One day last June, Patti Smith opened her laptop, typed a brief message to the thousands of readers of her Substack newsletter, and hit Send. I would be grateful for any suggestions of songs you think I might try, she wrote. Have a good week-end!

Smith began using the rapidly expanding, increasingly influential, and sometimes controversial email publishing platform in March 2021. Coronavirus had put touring on hold, and Smith was working on The Melting, a sort of diary about life in the COVID era, when someone at Substack reached out. Smith was intrigued. Rather than pursuing a printed work that wouldnt see the light of day for another year or two, she decided to publish The Melting on Substack in real time. She signed one of the companys pro dealsthe Substack equivalent of a book advanceand on March 31 sent out her first newsletter, offering readers a journal of my private pandemic, as well as weekly ruminations, shards of poetry, music, and musings on whatever subject finds its way from thought to pen.

Thirty-eight Substack emails later, Smith scrolled through the comments on her request for cover songs. One reader suggested Paupers Dough by the Scottish musician King Creosote, n Kenny Anderson. Smith found the track on YouTube, instantly falling in love with its slow, plaintive melody and lyrics that she described in a subsequent post as a poem to the people, the salt of the earth. She listened to it on repeat, memorizing the words and singing them as if they were her own. As luck would have it, Smith was due to perform in Andersons home country for the opening night of the COP 26 Climate Change Conference in Glasgow. Four months after discovering Anderson through her Substack, Smith stood onstage with him in the darkness of Glasgows Theatre Royal. I just started crying, she told me. We sang the song together and it was very moving. That was a real Substack moment.

Smith shared this story with me to convey her wholehearted embrace of Substack, which turns five this summer, half a decade after debuting with a promise to accelerate the advent of what we are convinced will be a new golden age for publishing. Since its founding, in tandem with an industry-wide pivot toward digital subscriptions, Substack has aggressively pursued that goal, making it both a darling of the media world and a breakout star of Silicon Valley. More recently, the company has found itself on the front lines of the culture wars. Its laissez-faire approach to content moderation, which sometimes gives voice to objectionable figures booted from other platforms, has made Substack a lightning rod in the debate over regulating free speech. But even amid bursts of negative media coverage, Substack has maintained a large and loyal user base, and there are no signs of an exodus.

Were not here to build A SMALL BOUTIQUE BUSINESS and just hope for the best, and hope that Google doesnt crush us one day.

Smith, for her part, sees her eponymous newsletter as a sort of petri dish for what the medium can be. In addition to her serialized memoir and other miscellaneous writings, Smith uses Substack for audio messages, poetry readings, and photography. She opens her laptop at night and records impromptu videos, inviting fans into her white-walled bedroom. In February, for Smiths paying subscribers$6 a month/$50 a year for unlimited accessshe hosted a livestreamed performance from Electric Lady Studios, belting out classics like Ghost Dance and Redondo Beach.

In its early days, Substack primarily catered to a certain set of internet-savvy writers and journalists, lured by the promise of monetizing a direct relationship with their readers. But as it morphs from a niche publishing concern into a heavyweight start-up mentioned in the same breath as Twitter and Facebook, its user base is proliferating accordingly. I really like my Instagram, but it has specific boundaries, and this was something new, said Smith. It makes me feel like, in the movies, where you see the reporter that goes to the phone booth and calls in her article. I feel a bit like that.

A year and a half ago, in a column published in the pages of this magazine, I suggested that Substack feels like a player that might just be on the cusp of the big leagues. Since then, Substack has raised an additional $65 million in venture capital, bringing its total funding to $82.4 millionled by mega-firm Andreessen Horowitzand its valuation to a reported $650 million. Its head count is about 90, up from 10 at the start of the pandemic. In November the company, headquartered in San Franciscos Financial District, offered a tiny glimpse into its otherwise opaque revenues, saying it had surpassed a million paid subscriptions to Substack publications, the top 10 of which, out of hundreds of thousands, collectively bring in more than $20 million a year. (Substack typically skims off 10 percent of a newsletters revenue, but individual deals vary; some writers take a lump sum in exchange for relinquishing 85 percent of their subscription dollars.) In addition to Smith, several other literary lions have joined Substack (Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Roxane Gay, Chuck Palahniuk, Joyce Carol Oates), which has also begun to attract celebrities of varying stripes (Padma Lakshmi, Nick Offerman, Dan Rather, Edward Snowden, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar). In February, President Joe Biden bypassed the long queue of print reporters clamoring for a sit-down and offered one instead to Heather Cox Richardson, the breakout history professor who became Substacks most-read writer last year. Substack also appears to have influenced strategy at major legacy news brands, like The Atlantic and The New York Times, which have been building out their own newsletter portfolios and, in some cases, vying for talent with Substack. Theyre not in Mark Zuckerberg territory just yet, but that appears to be the goal: Someone whos friendly with cofounder Hamish McKenzie told me he once said that Substack would be the next Facebook.

When I asked McKenzie about that, he didnt recall making the remark, but neither did he shy away from laying out the companys ambitions. Were not here to build a small boutique business and just hope for the best, and hope that Google doesnt crush us one day, or Amazon doesnt crush us one day, he said. What we are trying to do is build a true alternative to the attention economy.

McKenzie, a 40-year-old New Zealander who lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids, is Substacks de facto ambassador to the media. Slim and clean-cut, McKenzie grew up in a rural wine and farming region, where his father worked as an atmospheric scientist and his mother a high school language and culture teacher. At the University of Otago in New Zealands southeast, McKenzie got into journalism, which brought him to Canadas University of Western Ontario for graduate school. In 2006, he moved to Hong Kong and freelanced before helping create Hong Kongs edition of Time Out. Two years later, he joined the American woman who would become his wife, Stephanie Wang, in the United States, eventually landing a reporting gig at PandoDaily, the now defunct technology news website. He seemed very, like, I wanna shake things up, remembers Paul Carr, Pandos former editorial director. You could tell he had big ideas.

At Pando, McKenzies coverage of Tesla and SpaceX caught the attention of an editor who approached him about doing an Elon Musk book. Without a direct line to the elusive billionaire, McKenzie went to the personal website of Musks dietitian mother, found an email address for her, and reached out, seeking advice on the best way to approach her son. To my horror, McKenzie recalls, she just forwarded that email straight to Elonbusted!and then Elon had his P.R. person call me right away. Musk, as it happened, was familiar with McKenzies work and agreed to a call, except he wasnt keen on participating in a book. Have you ever thought about going corporate? he asked McKenzie, who met with Musk about a job at Tesla. McKenzie tried to talk Musk into doing a book anyway but got nowhere. He became a writer for Teslas communications team instead, sticking it out for more than a year before heeding the siren call of his Musk project, Insane Mode, which he left the company to write in 2015. Musk still didnt participate, but McKenzie shared the manuscript prior to publication. It wasnt smooth sailing, McKenzie told me.

