2/. Journalists, MPs & human rights activists were selected as targets for surveillance by authoritarian regimes
#Pegasus is the spyware developed, marketed & licensed to govts around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. @citizenlab#PegasusProject
3/. In the months before he died & a year after his murder, people associated with Jamal Khashoggi, were selected for potential surveillance by clients of NSO
Hungary’s far-right govt is suspected of hacking phones of journalists & targeting owners
4/. A list of some 50,000 phone numbers of people believed to be of interest to to authoritarian govts could have been targeted by Pegasus spyware
Last year, an Israeli court rejected an attempt, supported by @amnesty, to revoke notorious spyware firm NSO Group’s export licence.
5/. #Pegasus spyware may have been used in
Azerbaijan🇦🇿
Bahrain🇧🇭
Hungary🇭🇺
India🇮🇳
Kazakhstan🇰🇿
Mexico🇲🇽
Morocco🇲🇦
Rwanda🇷🇼
Saudi Arabia🇸🇦
Togo🇹🇬
UAE🇦🇪
NSO says it doesn’t know what clients do with its spyware BUT they’re certain their tech wasn’t used in Khashoggi murder
Hmmm
6/. “The #PegasusProject revelations must act as a catalyst for change”
Before joining @amnesty, @AgnesCallamard was UN Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions
8/. What the #PegasusProject reveals is the NSO Group is really representative of a new malware market, where this is a for-profit business. They don’t care about the law, they don’t care about regulations." @Snowden #Pegasus#PegasusSpyware#PegasusGate
9/. For 10 years the Israeli surveillance company NSO has been helping govts steal secrets
10/. The UK & US are also on the list of 45 countries where #Pegasus infections have been detected
Is it not more than likely that the NSA & GCHQ deploy similar or better spyware in their domestic & foreign surveillance?
If so, who are they targeting & is it being done legally?
11/. My colleagues at @AmnestyTech have published a toolkit for #PegasusProject to help you scan your iPhone & Android devices for evidence of NSO's #Pegasus spyware targeting your phone
13/. In August 2018, we discovered that an @amnesty colleague & several Saudi human rights activists, had been targeted with #Pegasus software
Did the Israelis - who sold the spyware to foreign govts - retain the ability to keep tabs on how it was used?
14/. “NSO's claim that it’s ‘technologically impossible’ to spy on US phone numbers is a bald-faced lie: an exploit that works against Macron's iPhone will work on Biden's iPhone. Any code written to prohibit targeting a country can be unwritten.” @Snowden
15/. UK & US intelligence services also spy on journalists, activists etc
In 2003, the NSA (& GCHQ?) eavesdropped on UN Security Council delegations in their attempt to force a 2nd Resolution to give a fig-leaf of legitimacy for their illegal war on Iraq.
16/. Interestingly #Pegasus spyware doesn’t seem to have been used to target far-right groups, KKK, QAnon, ISIS etc
In the UK, secretive forces like the 77th Brigade & SGMI, surveil human rights activists & infiltrate the media, judiciary, politics & NGOs wired.co.uk/article/inside…
17/. Is nothing sacred?
The phone numbers of the Dalai Lama's top advisers are believed to have been selected as those of people of interest by govt clients of NSO Group
24/. It may be tempting to frame this as “a battle btw democracies & autocracies” BUT the problem of malign surveillance is inseparable from the wider assaults on our privacy that are intrinsic to our daily online life. #Pegasus#PegasusProject@NewYorker newyorker.com/magazine/2021/…
25/. “My work to expose the crimes of the Saudi regime led to a hacking attempt on my phone. Today, I am overwhelmed by feelings of vulnerability & intrusion.”
