Biden Advisers Ride on Pegasus Spyware
As the NSO-Pegasus saga continues to play out, the information in this article highlights two important governance concerns:
- The amount of investor capital that has gone into cleaning up NSO’s reputation is considerable and serves as a warning of companies that (especially repeatedly) had reputational issues. Moreover, the unethical, backdoor ways in which it has sought influence and to clean up its image shed a cynical view on Washington operatives: “That a consulting firm specializing in national-security tech like WestExec Advisors rejected NSO Group’s entreaties, while advising other defense contractors and tech companies, shows just how beyond the pale NSO’s products are.”
- Many – not so – ethical companies are hiring top notch PR strategists to whitewash their ethical credentials, creating a mistrust in such credentials: “The experts counseling NSO have hardly helped bring it closer toward ethical behavior; in fact, as the Pegasus Project trickles out new reporting, what’s clear is that Washington consultants have lent a veneer of principle to a company whose malicious software has hacked more than 180 journalists and 14 world leaders.”
Tech Groups Urge Congress to ‘Dig Deeper’ on Facebook Role in Capitol Riot
The pressure on Facebook continues to pile on from both sides of the aisle – even as its share price makes new highs. At some point these two trajectories will cross and investors will either have made the correct bet, or not. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal, then the Capitol Riot role and most recently vaccination misinformation, Facebook (not so much Twitter and Google) consistently shows up as the baddest apple.
While they can’t be held completely accountable for why people choose to consume certain information, they are certainly helping amplify certain voices, more broadly spreading their publishings (and proving them with credibility on the platform), while in the process, hardening sceptics’ mistrust.
If Facebook wants to continue being one of the world’s most valuable companies, it has to accept the responsibility that comes with it.
Analyst Who Leaked Drone Secrets Sentenced to 45 Months
While one may agree or disagree with this analyst’s actions, what they do underline is a rising ethical apprehension around autonomous warfare, by those deploying them in live situations.
It may sound benign to those continents away, but would they feel as sanguine if they became the intended targets: ““The Drone Papers” from 2015, which detailed former President Obama’s embrace of drone warfare and revealed the degree to which strikes hit unintended targets.”
“Hale wrote in a handwritten note from jail: “By the rules of engagement, it may have been permissable [sic] for me to have helped to kill those men — whose language I did not speak, customs I did not understand, and crimes I could not identify — in the gruesome manner that I did watch them die. But how could it be considered honorable of me”.”
It’s Time for US to Get Serious About Cleaning up Space Junk
This is a subject we’ve returned to regularly, to forewarn of a foreseeable ‘tragedy of the commons’: “NASA estimates there are already 23,000 pieces of debris larger than 10 centimeters and over 500,000 pieces of smaller junk in orbit. This space junk, or orbital debris, travels at high speeds and even a small piece can cause serious damage or destruction if it hits a spacecraft or satellite.”
“As Sen. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.), chair of the Senate Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Science and Space, said recently, we need to be proactive on space debris “rather than learning by a terrible accident … but we don’t quite have the sense of urgency we need.””
Investors in the growing space sector need to be aware and proactive on this front.
Priest Outed Via Grindr App Highlights Rampant Data Tracking
The plethora of data collection by various firms, thereafter shared in ‘anonymised’ form, is exposed for the fig leaf it is, in this article: “The Pillar said it obtained “commercially available” location data from a vendor it didn’t name that it “correlated” to Burrill’s phone to determine that he had visited gay bars and private residences while using Grindr, a dating app popular with gay people.”
That anyone can purchase location data and triangulate it with a host of other activities from app data, belies the current paradigm of anonymisation as a method for protecting privacy. One doesn’t even have to be a tech sleuth to undertake this, as there are several firms who specialise in doing so.
“There are brokers that charge thousands of dollars a month for huge volumes of location data, some of which is marketed not just to advertisers but to landlords, bail bondsmen and bounty hunters, said John Davisson, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. He said someone looking to “reverse engineer” a particular person’s data from that bulk package could potentially get it from any of the many customers in the data chain.”