While working on Insane Mode, McKenzie took a part-time job doing comms for the messaging app Kik, where he became friends with Chris Best, the companys CTO. Best, a 34-year-old computer wonk who grew up outside Vancouver, had cofounded Kik in 2009 as he was finishing the systems design engineering program at the University of Waterloo in Ontario. In early 2017, Best left Kik and decided to take a year off. I started writing, he told me. One of the things that had been swirling in my head was, like, Hey, I think our media ecosystem has gotten insane! And I wrote basically an essay or a blog post or something. Best shared the piece with McKenzie and asked for feedback. He was bemoaning the state of the world and how it led to this growing divide in society, and how the things that were being rewarded were cheap outrage and flame wars, McKenzie recalls. I was like, Yeah, this is right, and everyone who works in media knows that these are the problems. But what no one knows is how to do something about it. Whats a better way? Whats a solution?

Their solution turned out to be Substack. We were both readers of Stratechery, Ben Thompsons influential, largely paid newsletter about the business of tech and media, says McKenzie, and were like, Yes, the model does work really well. Were both happy subscribers, paying subscribers to Stratechery. Why dont more people try it? It was simple enough to be appealing and convincing to me that it was worth a shot.

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Substacks Founders Dive Headfirst Into the Culture Wars - Vanity Fair

About 10 years ago, a story about Targets uncanny ability to detect a customers pregnancy made waves. An angry man had gone into a Target store in Minneapolis, demanding to speak to a manager and flashing coupons that his teenage daughter had received in the mail for baby clothes and cribs. Are you trying to encourage her to get pregnant?" he asked. It turned out his daughter was already pregnant and Target had figured this out before he had.

Data mining has improved since then, but fortunately so have our tools for protecting privacy. A leaked draft ruling suggests the US Supreme Court may overturn Roe vs Wade, the landmark 1974 decision that gave women the right to abortion. This would make online privacy more critical than ever for women and health-care providers, as secrecy over abortion would become integral not just for personal reasons but to avoid legal ramifications or blowback from vigilantes. Its unclear who would be legally liable for an abortion in close to a dozen or more US states that may ban it. But many women would want to hide their online activity out of caution. Democratic Senator Ron Wyden warned on Tuesday that every digital recordfrom web searches, to phone records and app datawill be weaponized in Republican states as a way to control womens bodies."

One of the first things many women in need of an abortion do is seek advice online. That wont change. But if they happen to live in one of 22 states that would probably outlaw abortion, theyd be wise to hide their browsing history and use encrypted messaging apps to talk to others about their plans. Should abortion pills also be outlawed, women may turn to the Dark Web to procure themsomething they already do, according to one study. Women may also turn to VPNs to stop mobile network providers and search engines from seeing their browsing habits. Theyll clear their web histories, use incognito windows or use more privacy-focused browsers like Firefox.

Such tools, normally associated with political dissidents in autocratic regimes, could become far more important for American women in a post-Roe vs Wade world. A tech news site reported that a location-data firm has already been selling information on visits to abortion clinics, by tracking apps on groups of phones.

The internet presents risk, but also help, such as telemedicine services that offer abortion medication. Many women in the US have flocked to services like Aid Access to acquire such medication; the website Women on Web offers services to women around the world. Depending on the location, pills can cost about $90, versus $600 or more to get the procedure done in a clinic, prohibitively expensive for many of the women who need abortions.

Online collectives like the Auntie Networks of Facebook will also become increasingly important. These are pages run by people offering a spare room in US states where abortion is legal, for women who need the procedure. A 2019 report in the Washington Post described how some Auntie Network pages suggested taking selfies at local landmarks as proof" that the trip was just a vacation. One host in Iowa said theyd be happy to mail you a birthday card" which contained birth control, a Plan B pill or a pregnancy test. Well-meaning as these initiatives are, this is sensitive information being hosted by a social-media company thats already being used by third parties, in this case advertisers.

In the meantime, a forthcoming law in the EU that reins in the power of large tech firms may have the unintended consequence of making peoples data in the US more vulnerable to surveillance. The EUs Digital Markets Act, which will come into effect in the next few years, forces the worlds biggest digital companies to make their products compatible with those of competitors. That means messaging apps like WhatsApp will need to co-exist with less-secure services like SMS. But some cryptography experts say that making these tools interoperable will break their encryption standards, which could put women seeking an abortion at greater risk.

Social-media and search platforms have for years been exploited by the surveillance advertising industry. How much will they resist future government efforts to enforce abortion bans? What happens if state prosecutors order Facebook or Google to identify women who are breaking the rules? Given the libertarian ethos of many Silicon Valley billionaire founders and the legal fallout from whistleblower Edward Snowden, its hard to see such firms giving in to government demands to break their encryption and hand over such details. But put enough financial pressure on a business and anything can happen. For now, encryption and online privacy tools are a sacred right for women seeking an abortion. They mustnt turn into a luxury.

Parmy Olson is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering technology.

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Online Privacy Will Be Critical If roe Vs Wade Is Overturned | Mint - Mint

Politicos publication of a draft Supreme Court opinion that signals the end Roe v. Wade has hit Washington like a thunderbolt, triggering protests outside the Supreme Court, generating blowback for pro-choice Republican Senators who supported Trumps nominees for the bench, and sparking an investigation to determine how the sensitive materials ended up in the hands of reporters Josh Gerstein and Alexander Ward. Because of the profound consequences that the draft opinion portends for abortion access in America, its publication is among the most significant leaks in Washingtons history. Here are six other bombshell leaks that rocked the nations capital.

In 1971, the military analyst Daniel Ellsberg sent copies of the top-secret Pentagon Papers to reporters at the Washington Post and the New York Times. The revelations about how badly the Vietnam war was going for American forces stunned the public, and the episode also led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling affirming that the newspapers had the right to publish the material.

At the start of the 1970s, a high-ranking FBI official,Mark Felt, reinvented himself as Deep Throat, the anonymous source who provided the Washington Posts reporting duoBob Woodward and Carl Bernsteinwith the secret information they needed for their historic Watergate scoops. The bombshell revelations would push Nixon out of the White House, inspire a Hollywood movie, and endow the Washington Post with its romantic mystique.

In 2003, Richard Armitage, the then deputy secretary of state, disclosed the identity of a CIA officer to the conservative columnist Robert Novak. Though Armitage would later insist that hed made the disclosure inadvertently, the outing of Valerie Plame as a CIA operative would trigger a federal investigation into the source of the leak, embroil the Bush administration in controversy, and lead to the conviction of Dick Cheneys former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, on obstruction of justice and other charges. Armitage didnt reveal himself to be Novaks original source until 2006, according to CNN.

Ex-intelligence contractor Edward Snowden in 2013 provided information to journalists at the Guardian and the Washington Post that exposedclassified government surveillance programs that harvested telecommunications data of millions of citizens. After American law enforcement authorities filed espionage charges against Snowden, he fled to Russia.

In July of 2016, Wikileaks released an embarrassing cache of roughly 20,000 emails that had been sent and received by senior figures in the Democratic Party. The emailswhich had been hacked by Russian operativesshowed top DNC officials disparaging Bernie Sanders,led to the resignation of Debbie Wasserman Schultz as DNC chairand stirred discord inside the Democratic Party.

