John Scott-Railton Profile picture
May 15 4 tweets 4 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
NEW: notorious spyware firm #NSO Group, maker of #Pegasus has spent millions on foreign agents & lobbying operations in the US.

Their most recent target? The American Bar Association @ABAesq.

By @incisayki @OpenSecretsDC
opensecrets.org/news/2023/05/s… Since 2020, NSO Group has p...
2/ NSO's Russia & China claims didn't sway the Biden Admin / NSC.

Because they are silly.

Countries that don't buy Chinese fighters won't suddenly buy their secret spy tech. For the same obvious reasons.

Still, NSO apparently warmed these canards up & served them to @ABAesq. The American Bar Associatio...
3/ As the fox, NSO says they are uniquely positioned to get all the hens together to craft regulation.

In case @ABAesq folks are wondering, these stakeholders:

- won't take NSO's meetings (most of congress)
- have sanctioned them (USG)
- have sued them (Industry, civil society) Image
The US Government's assessment of NSO Group bestowed upon it a rare twofer:

National security harm AND human rights harm.

Yet American lawyers & lobbyists keep taking handsome sums to help NSO keep the #spyware abuse train on the tracks.

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More from @jsrailton

May 16
Today is a good day to remember how Henry Ford used his immense wealth and status to spread antisemitism and conspiracy theories.

history.com/news/henry-for…
“In those days this book made such a deep impression on my friends and myself because we saw in Henry Ford the representative of success"

-Former Nazi youth leader describing during the Nuremberg trials, how Ford's writings & status played a key role in his radicalization. Image
As of right now, something like 30% of the replies to this thread celebrate, defend, or deflect from Ford's well-documented antisemitism.

Remarkable.
Read 5 tweets
May 14
The hubristic falsehood that only industry can regulate itself because things are so complex is not new.

We already know how it plays out.

It got us the 2008 Financial Crisis.
The Deepwater Horizon disaster.

And countless other epic messes & harms.
A big part of the messy soup of issues we have in America is because very complex industries successfully avoided regulation.

In all the consequential industries where regulators defer or are captured by industry... it's bad.

Like healthcare & big pharma.
Some in the #AI industry are simultaneously saying:

"We are going to change everything"

and

"Nobody should hold us accountable but ourselves"

Think about that for a second.
Read 9 tweets
May 10
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… ImageImageImageImage
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? ImageImage
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. Image
Read 8 tweets
May 10
Real talk: popular encrypted apps are a major target for zero-click exploits.

An untested video calling stack pushed onto the devices of the most influential ppl in the world w/ built in discovery + Twitter's threadbare security team = disaster waiting to happen.
Encrypted calling apps are great targets for a lot of reasons.

They are on many phones + typically have good user discovery features. And many other exploit-friendly surfaces around call handling, handshakes etc.

NSO's #Pegasus etc got onto phones via WhatsApp, iMessage, etc.
In the 2019 #Pegasus breach of WhatsApp, the company was thankfully watching logs. They spotted, investigated, notified victims & sued NSO Group.

Similar story w/Apple.

In both cases a world class threat intelligence & security team was in the house.

But chez Twitter?
Read 4 tweets
May 9
NEW: European Parliament's @EP_PegaInquiry
has issued their final report.

Urges #EuropeanUnion towards stronger regulation. Calls out several abusers.

Good thread on highlights👇 Image
"strategic campaign to destroy media freedom" in 🇭🇺 #Hungary.

"a system for the surveillance of the opposition...designed to keep...the government in power" in 🇵🇱#Poland

The @EP_PegaInquiry PR is not mincing words about #Pegasus #spyware abuses in the 🇪🇺#EU Image
The @EP_PegaInquiry also raises serious questions about spyware abuses in 🇬🇷#Greece & 🇪🇸#Spain.

It's clear: spyware is a European problem. Image
Read 7 tweets
Apr 27
NEW: Twitter basically stopped fighting gov demands for censorship & surveillance under Musk.

Shameful.

Nightmare for freedom of expression.

And dangerous to dissidents, opposition parties, human rights defenders etc.

By @russellbrandom
restofworld.org/2023/elon-musk… Image
Ugh. Looks like Governments have figured out that Musk isn't saying no to censorship & surveillance demands.

And sure enough, Twitter is getting masses more requests.

Cannot overstate how bad this is for democracy around the world. Image
Elon Musk's Twitter pushes everyone to supply more info.

Including human rights groups. Dissidents.

And opposition parties.

What happens today when a gov comes asking for all that data?

Yet another way that Twitter is breaking trust with users.

Bleak.
Read 7 tweets

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