#spyware in Mexico

[agentfascinateur]

Breaking the law in the name of the law!?! How misguided Texans rely on Israeli spyware to torment migrants.

[orbitbrain]

Report: Mexico Continued to Use Spyware Against Activists

Report: Mexico Continued to Use Spyware Against Activists

Home › Mobile Security Report: Mexico Continued to Use Spyware Against Activists By Associated Press on October 03, 2022 Tweet The Mexican government or army has allegedly continued to use spyware designed to hack into the cellphones of activists, despite a pledge by President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to end such practices. Press freedom groups said Monday they found evidence of recent…

[veganism]

The genocide is also experimentation on living beings

Israel is currently testing new weapons in Gaza, some of which will soon be sold globally as "battle-tested," according to Antony Loewenstein, an author who has written a widely acclaimed book on the issue.

For years, the Israeli defense sector has used Palestine as a laboratory for new weapons and surveillance tech, he told Anadolu, adding that this is also the case in the current ongoing war on Gaza.

One of the main reasons why "many nations, democracies and dictatorships support Israeli occupation" of Palestine is because it allows them to buy these "battle-tested" weapons, asserted Loewenstein, author of The Palestine Laboratory: How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation Around the World.

Another aspect of Israel's war on Gaza has been the use of artificial intelligence technology, he said.

According to Loewenstein, AI has been one of the key targeting tools used by the Israeli military in its deadly campaign of airstrikes, leading to mass killings of Palestinians-now over 28,500-and damage on an unprecedented scale.

The current war on Gaza is "inarguably one of the most consequential and bloody," he said.

He described Israel's use of AI against Palestinians as "automated murder," stressing that this model "will be studied and copied by other nation-states" and Tel Aviv will sell them these technologies as tried and tested weapons.

In the last 50 years, Israel has exported hi-tech surveillance tools to at least 130 countries around the world.

To maintain its illegal occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and blockade of the Gaza Strip, Israel has developed a range of tools and technologies that have made it the world's leading exporter of spyware and digital forensics tools.

But analysts say the intelligence failure during the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks casts doubts over Tel Avis's technological capabilities.

Israel's reliance on technology "is an illusion of safety, while imprisoning 2.3 million people under endless occupation," said Loewenstein, who is Jewish and holds Australian and German nationalities.

He described Israel's response in Gaza as "apocalyptic," stressing that the killings of Palestinian civilians, including children and women, is "on a scale of indiscriminate slaughter."

- 'BLOOD MONEY'

Loewenstein, who is also a journalist, said Israel has honed its weapons and technology expertise over decades as an occupying power, acting with increasing impunity in the Palestinian territories.

This led a small country like Israel to become one of the top 10 arms dealers in the world, he said, adding that Israeli arms sales in 2021 were "the highest on record, surging 55% over the previous two years to $11.3 billion."

In his book, Loewenstein explores thoroughly Israel's ties with autocracies and regimes engaged in mass displacement campaigns, and governments slinking their way into phones.

The Israeli NSO Group sold its well-known Pegasus software to numerous governments, a spyware tool for phones that gives access to the entire content, including conversations, text messages, emails and photos even when the device is switched off.

Israeli drones were first tested over Gaza, the besieged enclave that Loewenstein referred to as "the perfect laboratory for Israeli ingenuity in domination."

Surveillance technology developed in Israel has also been sold to the US in the form of watch towers now used on the border with Mexico.

The EU's border agency Frontex is known to have used Israeli drone technology to monitor refugees.

Loewenstein explains in his book that the EU has partnered with leading Israeli defense companies to use its drones, "and of course years of experience in Palestine is a key selling point."

"So again, one sees how there are so many examples of nations that are wanting to copy what Israel is doing in their own area in their own country on their own border," he said.

These technologies and "are sold by Israel as battle-tested," he said.

In other words, he contends that Palestinians essentially have become "guinea pigs," and despite some nations and the UN publicly criticizing the Israeli occupation, in reality "they're desperate for this technology for themselves for their own countries."

"And that's how in fact, the Palestine laboratory has been so successful for Israel for so long," he said.

In his exhaustive probe into Israel's dealings with arms sales around the world, he noted that the country has monetized the occupation of Palestine, by selling weapons, spyware tools and technologies to repressive regimes such as Rwanda during the genocide in 1994 and to Myanmar during its genocide against the Muslim Rohingya people in 2017.

"This to me is blood money. I mean, there's no other way to see that and again, as someone Jewish, who has spent many, many years reporting on this conflict, both within Israel and Palestine but also elsewhere, it's deeply shameful that Israel is making huge amounts of money from the misery of others," he said.

"This is not a legacy that I can be proud of."

- 'NO NATION ACTUALLY HOLDING ISRAEL TO ACCOUNT'

Profiting from misery is to some extent the nature of what capitalism has always been about, but Israel does this with a great deal of impunity, "because Israel does what it wants," said Loewenstein.

"There is no accountability, there is no transparency, there is no nation actually holding Israel to account," he added.

Israel's regime is shielded from any political backlash for years to come because nations are reliant on Israeli weapons and spyware, said the author.

Israel may not be the only player employing surveillance technology that leads to human rights violations, but it still plays a dominant role, which is why Loewenstein insists that it deserves singular attention.

Israel's foreign policy has always been "amoral and opportunistic," he said, calling on all nations to take a stand and hold Israel accountable, and acknowledge that the world is buying what Israel is selling.