After former President Trump fired him in May 2017, former FBI director James Comey used the assistance of a friend to leak the contents of a memo that,among other things,contained his recollection of a discussion in which Trump suggested that the bureau scrap its probe into Michael Flynn, according to NBC News.A subsequent report by the Department of Justices Office of Inspector General concluded that Comeys actions broke FBI policy,but the DOJ declined to prosecute him.

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Luke Mullins is a senior writer at Washingtonian magazine focusing on the people and institutions that control the citys levers of power. He has written about the Koch Brothers attempt to take over The Cato Institute, David Gregorys ouster as moderator of NBCs Meet the Press, the collapse of Washingtons Metro system, and the conflict that split apart the founders of Politico.

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6 Other Leaks That Rocked Washington - Washingtonian

Elon Musk is planning to make a few radical moves at Twitter, and from the looks of it, they are going to send ripples across the media industry. Lets start with the most recent splash he made regarding his Twitter dreams. Musk reportedly told bankers about his plans for charging a fee for embedding tweets. Given the digital medias reliance on tweets, a step like that would obviously hit the pockets of publications, especially the upstarts trying to leave a mark. It will also hamper the accessibility aspect for readers, with higher subscription prices or more paywalls likely resulting.

Musk also claimed that a nominal fee should be levied for commercial and government users. Yet again, it is newsrooms that keep a vigilant eye on the Twitter handles of government authorities and brands, passing on the information tweeted by them to the masses. Government institutions can absorb the cost, but theres no stopping brands from pushing their tweets behind a Super Follow paywall.

How would newsrooms that agree to pay the price for sourcing corporate Twitter announcements link or embed such tweets in an article that is free to read without any policy transgressions? Yes, screenshots can work for text- and picture-based tweets, but what about video clips? If embeds are blocked for such scenarios and a hyperlink to an exclusive tweet lands the reader nowhere, isnt that tantamount to asking users for blind faith in a news publication? But thats just the tip of the iceberg here.

Twitter and journalism share a deep bond. In 2015, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey credited journalists for the quick growth of Twitter, and how the platform was a great fit for people discovering news. Back then, 25 percent of Twitters coveted verified accounts belonged to journalists or media outlets. A Reuters Institute study from last year pointed out that Twitter is seen much more as a primary destination for news.

In comes free speech absolutist Elon Musk with his whirlwind $44 billion acquisition of Twitter. Musk is making bold promises for the platform under his leadership. Among those goals are ending the scourge of spambots, encrypting Twitter DMs, and open-sourcing the algorithm to boost transparency. Or just generally making it a more fun place.

But at the top of the list is a free speech agenda. That sounds good on paper, but it also risks undoing Twitters years worth of progress on moderation. Having a platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization. I dont care about the economics at all, Musk remarked during his TED interview two weeks ago.Balancing opinions and being politically neutral sound like benevolent ideals for a platform, but the repercussions might push the media business toward a major reality check.

Twitter acts somewhat like a virtual notebook for journalists to collect information and offer real-time updates on breaking news events. Research from the Sheffield Hallam University says Twitter has made it easier for reporters to build relations, while editors are effectively using it to promote legacy brands. But thats just the surface of it.

The platform has actually helped give birth to a new kind of journalism. The Guardian says Twitter has become central to its journalism, with the platform helping it achieve record traffic soon after the Edward Snowden story broke. A 2021 study from the Pew Research Center found that 69% of Twitter users in the U.S. rely on it for news, with nearly two-thirds of them showing trust in the news they come across on Twitter.

The role of journalists has also changed drastically, as theyre now building a personal brand by tweeting live events in real time, or writing threads about topics they are passionate about but cant really cover at a publication. Landing a plum book deal now depends on the number of Twitter followers you have, and so does the revenue one amasses from their Substack newsletter.

The retweet button is a convenient way to share breaking news or endorse an idea with just a single tap. Crowdsourced content available on Twitter helps create a more engaging news story with embedded videos and photos, without having to put a reporter on the ground, especially in precarious scenarios. For better or worse, influential figures beefing on Twitter regularly makes for front-page stories.

7/Journalists make Twitter better by providing context, research, and a balanced perspective drawn from what the people experience.

— jack (@jack) March 21, 2015

In fact, Twitter is influential enough that it can catalyze policy change for rival social media platforms with a much larger user base. The Everyday Sexism Project is an example of how Twitters hashtag feature was deployed, forcing Facebook to recognize the problem of disturbing content targeting women that was rampant on its platform. In fact, Hashtag Activism has become a powerful force for change across the globe. A study from the American Press Institute explained in detail how Twitter is more than just a breaking news service.

Thats problematic, especially with Elon Musks free speech stance. A loose hand at content moderation would mean the bad actors will have a field day at spreading conspiracies, fake news, and misinformation. A study conducted by the University of Wisconsin-Madison revealed that even reputed institutions like The Washington Post and NPR have mistakenly carried propagandist tweets from state-sponsored sources like Russias IRA.

Twitter has helped journalists overcome geographic circulation boundaries, but that freedom has also been exploited to disperse problematic content. With the kind of laissez-faire policing that Musk is potentially pitching, it would become even more difficult for the Twitter news consumer to identify good content from bad. And when the audience has been ensnared in the web of propagandist content, crowdsourcing for legitimate information is going to become a nightmare for reporters and newsrooms.

Whether or not Musk becomes the Tweetlord of Modern Civilization, Twitter will not fundamentally change as a platform. It will continue to be the public town square where news originates from influential figures and institutions, and covering stories as quickly as possible is what a journalist or media house will remain preoccupied with. But there are downsides to it as well.

As the Nieman Journalism Lab puts it, the overreliance on tweets for stories grants Twitter an unfairly large amount of authority, and it has compromised some core journalistic practices. Journalists can get caught up in a kind of pack mentality in which a story is seen as important because other journalists on Twitter are talking about it, rather than because it is newsworthy, concludes the Columbia Journalism Review, which performed research on journalists and their bond with Twitter.

For Twitter to deserve public trust, it must be politically neutral, which effectively means upsetting the far right and the far left equally

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 27, 2022

A free-speech platform that is more lenient on the kind of content from both sides of an ideology will definitely make the online chatter more chaotic. Musk said in his TED interview that instead of deleting tweets that fall in the gray area, he would rather let them stay on the platform, even though he is open to more suggestions.

That brings us to the final part of the equation: The echo-chambering. When a lot of journalists talk about a topic at the same time on Twitter, it seems as if the debate is roiling the country. In reality, it can be merely a heated discussion between a few reporters with opposite takes, while their followers just amplify the debate. Twitter can be a great journalistic tool, but it can also skew whats really important in the world, wrote CNNs incoming resident Chris Licht, who is also quitting the platform on the day he assumes his new role.

The Twittersphere has affected what good ol dogged reporting is, and Musks vision for the platform might just be the reality check this profession needs. Whether or not Twitter gets nastier under Musk would be an afterthought at this point. The bigger a crowd gets on the de facto public town square, the more diverse opinions will get.

