Thank you coderman for the articles. They provide rare evidence that private investigators purchase and use spyware: "Both Hacking Team and FinFisher claim that they only sell to governments, but recently leaked documents appear to show that FinFisher has sold to at least one private security company." https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/15/cat-video-hack/ "Customer email addresses in the collection appeared to belong to a German surveillance company," http://www.propublica.org/article/leaked-docs-show-spyware-used-to-snoop-on-... On 08/17/2014 12:42 am, coderman wrote:
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: r.deibert@utoronto.ca Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:44:28 -0400 Subject: [liberationtech] New Citizen Lab report
Dear LibTech
I am pleased to announce a new Citizen Lab report published today, authored by Morgan Marquis-Boire and entitled "Schrodinger?s Cat Video and the Death of Clear-Text."
The key findings are outlined below:
? Commercial network injection appliances are actively targeting Google?s YouTube and Microsoft?s Live services in order to install surveillance implants on targets across the globe.
? Documents indicate that a prototype for targeted surveillance network injection appliances sold to the governments of Oman and Turkmenistan was designed by CloudShield Technologies, a US Department of Defense contractor.
? This report reveals never before seen documentation on the operation of Network Injection appliances from both Hacking Team and FinFisher and provides source code for an early prototype of FinFisher?s FinFly ISP product.
A link to the full report is here: https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/cat-video-and-the-death-of-clear-text/
The Washington Post has extensive coverage on the report, which can be found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/15/how-your-cat-vi...
Morgan Marquis-Boire has written an oped at The Intercept: https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/08/15/cat-video-hack/
Relatedly, my "Open Letter" on behalf of the Citizen Lab to Hacking Team was published last week: https://citizenlab.org/2014/08/open-letter-hacking-team/
Cheers Ron