A new biography of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS), by Ben Hubbard, describes how he perfected “electronic authoritarianism.” From Fred Hiatt’s review in the The Washington Post the most fundamental change the headstrong crown prince has brought about, Hubbard shows, is to turn a “soft-gloved autocracy” that featured multiple centers of power, and...
Category: Surveillance
Post
Post
$100 Million NSA Program Produced Exactly Two Unique Leads
Mass surveillance, whether you approve of it morally, is not practical. It does not enhance the safety of the American people. The results are in: only twice during that four-year period did the program generate unique information that the F.B.I. did not already possess, said the study, which was produced by the Privacy and Civil...
Post
Indian Journalists Say They’ve Been Targeted by NSO Spyware
The Columbia Journalism review reports that five Indian journalists have been notifed by WhatsApp of attempts to hack their phone. In October 2019, WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, sued the Israeli technology firm NSO Group in a United States federal court and accused the company of exploiting a vulnerability in WhatsApp to enable its...
Post
Four Members of Chinese Military Charged With 2017 Hack at Equifax
From The Washington Post: In a nine-count indictment filed in federal court in Atlanta, federal prosecutors alleged that four members of the People’s Liberation Army hacked into Equifax’s systems, stealing the personal data as well as company trade secrets. In a statement announcing the case, Attorney General William P. Barr called their efforts “a deliberate...
Post
Sen. Mark Warner Wants to Fund Huawei Competitors
Huawei or the highway? As that question divides the U.S. and U.K. intelligence communities, Sen. Mark Warner, ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has a solution to wean the United States from reliance on the Chinese telecom giant. The issue is whether Western governments can use Huawei’s technology to build their 5G networks, which...