With that happening, it would become harder for journalists and fact-checkers to separate truth from misinformation. In an age where sensationalism is commonplace and misinformation travels at light speed, the situation will get messy sooner rather than later. It would be an ugly sight and the onus would fall as much on Musks libertarian approach as it would on Twitter as a platform.

By free speech, I simply mean that which matches the law.

I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law.

If people want less free speech, they will ask government to pass laws to that effect.

Therefore, going beyond the law is contrary to the will of the people.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 26, 2022

The media will continue its reliance on Twitter as it does today, albeit in a potentially noisier online space with more toxicity and the fallacy of human behavior in its ugly, naked glory. As for Musk if hes willing to listen he should be aware of his massive influence and what is borne out of it, for the sake of Twitter and millions of its users. Lets not forget Musks toxic fandom. Theres a whole history of Musk fans harassing journalists that dared criticize the billionaire.

In a world where genocides have been planned over social media, bending to local laws and championing free speech is a delicate balance that cant be left to the whims of a billionaire who cant or simply doesnt want to comprehend whats at stake here. Therefore. its going to be up to the media to make the next move. The two are tied so closely these days that its impossible to separate the two. But the media is going to have to wake up and realize that things are changing, and they (read: we) are going to have to adapt to this new, Musk-led era of our favorite platform, for better or for worse.

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Will Elon Musk give media the wake-up call they (we) need - Digital Trends

Authorities in China have reportedly directed government agencies and state-run companies to bin all personal computers made by foreign companies and replace them with homegrown hardware within two years.

According to Bloomberg, "people familiar with the plan" recounted how government staff were told upon returning from China's Labor Day holiday, which ran from April 30th through May 4th, they will have to toss foreign PCs.

Bloomberg's report claims that the yet-to-be-officially-published mandate could lead to the replacement of as many as 50 million PCs by the central government.

The leading PC maker in the APAC region last year, according to research firm IDC, was China-based Lenovo, with about 30 percent of the market. HP came in second, with 14.3 percent market share, followed closely by Dell with 14.1 percent market share.

Figures specific to the Chinese market from Canalys, covering Q2 2021, show Lenovo with a 40 percent market share.

Lenovo stock, coincidentally, was up about 4 percent on Friday, following the publication of the report from Bloomberg. The NASDAQ Composite during that period fell 1.4 percent.

The Register asked HP and Dell to comment but we've not heard back. We also asked Apple to comment because a predictably uncommunicative communications department is always good for a laugh.

We reached out to the Chinese Embassy in Washington, DC, which did not respond. The Commerce Department didn't immediately respond to a query either. A US State Department spokesperson did get back to us to say the agency has nothing to say on the subject.

This is not the first time reports of this sort have circulated. In December 2019, The Financial Times ran a similar story, "Beijing orders state offices to replace foreign PCs and software." At the time amid the Trump administration's friction with China and ban on Huawei's telecom gear the transition was to take three years, which is about where we are now.

Then there was the time in 2014 when, according to China's Xinhua news agency, China banned Windows 8 on government computers. That was a month after Microsoft ended support for Windows 8 and Chinese officials were said to concerns about the operating system's safety.

China has long wanted to wean itself from dependence on foreign technology providers. As far back as 1999, government officials hoped the homegrown Red Flag Linux would replace Windows. The software however proved unpopular and the project shut down in 2014.

More or less since Edward Snowden leaked classified information in 2013 about the scope of global surveillance programs run by the US National Security Agency, talk of disentangling global supply chains for the sake of national security has picked up. During the Trump administration, trade conflict with China increased and sanctions against Chinese firms like Huawei complicated global tech transitions like the adoption of 5G networking technology.

Relations with China have not improved much under the Biden administration, which has enacted its own considerable set of trade restrictions, as documented by China Briefing.

And thanks to Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing sanctions imposed by the US, EU countries, and the UK, among others, Russia too has been forced to mandate locally made technology.

Even so, Scott Kennedy, senior advisor on Chinese business and economics at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, does not appear to find the report particularly troubling.

"This is at least the fourth or fifth time Beijing has 'ordered' replacement of foreign office equipment, only to later back down," he said via Twitter. "Unsure why this time will be different. Even if they swap in domestic brands, there'll still be lots of US & Western tech inside."

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China plans to toss foreign-made PCs from government agencies 'in two years' - The Register

The Nation

WHY has the United States already become so heavily invested in the Russia-Ukraine war? And why has it so regularly gotten involved, in some fashion, in so many other wars on this planet since it invaded Afghanistan in 2001? Those with long memories might echo the conclusion reached more than a century ago by radical social critic Randolph Bourne that war is the health of the state or recall the ancient warnings of this countrys founders like James Madison that democracy dies not in darkness, but in the ghastly light thrown by too many bombs bursting in air for far too long.

In 1985, when I first went on active duty in the US air force, a conflict between the Soviet Union and Ukraine would, of course, have been treated as a civil war between Soviet republics. In the context of the Cold War, the US certainly wouldnt have risked openly sending billions of dollars in weaponry directly to Ukraine to weaken Russia. Back then, such obvious interference in a conflict between the USSR and Ukraine would have simply been an act of war. (Of course, even more ominously, back then, Ukraine also had nuclear weapons on its soil.)

With the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, everything changed. The Soviet sphere of influence gradually became the US and NATO sphere of influence. Nobody asked Russia whether it truly cared, since that country was in serious decline. Soon enough, even former Soviet republics on its doorstep became Americas to meddle in and sell arms to, no matter the Russian warnings about red lines vis--vis inviting Ukraine to join NATO. And yet here we are, with an awful war in Ukraine on our hands, as this country leads the world in sending weapons to Ukraine, including Javelin and Stinger missiles and artillery, while promoting some form of future victory, however costly, for Ukrainians.

Heres what I wonder: Why in this century has America, the leader of the free world (as we used to say in the days of the first Cold War), also become the leader in promoting global warfare? And why dont more Americans see a contradiction in that reality? If youll bear with me, I have what I think are at least five answers, however partial, to those questions:

First and above all, war is even if so many Americans dont normally think of it that way immensely profitable. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the US military-industrial complex recognised a giant business opportunity. During the Cold War, the worlds biggest arms merchants were the US and the USSR. With the Soviet Union gone, so, too, was Americas main rival in selling arms everywhere. It was as if Jeff Bezos had witnessed the collapse of Walmart. Do you think he wouldnt have taken advantage of the resulting retail vacuum?

Forget about the peace dividends Americans were promised then or downsizing the Pentagon budget in a major way. It was time for the big arms manufacturers to expand into markets that had long been dominated by the USSR. Meanwhile, NATO chose to follow suit in its own fashion, expanding beyond the borders of a reunified Germany. Despite verbal promises to the contrary made to Soviet leaders like Mikhail Gorbachev, it expanded into Poland, Hungary, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and Romania, among other countries that is, to the very borders of Russia itself, even as US weapons contractors made a killing in supplying arms to such new NATO members. In the spirit of management guru Stephen Covey, it may have been a purely win-win situation for NATO, the US, and its merchants of death then, but its proven to be a distinctly lose-lose situation for Russia and now especially for Ukraine as the war there drags on and on, while the destruction only mounts.

