New: Elon Musk's lawyer has sought to reassure Twitter employees they won't go to jail if the company is found in violation of a Federal Trade Commission decree that outlines steps Twitter must take to protect users’ personal data. With @KurtWagner8 bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Also: We're told Musk laid off an entire information security team at Twitter that oversaw sharing of user data with advertisers & research partners, a move that triggered internal concerns about vulnerability to security threats & potential violations of FTC rules.

New: I spoke with some of the hackers & dissidents waging a covert war of sabotage against the authoritarian regimes of Belarus's Lukashenko & Russia's Putin. They are setting a new model for revolutionary groups. Here's their story: bloomberg.com/news/features/… It's their innovation that really stands out. Aside from using ransomware to disrupt trains moving Russian troops, for example, Belarus hackers @cpartisans breached govt computers & stole a database of 10m passport & driver licence photos covering most of Belarus's population...

New: US technology company Sandvine has quietly exited the Russian market after making major deals there in recent years to supply deep packet inspection equipment, a controversial technology that can be used to censor the internet: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… During meetings in Moscow in 2018, Sandvine reps told prospective clients that its tech could be used to block or slow access to specific websites, discover the location of particular people & support local law enforcement, according to company documents & people familiar.

New: Ukraine cybersecurity official says 400,000 volunteers have signed up to aid country's makeshift hacker unit, says volunteers working to gather intelligence & attack Russian military systems: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The "IT Army" has also been working to “address Russian people directly" in phone calls, emails, & messages” in effort to show real pictures from the war, said Victor Zhora, deputy chief of Ukraine’s information protection service, in a briefing on Friday.

New: Belarus hacktivist group @cpartisans staged a new cyberattack on the country's train network today in effort to disrupt Russian troop movements into Ukraine. Group damaged railway control system, claims trains were halted in Minsk, Orsha & Osipovichi bloomberg.com/news/articles/… A former Belarus Railway employee who runs an online group for train workers in the country told me the hackers breached a traffic control system called the "Neman dispatcher." That caused disruption to train movements, especially at a junction between Minsk & Orsha, he said.

Putin reportedly has a $97 million luxury yacht called "Graceful". A group of Anonymous hackers on Saturday figured out a way to mess with maritime traffic data & made it look like the yacht had crashed into Ukraine's Snake Island, then changed its destination to "hell": The hackers -- who are affiliated with an Anonymous offshoot called @Theanonleaks -- told me they did it by manipulating the maritime "Automatic Identification System," which is used to track ship locations.

New: I spoke to Ukrainians who say they have formed a makeshift "cyberwar" unit & are working with Ukraine's government to stage hacks on Russian officials & websites amid the ongoing invasion: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Many of those involved -- about 500 people so far have signed up to participate -- worked in the country's technology industry. They say they are using their computer expertise to attack Russian government assets & counter Russian propaganda.

New: I wrote about the terrifying rise of "zero click" hacks - a method of breaking into a smartphone or computer even if its user doesn’t open a malicious link or attachment. bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Zero-click hacks are becoming the gold standard many intelligence & law enforcement agencies are relying on to break into phones & covertly install spyware capable of stealing data, listening in on calls & tracking the user’s location.

New: Google told US lawmaker it received a warning last May that European technology company Mitto was “siphoning” user passcodes to aid surveillance carried out by foreign governments: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Google said it looked into the matter but “due to a lack of visibility into telecommunications networks,” wasn’t able to confirm it, according to the disclosure to Senator @RonWyden. Mitto denies the allegation.

Wrote about an extraordinary ongoing hacking campaign in Belarus by a group called the "Cyber Partisans", which has breached dozens of police & government databases in recent months in a bid to expose wrongdoing & overthrow the Lukashenko regime bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The group has penetrated some of the most secret govt databases in the country, obtaining:
- a huge trove of recordings from a govt wiretapping system that intercepts phone calls
- personal info on top govt officials & spies
- a list of informants who reported activists to police

New: Former employees at US tech firm Kaseya told us they tried to raise alarm repeatedly about internal security failings before the recent hack of the company's software that led to one of the worst ever ransomware incidents bloomberg.com/news/articles/… A Russia-linked criminal gang called REvil took credit for the attack, during which it used Kaseya’s software as a launching pad to infect the company’s customers with ransomware. As many as 1,500 companies have so far been affected.