26/. Alarmed by #PegasusProject revelations that #Pegasus has been used to facilitate worldwide human rights violations on a mass scale, 146 NGOs call on states to implement an immediate moratorium on the sale, transfer & use of surveillance technology amnesty.org/en/documents/d…
28/. #BREAKING: #Pegasus spyware owner, Novalpina, is to be liquidated
In a move that’s yet to be made public, the London-HQed private equity firm is to be wound up after a dispute between its 3 principals & controversy over its ownership of the NSO Group news.sky.com/story/pegasus-…
29/. “Power is sucked out of democratic structures & relocated to a place where it can’t be challenged: an inner circle defended from opposition by a forcefield of money & patronage, a compliant judiciary & a grovelling media.” @GeorgeMonbiot on #Pegasus google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theg…
30/. This article👆is about the “the ever more sophisticated tools of autocratic power used in nominal democracies”
Surveillance tools
Dark ads on social media
Thinktanks using dark money
Voter suppression
Culture wars
31/. Two days ago, in an extraordinary bid to discredit the #PegasusProject, @Europol’s director & NY’s district attorney, wrote an OpEd entitled “The last refuge of the criminal: Encrypted smartphones”!
32/ #Pegasus can be installed in a targeted phone with just a missed call
“An missile delivering a payload of invisible spyware capable of dismantling democracies & atomising societies without the bother of red tape – no warrants, no oversight, no regulation whatsoever” (A. Roy)
33/. #Pegasus is just one of many spyware products
NSO is one of many cyber warfare firms
Cellebrite sells to UAE, Turkey, Russia & Saudi Arabia
Candiru - named after the Amazonian fish that lodges itself in the penis - hacks Microsoft & Google products citizenlab.ca/2021/07/hookin…
37/. The #DataGrab finally hit the news last month, but this was about GP patient data & 10 MONTHS after the 1st deadline passed to “opt out” of NHS patient data sharing
Data of 65m Britons “for life science research” is being advertised to Pharma companies by the Dept of Trade.
38/. We know that Big Tech firms mine our data for commercial & national security purposes, but the new frontier lies not in our consumer behaviour, but in our biological selves
Population-wide genomic data would offer huge benefits...It would also give govts unprecedented power
39/. “You ask for forgiveness not permission” (Peter Thiel, Palantir)
Genomics has the capacity to reshape humans & transform society
Every futurist will tell you this is the way the world is going...but how to achieve this as quickly as possible?
40/. “We’ve arranged a society based on science & technology, in which nobody understands anything about science & technology
This combustible mixture of ignorance & power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces”
(Carl Sagan)
That time is now!
41/. Public investors in Novalpina, the private equity firm that owns a majority stake in the Israeli spyware company, NSO Group, are in talks to transfer management of that fund to Berkeley Research Group, a US consulting firm. #Pegasus#PegasusProject#PegasusSpyware@Snowden
42/. French intelligence investigators confirmed #Pegasus spyware found on the phones of 3 journalists, including a senior member of staff at @FRANCE24
It’s the 1st time an independent & official authority has corroborated the findings the investigation #PegasusProject. @Snowden
45/. "#PegasusProject is just the latest example that exposes what some states will do outside the gaze of publicity & reinforces the importance of whistleblowers, journalists & publishers in holding the perpetrators of human rights violations to account.” amnesty.org/en/latest/news…
46/. Will spying on journalists be the ‘new normal’?
Must listen @globalfreemedia of podcast looks at the impact of #PegasusProject revelations & why they must serve as a wake-up call
48/. The #PegasusProject shed light on the ways govts across the globe sidestep encryption by resorting to the amoral expertise provided by private enterprise
50/. Two months after @amnesty broke the #PegausProject scandal, the German govt has admitted its police bought #Pegasus spyware
In India, issue continues to rumble on with the Modi govt refusing to tell the Supreme Court whether or not they used #Pegasus thewire.in/world/german-g…
51/. Apart from in India, the #Pegasus scandal came & went, largely unnoticed.
It reminds me of the #PanamaPapers (2016) & #ParadisePapers which blew the lid on how the rich & powerful exploit secretive offshore tax regimes in order to launder money, dodge sanctions & avoid tax.