Second, when it comes to promoting war globally, consider the US militarys structure and mission. How could this country possibly return to anything like what, so long ago, was known as isolationism when it has at least 750 military bases scattered liberally on every continent except Antarctica? How could it not promote war in some fashion, when that unbelievably well-funded militarys mission is defined as projecting power globally across all spectrums of combat, including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace? What could you expect when its budget equals those of the next 11 militaries on this planet combined or when the Pentagon quite literally divides the whole world into US military commands headed by four-star generals and admirals, each one a Roman-style proconsul? How could you not imagine that Washingtons top officials believe this country has a stake in conflicts everywhere under such circumstances? Such attitudes are an obvious product of such a structure and such a sense of armed global mission.

Third, consider the power of the dominant narrative in Washington in these years. Despite the never-ending war-footing of this country, Americans are generally sold on the idea that we constitute a high-minded nation desirous of peace. In a cartoonish fashion, were always the good guys and enemies, like Putins Russia now, uniquely evil. Conforming to and parroting this version of reality leads to career success, especially within the mainstream media. As Chris Hedges once so memorably put it: The [US] press goes limp in front of the military. And those with the spine to challenge such a militarist narrative are demoted, ostracized, exiled, or even in rare cases imprisoned. Just ask whistleblowers and journalists like Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Hale, and Edward Snowden who have dared to challenge the American war story and paid a price for it.

Fourth, war both unifies and distracts. In this century, it has helped unify the American people, however briefly, as they were repeatedly reminded to support our troops as heroes in the fight against global terror. At the same time, its distracted us from the class war in this country, where the poor and working class (and, increasingly, a shrinking middle class as well) are most definitely losing out. As financier and billionaire Warren Buffett put the matter: Theres class warfare, all right, but its my class, the rich class, thats making war, and were winning.

Fifth, wars, ranging from the Afghan and Iraq ones to the never-ending global war on terror, including the present one in Ukraine, have served as distractions from another reality entirely: Americas national decline in this century and its ever-greater political dysfunction. (Think Donald Trump, who didnt make it to the White House by accident, but at least in part because disastrous wars helped pave the way for him.)

Americans often equate war itself with masculine potency. (Putting on big boy pants was the phrase used unironically by officials in President George W Bushs administration to express their willingness to launch conflicts globally.) Yet by now, many of us do sense that were witnessing a seemingly inexorable national decline. Exhibits include a rising number of mass shootings; mass death due to a poorly handled Covid-19 pandemic; massive drug-overdose deaths; increasing numbers of suicides, including among military veterans; and a growing mental-health crisis among our young.

Political dysfunction feeds on and aggravates that decline, with Trumpism tapping into a reactionary nostalgia for a once great America that could be made great again if the right people were put in their places, if not in their graves. Divisions and distractions serve to keep so many of us downtrodden and demobilized, desperate for a leader to ignite and unite us, even if its for a cause as shallow and false as the stop the steal Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.

Despite the evidence of decline and dysfunction all around us, many Americans continue to take pride and comfort in the idea that the US military remains the finest fighting force in all of history a claim advanced by presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama, and Joe Biden, among so many other boosters.

All the worlds a stage

ABOUT 15 years ago, I got involved in a heartfelt argument with a conservative friend about whether it was wise for this country to shrink its global presence, especially militarily. He saw us as a benevolent actor on the world stage. I saw us as overly ambitious, though not necessarily malevolent, as well as often misguided and in denial when it came to our flaws. I think of his rejoinder to me as the empty stage argument. Basically, he suggested that all the worlds a stage and, should this country become too timid and abandon it, other far more dangerous actors could take our place, with everyone suffering. My response was that we should, at least, try to leave that stage in some fashion and see if we were missed. Wasnt our own American stage ever big enough for us? And if this country were truly missed, it could always return, perhaps even triumphantly.

Of course, officials in Washington and the Pentagon do like to imagine themselves as leading the indispensable nation and are generally unwilling to test any other possibilities. Instead, like so many ham actors, all they want is to eternally mug and try to dominate every stage in sight.

In truth, the US doesnt really have to be involved in every war around and undoubtedly wouldnt be if certain actors (corporate as well as individual) didnt feel it was just so profitable. If my five answers above were ever taken seriously here, there might indeed be a wiser and more peaceful path forward for this country. But that cant happen if the forces that profit from the status quo where bellum (war) is never ante- or post- but simply ongoing remain so powerful. The question is, of course, how to take the profits of every sort out of war and radically downsize our military (especially its overseas footprint), so that it truly becomes a force for national security, rather than national insecurity.

Most of all, Americans need to resist the seductiveness of war, because endless war and preparations for more of the same have been a leading cause of national decline. One thing I know: Waving blue-and-yellow flags in solidarity with Ukraine and supporting our troops may feel good but it wont make us good. In fact, it will only contribute to ever more gruesome versions of war.

A striking feature of the Russian invasion of Ukraine is that, after so many increasingly dim years, its finally allowed Americas war party to pose as the good guys again. After two decades of a calamitous war on terror and unmitigated disasters in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, and so many other places, Americans find themselves on the side of the underdog Ukrainians against that genocidal war criminal Vladimir Putin. That such a reading of the present situation might be uncritical and reductively one-sided should (but doesnt) go without saying. That its seductive because it feeds both American nationalism and narcissism, while furthering a mythology of redemptive violence, should be scary indeed.

Yes, its high time to call a halt to the Pentagons unending ham-fisted version of a world tour. If only it were also time to try dreaming a different dream, a more pacific one of being perhaps a first among equals. In the America of this moment, even that is undoubtedly asking too much. An Air Force buddy of mine once said to me that when you wage war long, you wage it wrong. Unfortunately, when you choose the dark path of global dominance, you also choose a path of constant warfare and troubled times marked by the cruel risk of violent blowback (a phenomenon of which historian and critic Chalmers Johnson so presciently warned us in the years before 9/11).

Washington certainly feels its on the right side of history in this Ukraine moment. However, persistent warfare should never be confused with strength and certainly not with righteousness, especially on a planet haunted by a growing sense of impending doom.

TomDispatch.com, May 8. William J Astore is a retired lieutenant colonel of US air force and professor of history He is also a senior fellow at the Eisenhower Media Network, an organisation of critical veteran military and national security professionals.

Excerpt from:
Must the US be involved in every war? - newagebd.net

On June 21, 2021, Edward Snowden celebrated his 38th birthday in Russia. Hes been in the country for over eight years, having been granted permanent residence in the country in October 2020 [1]. Snowden, an American, has not returned to his native country since leaking millions of classified documents detailing the massive surveillance programs that the United States undertook.

While many have heard Edward Snowdens name, the programs that he uncovered have seemingly faded in the public consciousness in recent years. Snowdens reveal of massive global surveillance programs in 2013 was a wake-up call for many Americans, when modern technology and digital communication were truly becoming everyday tools at work and home. His leaked documents highlighted how so many Internet activities are never truly private.

