveillance technology facilitated the hit

theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/…

newsflash: hypersensitive/violent criminal tyrants don't take criticism well #PegasusProject

as freelance journalist I take great pleasure in telling Evil Tech dickheads to F off

Rosenstein watched journalists getting targeted/whacked in Mexico; was at DOJ when Khashoggi got bonesawed; then said "no yea NSO seems like neat place to work"

https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1300154435428065281?s=20

https://twitter.com/DavidManOnFire/status/1416873171979051019?s=20

NSO paid Misha Flynn some coin while on-break from his contract with Turkey I guess?

https://twitter.com/jimstewartson/status/1417168224555212800?s=20

*Transnational Surveillance Goon Squad Thread continues*

Day 6 of sleep interruption and my dear sweet toddler son has gone from levitating Linda Blair to reenacting scene from "Scanners" (see above for context)

so fun!

disclaimer: thread will be LONG and rollicking cuz NSO scandal touches all corners of mobster culture

think of it as an octopus fornicating a centipede which then had an orgy with 10,000 bunnies but they're all crims

we'll get back to exploring specific surveillance dickheads in a minute but we gotta unpack this Facec*nt scandal as it pertains to NSO

hoo boy.

https://twitter.com/clearing_fog/status/1417269494037192720?s=20

refresher:

- NSO exploited WhatsApp vulnerability cuz they got more security holes than swiss cheese

- FB sued; said "how dare you"

- NSO then spilled tea in discovery about FB dickheads trying to *hire them for spying in 2017*

- Facebook: "how dare you"

well hey now NSO/Pegasus story's getting downright spooky

h/t @LongAsUCan2 @WendyBugliari cc: @DavidManOnFire @HunterJCullen @ZevShalev

theshiftnews.com/2021/07/19/int…

is it just a coincidence that NSO-linked mobster Anatoly Hurgin fraudulently obtained Maltese citizenship and journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia ended up dead 🤔

theshiftnews.com/2021/07/19/int…

AFAICT nobody's established definitive link between NSO & Galizia's murder but evidence strongly suggests Hurgin had her whacked for posts like this

daphnecaruanagalizia.com/2016/08/owner-…

assassinated Maltese journalist Daphne Caruana Galizia was trying to warn us about NSO & transnational surveillance dickheads who today are very very in the barrel cc: @BaddCompani

journalist gets whacked by the mob and Malta drags feet for *2 years* to investigate? dunno guys that seems like tacit admission of corruption

night 7 of toddler-induced sleep deprivation so I'm still loopy AF; will be continuing NSO thread shortly

ever experienced your toddler thinking your junk is a playtoy while trying to get your underwear on?

like wintering in Cabo you simply must try it

*Surveillance Dickhead Thread continues*

will y'all take a bit of a detour with me? feel like I might've stumbled on something important

2 weeks ago Haitian president Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in a *surgically precise operation*

so who helped?

@BaddCompani @DavidManOnFire @ZevShalev @WendyBugliari @MelissaJPeltier @carrybeyond @clearing_fog @sisu_sanity @HunterJCullen @ericgarland @jimstewartson

operation to kill Moïse had NUMEROUS players but one of them stuck out to me: Florida resident & Venezuelan fella called Antonio Intriago
kosu.org/news/2021-07-1…

while trying to piece together spyware's potential role in this assassination (reminder: NSO is linked to Khashoggi and other killings) I decided to drill down on Intriago

deep financial hole and a chubby for violent-military ops? bad combination.

anyhooze before Wikileaks became full-time Kremlin PR it posted docs from "inner workings of the controversial global surveillance industry"

Intriago was in that document dump from 2015

"potential customer in Mexico" gets me wondering if Intriago had an opporunity to muscle in on NSO's Mexican turf (see earlier in 🧵 for reference) 🧐

"can your system be inserted on computer via remote" sounds kinda familiar yes?

Intriago's firm CTU Security is where things really start going left

how can a dude this sketchy continue to operate?

because Florida.

mystateline.com/news/internati…

good times.

so I *of course* popped over to CTU Security's page to check things out

protip: leaving ur website up while also being a fugitive is kind of a bad idea

(sketchy English and lots of patriotic/pro-police nonsense)

CTU's store has Glocks for sale which seems a teeny bit problematic

CTU's partner page features a number of bottom-feeder garden-variety surveillance dickheads like Karbontech

feel free to peruse but it'll probably go dark soon: ctusecurity.com/?page_id=1606

and so.

primary suspect in Jovenel Moïse's assassination has connections to/sought business from multiple spyware entities

how did spyware factor in and which companies helped?

answerable question.

more tomorrow and thanks for following along

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"there are crooks everywhere you look now. the situation is desperate"—Daphne Galizia

h/t @StudioUnspoken

*Transnational Surveillance Goon Squad/VERY MESSED UP THREAD™ continues*

believe I mentioned earlier how "global network of spying f*cksticks" story would be rollicking, yes? well...

writer's note: less than an hour to do this update before Rugrat Management™ but happy to report full sleep last night praise jeebus

.@MSignorile—who is still a national treasure/force of nature—wrote an outstanding recap on Catholic Church's operation to out one of its own via Grindr data
signorile.substack.com/p/right-wing-c…

target of Grindr-data op was Monsignor Jeffrey Burrill, general secretary of the USCCB (episcopal conference of U.S. Catholic Church) whom you'll recall was keen to deny Biden communion

boingboing.net/2021/07/22/cat…

pausing here to tag pals who'll want to see this update ;) @DavidManOnFire @WendyBugliari @100FrogLegs @jimstewartson @BaddCompani @HunterJCullen @UROCKlive1 @MelissaJPeltier @clearing_fog @sisu_sanity @carrybeyond @arapaho415 @MingGao26 @YDanasmithdutra

anyhooze Burrill is not low-level coffee boy or mailroom clerk (no offense to either of those jobs; all jobs matter)

Burrill is a Catholic Church muckety-muck reliably pushing RW dirtbags' anti-gay propaganda while being gay himself

sounds familiar yes?

according to @MSignorile's reporting (my sources concur) outing Burrill was designed as *very public* warning to other CC officials who might want to a) seek company of gentleman callers; or b) step outta line in other ways 🤨

spoiler alert: Transnational Spying Dickheads don't need tons of cash to target inconvenient/misbehaving folk

"spying's been going on since just after invention of radio" my intel source said. difference today? "reasons people are doing it: gone from warfare, spying, tracking, search & rescue—to outing political or ideological rivals"

based on recent events (Khashoggi) that feels right

sorry I have to leave it here for Rugrat Management and will resume soon

here's a tease: Fuckr was forked to help Bible Chuckers exploit Grindr 🤣🧐

engadget.com/2018-09-15-gri…