NEW: When Kenyan cops arrested activist & presidential candidate @bonifacemwangi they took his devices.
When he got his personal phone back, the password was gone.
We @citizenlab found they'd abused @cellebrite to break into it.
Here's why this abuse matters 1/
2/ Your phone holds the keys to your life, and governments shouldn’t be able to help themselves to the contents just because they don’t like what you are saying.
But everywhere you look, cops are getting phone cracking technology from companies like @cellebrite.
Many abuse it.
3/ @Cellebrite's abuse potential is clear.
Now, Cellebrite says that they have a human rights committee & do due diligence...
Because even Cellebrite knows that if you sell phone cracking tech to security services with bad oversight, you have a problem.
So why are there so many sales to questionable security services?
2/ Companies like Paragon (founded in Israel, former Israeli intelligence ppl, recently sold to a US owner) make hacking American technology companies their business model.
And then selling these capabilities to foreign governments.
How can this be?
3/ Honestly it is astonishing that a company that works tirelessly to hack & undermine the security of American products is now US-owned.
The missing factor: building contracts with the US government & lobbying.
The goal of these contracts, I believe, isn't just profit. It's getting protection & building government dependency on their technology.
They showed us cute missing dogs & we consented to a mass human tracking system.
I think Ring's wants to be Flock. On steroids.
Because instead of just sketchy cameras in parking lots, Search Party will cover your own backyards & homes.
And if you & your neighbors want to challenge the loss of privacy? Well, how exactly would you do that effectively?
Because, instead of going to the city council, looking at the contracts, and calling out your mayor for speeding your city to dystopia, it's massive and distributed.
Will you even know which of your neighbors is now helping to feed the system?
If we had half competent privacy regulators & laws in the US this kind of thing would be a big, hard fight for Ring.
Instead? It's a Super Bowl commercial.
Oh, and yeah Ring has already partnered with Flock Safety to incorporate tools letting the government directly request footage.
Regrettably, I'm familiar with this kind of graphical language.
This sort of gods-eye-view is exactly how you pitch your surveillance product to a state.
It's all over the kind of advertising we review all the time while researching commercial spyware & surveillance companies.
"Available to everyone for free right now."
Frog, you can reach out of your pot and turn the stove knob up yourself! Free.