Snowdens Career Beginnings and Disillusionment

Snowden began his career by joining the Army in May 2004, but was discharged four months later due to broken legs he suffered in a training accident [2]. Following his short time in the Armed Forces, he gained a position as a security specialist at an NSA-contracted facility, beginning his time in the intelligence community. He then joined the CIA in 2006 until 2009, years that disillusioned his faith in Americas intelligence community [3]. He described an incident where the CIA purposefully intoxicated a Swiss banker and encouraged him to drive home. When the banker was arrested for drunk driving, the CIA offered him help in exchange for becoming an informant.

Following his resignation from the CIA, Snowden worked as an NSA contractor in Japan with high-level security clearance for three years before moving to Hawaii to join Booz Allen Hamilton, another private contractor. He joined Booz Allen Hamilton with the sole intent of gaining clearance to new classified files. After just a few weeks on the job, Snowden gained access to the classified material, downloaded it on a flash drive, and fled the United States shortly afterward. Finally, he distributed the materials to media outlets he trusted, particularly The Guardian, with the first revelations posted publicly in June 2013.

What Programs Did Snowden Reveal?

The biggest revelation in Snowdens leaked documents was the existence of a National Security Agency program called PRISM. Under the program, the NSA had direct access to the servers of the biggest tech companies, including Google, Apple and Facebook without their knowledge [4]. Using this direct access, the NSA could collect users emails, search history, and file transfers without a court order. Even if you were an American citizen, you could have been subject to this surveillance if your messages ever touched a non-American server.

Snowden explained the horrifying simplicity of the NSAs programs, stating I, sitting at my desk, [could] wiretap anyone, from you or your accountant, to a federal judge or even the president, if I had a personal email [5]. This allegation was initially denied by government officials, yet leaked documents showed a program called XKeystore allowed analysts to search enormous databases with just one piece of identifying information [5].

In addition, Snowden revealed NSA phone-tapping of allied leaders, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and then-Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu [6]. These revelations caused an uproar among American allies, particularly in Europe. The NSA also monitored various charity organizations and businesses including UNICEF, the United Nations agency dedicated to providing aid to children worldwide and Petrobras, Brazils largest oil company.

The Legal Justification

All of these programs were justified by Section 702 of the FISA Amendments Act, a bill signed in 2008 that amended the original Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978. The 2008 amendment rid FISA of its warrant requirement, allowing the NSA to spy on any foreign communications without a court order. In practice, this meant any communications that touched a foreign server were legally allowed to be collected.

Snowden explained Even if you sent [a message] to someone within the United States, your wholly domestic communication between you and your wife can go to New York to London and back and get caught up in the database [7]. Because the data had reached a foreign server, no matter how short of a time, the NSA was able to collect, store and potentially analyze that data through Section 702s legal framework.

The Effects

A Washington Post investigation found that approximately 90% of account holders in a leaked data cache were ordinary Internet users, with just a tenth of the account holders being NSA targets [8]. These account holders were subject to daily tracking, with NSA analysts having access to intimate conversations unrelated to national security. Put simply, the NSA had access to millions of Americans personal data, able to be perused by low-level analysts with little more than an email address.

In addition, government officials responses to Snowdens leaks were swift and severe. Then-Secretary of State John Kerry stated that Snowdens leaks told terrorists what they can now do to (avoid) detection [9]. Various other officials agreed with Kerrys assessment, stating that suspected terrorists had begun changing their communication tactics following Snowdens revelations [10]. While the NSA claimed that digital surveillance helped prevent over 50 potential terrorist events, then-President Obama stated that other methods could have prevented those attacks [11].

Data Privacy vs. Protection

Above all, the NSA has been criticized for conducting digital surveillance beyond the scope of national security. While government officials have stated that the surveillance saved countless lives by preventing terrorist attacks, claims that these programs solely stopped potential terror attacks are dubious. The inappropriate collection of everyday Americans data, however, is undeniable. Millions of Americans emails, video calls and search histories were readily available to low-level NSA analysts. While Edward Snowden remains a highly controversial figure today, his revelations of mass global surveillance undoubtedly increased Americans concern for data privacy. And while some still view Snowden as a criminal or traitor, some see him as a brave whistleblower who revealed just how exposed our data, and our lives, can be.

Continue reading here:
The Fallout of Edward Snowden and his Leaked Documents ...

Wednesday, April 27, 2022

When hearing the term whistleblower, some of the names that may automatically come to mind include famous whistleblowers that have been covered in the news: Edward Snowden, the controversial whistleblower who leaked documents regarding National Security Agency surveillance programs; to Deep Throat of Watergate, the FBI whistleblower who would later be named as Mark Felt; and even Frances Haugen, the recent Facebook whistleblower.

These whistleblower cases may have been highly publicized across news stations, but they are some of the many whistleblowers across a number ofdifferent industrieswho help uncover fraud and corruption and in turn, help make America a more equitable place.

Awhistlebloweris a private individual who comes forward with evidence regarding fraud, corruption, waste, or abuse and reports it to law enforcement or the appropriate government agency. Whistleblowers help expose illegal or unethical behavior by providing inside information that otherwise would not have become known to the public.

Whistleblowers are also known as qui tam relators and are usually employees, former employees, contractors, freelancers, or other individuals with non-public information regarding crimes, unethical behavior, corruption, or fraud against the government. Common examples of whistleblowers include a healthcare worker that witnesses medical billing fraud or a defense contractor employee noticing inferior products being substituted and sold to the U.S. government.

Whistleblowers are incentivized to come forward with the potential of receiving a financial reward by various state and federal laws which also serve to provide whistleblowers with protection against retaliation.

Abraham Lincoln passed the False Claims Act (FCA) in 1863 as a way to encourage citizens to report the fraud and waste that was taking place during the Civil War. The FCA, also known as Lincolns Law, contains a qui tam provision that allows private citizens to bring forth lawsuits on behalf of the government against entities who have committed fraud and share in the financial recovery if the case is successful. According to theDepartment of Justice, the government recovered more than $70 billion in FCA lawsuits between 1986 and 2021.

Whistleblowers throughout history have helped to exposehealthcare fraud, environmental regulation violations, government contract fraud, violations of the Motor Vehicle Safety Act,tax fraud, and more. These types of illegal and unethical activities can harm taxpayers that fund government programs as well as the general public, and these crimes may otherwise go unknown without the bravery of whistleblowers.

Whistleblower lawsuits that are filed under the FCA usually involve healthcare fraud andgovernment contractor fraud. Other types of whistleblower lawsuits involvesecurities fraud,customs/tariffs fraud, tax fraud, and environmental crimes.

Some of the most common whistleblower claims include:

Submitting false claims and information to procure unwarranted government funds, grants, loans, and contracts

Violating the terms of a government contract by providing substandard goods or services

Gross waste of funds, including using grant money or PPP loans for personal gain

Healthcare billing fraud, including billing for services not provided, double billing, upcoding, and more

Offering bribes or providing kickbacks in exchange for government-funded business

Presenting a danger to public health or safety, including designing and/or failing to recall dangerous automobiles and parts

The majority of whistleblowers are not splashed across the news like Ed Snowden. In fact, most remain anonymous, which helps protect them from retaliation.

