The two rival businesses gained the same ability last year to remotely break into iPhones, according to the five sources, meaning that both firms could compromise Apple phones without an owner needing to open a malicious link. That two firms employed the same sophisticated hacking technique – known as a “zero-click” – shows that phones...
Category: Surveillance
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How to Protect Yourself From NSO Spyware
The U.S. government has advice for journalists and activists: Watch out for spyware. The National Counterintelligence and Security Center doesn’t mention NSO, the Israeli company whose Pegasus spyware has been implicated in policies of surveillance and repression around the world. But the warning described Pegasus’ powers exactly. Companies and individuals have been selling commercial surveillance...
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Suspicionless Surveillance: Suppressing Communities of Color and Political Dissent After 9/11
The expansive post-9/11 notion of “homeland security” – manifested most concretely in the creation of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) – underpins suspicionless surveillance. DHS itself, “as part of its regular operations, conducts invasive physical searches of millions of Americans and their belongings each week without any predicate.” These programs, according to the...
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The Afghan Intelligence Agency Was Raided: Who Got the Files?
The people who seized the files at the National Security Directorate and the Ministry of Communications may not have even been Taliban: The men did not speak Afghan languages, the officials said, and may have been agents of Pakistan’s military intelligence agency working in tandem with Taliban forces. Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency has long supported...
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Israeli Spyware Used to Surveil Activists World Wide
Military-grade spyware leased by the Israeli firm NSO Group to governments for tracking terrorists and criminals was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, business executives and the two women closest to murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, according to an investigation by The Washington Post and 16...