Pretty wild to see the CTO of US tech company @Sandvine, which sells internet censorship equipment, openly applauding Russian government internet blocking & bandwidth throttling in this post on LinkedIn from Friday linkedin.com/posts/activity… The CTO -- Alexander Havang -- praises the actions of Russia's internet regulator Roskomnadzor, which enforces political censorship in the country, blacklisting thousands of websites & restricting online privacy hrw.org/report/2017/07…

New: My investigation of US private equity firm Francisco Partners & its little-known role backing companies that have sold some of the world's most repressive governments surveillance & censorship technology bloomberg.com/news/features/… The story took a few months to put together & I'm grateful to the many people who helped me with it. It's based on interviews w/ about two dozen current & former employees at Francisco Partners & the businesses it’s financed, as well as internal documents & financial filings.

New: Tech from US company @Sandvine used to censor the internet in more than a dozen countries w/ a record of political repression. We've uncovered Sandvine's deals w/ likes of Algeria, Azerbaijan, Egypt, Eritrea, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, UAE & Uzbekistan: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… In August, we reported Sandvine had sold its technology to Belarus, which the country's government was using during recent mass protests to block access to social media, messaging apps, & news websites.

A few people have asked me for more technical details about what U.S. company @Sandvine is doing in Belarus to help the country censor the internet. So here's a thread with some new insights on that: Sandvine's technology was used to help shut down the internet in Belarus through several days in August, during & immediately after the disputed re-election of President Alexander Lukashenko, who is known as Europe's last dictator. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

New: U.S. company @Sandvine faces backlash after Belarus uses its tech to block the internet & censor access to social media, messaging apps, & news websites: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… Reps from Sandvine met w/ Belarus government security officials as recently as May this year & provided a state-run internet agency w/ tech that can block people from accessing as many as 150 million websites, according to sources & newly obtained documents.

Google employees accuse company leadership of developing internal surveillance tool to monitor workers’ attempts to organize protests & discuss labor rights: bloomberg.com/news/articles/… The tool -- a mandatory Chrome extension -- will report staffers who create an internal event w/ 10+ rooms or 100+ participants, acc to an employee memo, which alleges it is "an attempt of leadership to immediately learn about any worker organization attempts.”

Twitter helped to promote Chinese government propaganda & disinformation denying human rights violations in Xinjiang, where an estimated one million ethnic minority Uighurs have been held in internment camps. theintercept.com/2019/08/19/twi… The company today announced a policy change that will bar such activity -- in the form of promoted tweets from state media orgs -- hours after an inquiry from The Intercept about Xinjiang & an earlier controversy over propaganda related to Hong Kong. blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/c…

NEW: An American organization founded by Google & IBM is working with a company that is helping China's authoritarian government secretly monitor the phone & internet activity of 200 million people, documents & sources reveal: theintercept.com/2019/07/11/chi… Shenzen-based Semptian has been working with the OpenPower Foundation, a nonprofit led by Google & IBM execs with the aim of trying to “drive innovation.” The foundation has enabled the Chinese company to collaborate with IBM, US chip manufacturer Xilinx & other US corporations.

New website shines light on @Apple's complicity in China censorship -- blocking people's access to western news sources, info on human rights & religion, & privacy-enhancing apps that would circumvent the country’s pervasive online surveillance regime: theintercept.com/2019/02/01/app… Some of the apps Apple's censoring in China: 600+ VPNs, news sources like @NYTimes, @RadioFreeAsia, Tibetan News, @VOT_Tibetan; counter-censorship tools like @TorProject & @PsiphonInc; Google; &
@zh_bitterwinter, which provides info on human rights & religious freedoms in China:

NEW: Google censored China search plan "effectively ended" after major internal dispute. Secret data analysis operation integral to the project shut down after @theintercept exposed it & the company's furious privacy team confronted executives: theintercept.com/2018/12/17/goo… #Dragonfly Key to this story is 265.com, a Chinese-language web directory service that claims to be “China’s most used homepage.” Google purchased the site in 2008 from Cai Wensheng, a billionaire Chinese entrepreneur.