The U.S. has many laws on the federal and state levels that are meant to protect both private and public sector employees from employer retaliation for becoming a whistleblower. The FCA protects whistleblowers who report fraud against the government from retaliation, while federal employees who report corruption or misconduct are protected from retaliation by theWhistleblower Protection Act. Other whistleblower laws that afford protections include but are not limited to theSarbanes-Oxley Act, theOccupational Health and Safety Act, theClean Air Act, and theToxic Substances Control Act.

Types of employer retaliation prohibited by whistleblower protection laws include termination, suspension, demotion, threats, harassment, withholding pay or benefits, or any other discrimination directed at an employee or contractor for their actions as a whistleblower. Whistleblowers who are retaliated against have the right to bring a separate lawsuit against their employer for damages relating to the retaliation, including reinstatement, back pay, attorneys fees, and more.

While the whistleblower does not specifically have to witness the fraud or crime take place, it is vital in all qui tam lawsuits that the whistleblower has thorough and specific evidence that proves the fraudulent or illegal behavior took place. Ideally, the evidence the whistleblower gathers should answer the following questions:

Who is committing fraud or a crime, and who knows about it?

What fraud, crime, or violation took place?

When and where did the fraud or illegal behavior occur?

How was the crime or fraud committed, and is it ongoing?

How was the public affected by what took place?

Under the FCA as well as other whistleblower programs including the IRS, SEC, CFTC, and NHTSA, whistleblowers who provide information that leads to the government successfully settling the matter are rewarded between 15 and 30 percent of the recovery. In a multi-million dollar qui tam settlement, thewhistleblowers financial rewardcan be significant.

Link:
What is a Whistleblower? - The National Law Review

Russia isknown for itsarmy of hackers, but sincethe start of itsinvasion of Ukraine, dozens of Russian organizations including government agencies, oil and gas companies, and financial institutions have been hacked,with terabytes of stolen data leaked onto the internet.

Distributed Denial of Secrets, the transparency collective thats best known for its 2020release of 270gigabytes of U.S. law enforcement data (in the midst of racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd),has become the de facto home of the hacked datasets from Russia.The datasets are submitted to DDoSecretsmostly by anonymous hackers, and those datasets are then made available to the public on the collectives website and distributed using BitTorrent. (I am an adviser to DDoSecrets).

The flood of Russian data has meant a lot of sleepless nights, and its truly overwhelming, Emma Best, co-founder of DDoSecrets, told The Interceptvia an encrypted messaging app. In its first 10 years, WikiLeaks claimed to publish 10 million documents. In the less than two months since the invasion began, weve published over 6 million Russian documents and it absolutely feels like it.

After receiving a dataset, DDoSecrets organizes and compresses the data; it then starts distributingthe data using BitTorrent for public consumption, publicizes it, and helps journalists at a wide range of newsrooms access and report on it. DDoSecrets has published about 30 hacked datasets from Russia sinceits invasion of Ukraine began in late February.

The vast majority of sources who provided the hacked Russian data appear to be anonymous individuals, many self-identifying as part of the Anonymous hacktivist movement. Some sources provide email addresses or other contact information as part of the dumped data, and some, like Network Battalion 65, have their own social media presence.

Still, with so many datasets submitted by anonymous hackers, its impossible to be certain about their motives or if theyre even truly hacktivists. For instance, in 2016 hackers compromised the network of the Democratic National Committee and leaked stolen emails to WikiLeaks in an attempt to hurt Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. Guccifer 2.0, the hacker persona responsible, claimed to be a loneactor but was later revealed to be an invention of the GRU, Russias military intelligence agency.

For this reason, the recent Russian datasets published by DDoSecrets includea disclaimer: This dataset was released in the buildup to, in the midst of, or in the aftermath of a cyberwar or hybrid war. Therefore, there is an increased chance of malware, ulterior motives and altered or implanted data, or false flags/fake personas. As a result, we encourage readers, researchers and journalists to take additional care with the data.

On February 26, two days after Russias invasion started, DDoSecrets published 200 gigabytes of emails from the Belarus weapons manufacturer Tetraedr, submitted by the hacktivist persona Anonymous Liberland and the Pwn-Br Hack Team. Belarus is a close ally to Russia in its war against Ukraine. A message published with the dataset announced #OpCyberBullyPutin.

OnFebruary 25, the notorious Russian ransomware gang known as Conti publicly expressed its support for Russias war, and two days later, onFebruary 27, an anonymous Ukrainian security researcher who had hacked Contis internal infrastructure leaked two years of Conti chat logs,along withtraining documentation, hacking tools, and source code from the criminal hackers. I cannot shoot anything, but I can fight with a keyboard and mouse, the anonymous researcher told CNN on March 30 before he safely slipped out of Ukraine.

In early March, DDoSecrets published 817 gigabytes of hacked data from Roskomnadzor, the Russian federal agency responsible for monitoring, controlling, and censoring Russian mass media. This data specifically came from the regional branch of the agency in the Republic of Bashkortostan. The Intercept made this dataset searchable and shared access with independent Russian journalists from Meduza who reported that Roskomnadzor had been monitoring the internet for antimilitarism since at least 2020. In early March, Roskomnadzor began censoring access to Meduza from inside Russia due to systematic spread of fakes about the special operation in Ukraine, a spokesperson for the agency told the Russian news site RIA Novosti.

Thehacks continued. In mid-March, DDoSecrets published 79 gigabytes of emails from the Omega Co., the research and development wing of the worlds largest oil pipeline company, Transneft, which is state-controlled in Russia.In the second half of March, hacktivism against Russia began to heat up. DDoSecrets published an additional five datasets:

On the last day of March, the transparency collective also published 51.9 gigabytes of emails from the Marathon Group, an investment firm owned by sanctioned Russian oligarch Alexander Vinokurov.

On the first day of April, DDoSecrets published 15 gigabytes of emails from the charity wing of the Russian Orthodox Church. Because the emails might include sensitive and privateinformation from individuals, DDoSecrets isnt distributing thisdatato the public. Instead, journalists and researchers can contact DDoSecrets to request a copy of it.

On April 3, DDoSecrets published 483 gigabytes of emails and documents from Mosekspertiza, a state-owned corporation that provides expert services to the business community in Russia.On April 4, DDoSecrets published 786 gigabytes of documents and emails from the All-Russia State Television and Radio Broadcasting Co., referred to with the English acronym VGTRK. VGTRK is Russias state-owned broadcaster; itoperates dozens of television and radio stations across Russia, including regional, national, and international stations in several languages. Former employees of VGTRK told thedigital publication Colta.ru that the Kremlin frequently dictated how the news should be covered.Network Battalion 65 is the source for both the VGTRK and Mosekspertiza hacks.

Russias legal sector also got hacked. On April 8, DDoSecrets published 65 gigabytes of emails from the law firm Capital Legal Services. The persona wh1t3sh4d0wsubmitted the data to the transparency collective.