Before she was murdered, #DaphneCaruanaGalizia was working to expose links btw SCL - #CambridgeAnalytica's parent company - citizenship firm, Henley & Partners, & then PM Muscat
54/. Three years after the UK parliament called a for criminal investigation into SCL, #CambridgeAnalytica, & Henley+Partners, a link btw the companies was proven
But more disturbing are the funders in the shadows like the Mercers who funded Steve Bannon.
55/. “The truest conspiracies meet with the least opposition
Methods by which true conspiracies are realized are almost always overshadowed by conspiracy theories: malevolent falsehoods that erode confidence in the existence of anything certain” @Snowdenedwardsnowden.substack.com/p/conspiracy-p…
57/. "It’s as if the Age of Reason - the era of evidential argument - is ending & knowledge is delegitimized & scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy, which depends on shared truths, is in retreat, & autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march” @SachaBaronCohen
61/. Human rights lawyer & husband of ex-PM, Cherie Blair has been revealed as ‘ethics advisor’ to NSO, the Israeli firm that sold #PegasusSpyware to human rights abusing govts
65/. #BREAKING: India’s Supreme Court has set up an independent expert committee to investigate the use of #PegasusSpyware against journalists, opposition MP’s & others.
74/. These revelations show the need for govts to stop non-human rights compliant forms of surveillance & for a global moratorium on the export, sale, transfer & use of surveillance equipment, 'til a human rights-compliant regulatory framework is in place. amnesty.org/en/latest/news…
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Julian Assange is scheduled to appear in a federal court in Saipan, a US commonwealth in the Pacific, where he’s expected to plead guilty to one charge under the Espionage Act & be sentenced to 5yrs
Given he’s already served this time, he should walk free
The public have a right to know what their govts do in their name
Julian #Assange’s prosecution represented a grave threat to press freedom, undermining the key role of journalists & publishers in scrutinizing govts misdeeds & creating a chilling effect
2/. From the start of the pandemic the govt had given #Palantir, a US spyware company with reported links to #CambridgeAnalytica, access to NHS health data
3/. Palantir worked on the NHS data store with #FacultyAI - a company with ties to Cummings
In 2020, @amnesty warned that Big Tech firms might use the COVID crisis to hoover up genomic data, obliterating the last frontier of privacy: our biological selves
1/. “It is the greatest mass-killing in recorded history; & it goes on daily, hourly, as regularly as the ticking of your watch”
Arthur Koestler’s 1944 essay expressing frustration at the failure of the world to acknowledge Nazi atrocities resonates today wethescreamers.com
2/ “There are a few of us…yelling at you in newspapers…Now & then we reach your ear…But it only lasts a minute. You shake yourself like puppies who’ve got their fur wet; then the screen again descends & you walk on, protected by the dream-barrier which stifles all sound”
#Gaza
3/ Koestler notes maniacs lose contact with reality so “perhaps it’s we, the screamers, who react in a sound & healthy way to the reality which surrounds us, whereas you are the neurotics who totter about in a screened fantasy world because you lack the faculty to face the facts”
“They got me!” Liz Truss tells far-right kingpin, Steve Bannon, before going on to explain that, to have effectively tackled “the deep state” that runs Britain & its institutions, she would have “needed a bigger bazooka”! #LizTruss #BritanniaUnchained
"I was just saying it like it is & that’s what people respect me for"(!)
Liz Truss’ compares her premiership to a one night stand & says she was just “fattening the pig” for slaughter & that she should have gaslit the public like Rishi Sunak is doing (!)
"I faced the most almighty backlash...from the usual suspects in the media” Liz Truss
“Truss's decline is simultaneously tragic & horrifying but the claim that the media conspired against her can't go unchallenged. There are front pages praising her to the rafters” @mrjamesob
2/. It’s clear that the bomb blasts in Kerman on the 4th anniversary of #Soleimani's assassination by the US, could lead to a quick ratcheting up of dangerous tensions
After Oct 7, the US sent two aircraft carrier groups to the region
3/. Three US soldiers were killed & two dozen injured in an unmanned aerial drone attack on US forces stationed in northeastern #Jordan near the Syrian border, President @JoeBiden said