In the following days, DDoSecrets published three more datasets:

By April 11, DDoSecrets had published another three datasets:

In mid-April, DDoSecrets published several datasets from the oil and gas industries:

On April 16, DDoSecrets published two more datasets:

Just during the last week, DDoSecrets published these datasets:

Earlier today, DDoSecrets published 342 gigabytes of emails from Enerpred, the largest producer of hydraulic tools in Russia that works in the energy, petrochemical, coal, gas and construction industries.

Despite the massive scale of these Russian data leaks, very few journalists have reported on them so far. Since the war began, Russia has severely clamped down onits domestic media, introducing penalties of years in prison for journalistswho use the wrong words when describingthe war in Ukraine like calling it a war instead of a special military operation. Russia has also ramped up its censorship efforts, blocking Twitter and Facebook and censoring access to international news sites, leaving the Russian public largely in the dark when it comes to views that arent sanctioned by the state.

One of the barriers for non-Russian news organizations is language: The hacked data is principally in Russian. Additionally, hacked datasets always come with considerable technical challenges. The Intercept, which was founded in part to report on the archive of National Security Agency documents leaked by Edward Snowden, has been using our technical resources to build out tools to make these Russian datasets searchable and then sharing access to these tools with other journalists. Russian-speaking journalists from Meduza which is forced to operate in Latvia to avoid the Kremlins reach have already published a story based on one of the datasets indexed by The Intercept.

More here:
Russia Is Losing a War Against Hackers Stealing Huge Amounts of Data - The Intercept

States spy on each other. This fact is neither shocking nor surprising in itself. There are plenty of good reasons why states do it, even if not all states are equal in their relative intelligence power. So, you would think by now that we would have a high bar for being surprised or shocked by revelations about states spying on each other.

Certainly, when states become victims of espionage their responses are shaped by a number of factors, including the strategic context (is the transgressor an adversary or an ally?) and the severity of the case (a one-off or a sustained campaign?). Domestic public opinion might be inflamed by revelations of espionage victimhood, or else barely flicker with quickly-fading attention. Throughout, victim states will recognize that the basic problemthat they are targets of foreign espionage operationsis the mirror image of their own pursuit of intelligence gain against other states. States are not, therefore, shocked or surprised by the existence of foreign espionage: they do their best to counter it and remediate and respond to it where they have to. As indicated by recent comments from FBI director Christopher Wray about the magnitude of the threat posed by Chinese espionage, recognizing the perennial nature of espionage doesnt necessarily imply complacency towards it.

The high bar to surprise or shock holds good even in the case of newer forms of espionage, such as digital or cyber spyingthat is, establishing access to digital data for intelligence gain, whether that data is stored at rest somewhere (on a device like a mobile phone or laptop), or else by intercepting data whilst it is traversing a network. Nearly a decade after Edward Snowdens revelations, few people can be surprised that some states have not only the ambition but also the capabilities to derive significant intelligence gains from information and communications technology.

Another obvious point is that, given much of this global technological infrastructure is built, owned, and operated by the private sector, the practice of states spying on each other inevitably involves relationshipscommercial, collaborative, or competitivebetween governments and companies. These relationships might be transactionalthe procurement by governments of a service or toolor they might be framed by legal requirement, compelling companies to comply with lawful requests for access. Equally, they might involve the non-consensual acquisition of data from companies by government intelligence agencies, or indeed the recognition that these companies are useful vectors of attack, so-called supply chain attacks such as the SolarWinds case.

The private sectors importance also extends to digital spying by the state on its own citizens: sovereign capabilities for domestic surveillance are more likely to be developed by the private sector than the state itself. States with a thriving tech sector undoubtedly have had an advantage in this respect, with a domestic network of trusted companies to develop surveillance tools and systems. But, over decades, the market for commercial spyware has become truly global.

At its best, this global market helps to fill an important gapproviding those states that would otherwise lack the technical capabilities with the ability to counter severe national security threats such as terrorism or serious crime. But at its worst, the capabilities procured from the global marketplace can enable repressive states to target dissidents, either passively or to enable operations against them.

Many companies are active in this marketplace, but one, in particular, has become a focal point for global criticism of commercial spyware: the Israeli company NSO Group and particularly its Pegasus spyware. Pegasus is reportedly so good at what it doesfor example, providing zero-click access to a targeted iPhone, meaning no need for targets to fall for malware-laden messagesthat many states were lining up to procure its services. This customer interest was great for the companyand presumably also for the Israeli government. The government issued export licenses for the spyware and potentially was able to integrate this commercial success into its wider diplomatic strategyessentially, what many states would do in a similar position.

The problem facing the companywhether it was recognized as such or notwas how to contain the potentially negative consequences of this burgeoning customer interest. New contracts were one thing, but would its values, future sales, and potentially its continued existence as a company be compromised if its new customers used Pegasus to spy on innocent subjects, to enable victimization and human rights abuses? To this questionwe can add one other, perhaps more strategically pertinent for the Israeli government, and potentially devastating in repercussions for businesses like NSO Group: what if Pegasus was used, not against a clients domestic targets, but against foreign governments, including governments with which Israel has close diplomatic ties?

This is indeed what recent reporting suggests has happened, with revelations in December 2021 that Pegasus had been used to target U.S. diplomats working overseas, and in more recent reporting that a range of European officials, including someone from the UK government working in the prime ministers office (10 Downing Street), had also been targeted. In the UK case, independent researchers suspected the state client using Pegasus to target the UK was the United Arab Emirates (UAE). In diplomatic terms, the UAE is a relatively close regional partner of the UKone with a controversial and widely-reported broader strategy of harnessing commercial spyware services to enhance its national intelligence power.

The same reports that highlighted the reported breach of communications in 10 Downing Street also indicated that Pegasus customers had also successfully used it in 2020 and 2021 against UK diplomatswith the UAE, India, and Cyprus identified as the potential state actors. All these states are regarded as partnersindeed, just this month the UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, signed agreements with his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, including an agreement to improve cybersecurity cooperation.

This juxtaposition suggests that states take a broad view of such revelations, placing them in broader strategic context. This is similar in the U.S. case, where bilateral relations with Pegasus-customer states appear relatively unharmed. In contrast, the United States has pursued more targeted responses against NSO Group and other firms, and might go further to address foreign commercial spyware more generally.

Collectively, this might suggest that we are at some kind of transitional point in the relationship between states and commercial spyware. A global market that has developed quickly and in the shadows is now very much more salient and starting to provoke some pushback from states. And yet, whilst the fates of a single company like NSO Group can rise and fall, it is very difficult to see the wider industry enjoying anything other than continued success.

States are not going to stop wanting to spy on each other, or on other, non-state targets. The market that has grown to cater to this perennial state practice is too valuable, too globally dispersed, and likely also too covert to be readily amenable to collective, verifiable efforts to curb it. And, in the absence of effective constraints, commercial spyware will continue to level the playing field between state actors in the competition for intelligence gains. This will create both opportunities to be exploited and challenges that must be overcomean ever-present feature of intelligence competition between states throughout history.

Joe Devanny is a Lecturer in the Department of War Studies at Kings College London. He writes here in a personal capacity. He can be contacted on Twitter @josephdevanny.

Image: Reuters.

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Pegasus in Downing Street? Commercial Spyware and Espionage Competition - The National Interest Online