[odinsblog]

(source)

In June 2019, three Israeli computer engineers arrived at a New Jersey building used by the F.B.I. They unpacked dozens of computer servers, arranging them on tall racks in an isolated room. As they set up the equipment, the engineers made a series of calls to their bosses in Herzliya, a Tel Aviv suburb, at the headquarters for NSO Group, the world’s most notorious maker of spyware. Then, with their equipment in place, they began testing.

The F.B.I. had bought a version of Pegasus, NSO’s premier spying tool. For nearly a decade, the Israeli firm had been selling its surveillance software on a subscription basis to law-enforcement and intelligence agencies around the world, promising that it could do what no one else — not a private company, not even a state intelligence service — could do: consistently and reliably crack the encrypted communications of any iPhone or Android smartphone.

Since NSO had introduced Pegasus to the global market in 2011, it had helped Mexican authorities capture Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug lord known as El Chapo. European investigators have quietly used Pegasus to thwart terrorist plots, fight organized crime and, in one case, take down a global child-abuse ring, identifying dozens of suspects in more than 40 countries. In a broader sense, NSO’s products seemed to solve one of the biggest problems facing law-enforcement and intelligence agencies in the 21st century: that criminals and terrorists had better technology for encrypting their communications than investigators had to decrypt them. The criminal world had gone dark even as it was increasingly going global.

But by the time the company’s engineers walked through the door of the New Jersey facility in 2019, the many abuses of Pegasus had also been well documented. Mexico deployed the software not just against gangsters but also against journalists and political dissidents. The United Arab Emirates used the software to hack the phone of a civil rights activist whom the government threw in jail. Saudi Arabia used it against women’s rights activists and, according to a lawsuit filed by a Saudi dissident, to spy on communications with Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post, whom Saudi operatives killed and dismembered in Istanbul in 2018.

(continue reading)

[govindhtech]

Operations Of Cyber Espionage Aimed Against Mexico

Cyber Espionage news

With the twelfth-biggest economy globally, Mexico attracts the attention of cyber espionage actors from several countries, whose targeting strategies reflect broader goals and priority areas observed elsewhere. Cyber espionage groups from over ten nations have been targeting Mexican users since 2020; however, groups from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), North Korea, and Russia account for over seventy-seven percent of government-sponsored phishing activity.

The examples provided illustrate both historical and contemporary instances of cyber espionage entities targeting Mexican consumers and organizations. It should be mentioned that these campaigns only discuss targeting; they don���t provide instances of successful exploitation or compromise.

- Advertisement -

China Cyber Espionage

Cyber espionage by the PRC Aims for Mexico

Seven cyber espionage outfits with ties to the PRC have been spotted targeting users in Mexico since 2020; these entities account for one-third of the government-backed phishing activity in the nation.

The extent of PRC cyber espionage is comparable to that of other areas, such those included in China’s Belt and Road Initiative, where Chinese government funding has been concentrated. Apart from their actions directed on Gmail users, groups supported by the PRC have also targeted journalistic organizations, higher education establishments, and government entities in Mexico.

North Korea Cyber Espionage

Groups Supported by the North Korean Government Aim for Mexico

Since 2020, about 18% of government-sponsored phishing attacks against Mexico have been carried out by cybercriminals from North Korea. Businesses that deal with cryptocurrencies and financial technology have received special attention, much as their targeting interests in other locations.

The threat posed by North Korean individuals working covertly in organizations to perform various IT functions is one of the new trends Google cloud is seeing around the world from North Korea. Given the historical activities of North Korean threat actors in Mexico and the difficulties related to the widespread issue of North Korean actors seeking work abroad, stress the possibility that this threat will pose a concern to Mexican firms in the future.

- Advertisement -

Russia Cyber Espionage

Mexico Is the Target of Russian Cyber Espionage Activity

Since the beginning of Russia’s war in Ukraine, Russian cyber espionage groups have been targeting users in Mexico on a regular basis. This is likely due to Russia’s efforts to concentrate resources on targets in Ukraine and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in the context of the Russia-Ukraine war. Nevertheless, Russian activity targeting Mexico has significantly decreased. Out of the four Russia-backed groups that have been seen attacking Mexico, APT28 is responsible for more than 95% of the associated phishing activity.

About one-fifth of government-sponsored phishing attacks targeting Mexico since 2020 have been traced back to Russian cyber criminals. But in 2023 and 2024, less than 1% of government-sponsored phishing attacks directed towards Mexico are coming from Russian cyber actors.

Providers of Commercial Surveillance

Spyware is commonly employed to observe and gather information from individuals who pose a risk, such as opposition-party leaders, journalists, human rights advocates, and dissidents. The increased demand for spyware technology due to these capabilities has created a profitable industry that sells the capacity to exploit vulnerabilities in consumer devices to governments and unscrupulous parties. Google provides a number of features to help shield people who pose a high risk from internet dangers.

Many incidents of spyware being used to target various segments of Mexican civil society, such as journalists, activists, government officials, and their families in Mexico, have been documented by open sources over the past few years. TAG has previously drawn attention to the detrimental effects of commercial spyware tools, such as the spread of sophisticated Cyber Espionage threat capabilities to new sponsors and operators, the rise in the discovery and exploitation of zero-day vulnerabilities, and harm to the tools’ targets.

Even though the use of spyware usually only has a limited influence on a few human targets at a time, its broader effects are felt globally as a result of the growing dangers to free expression, the free press, and the integrity of democratic processes all around the world. TAG is still finding evidence of multiple commercial surveillance companies doing business in Mexico. TAG saw malware being deployed in Mexico with lures that have a Mexican news theme as recently as April 2024.

Perspectives on Cybercrime Aimed at Users and Businesses in Mexico

Mexico is frequently faced with a moderately significant threat from cybercrime. Notably, Google cloud have noticed a range of activities, such as threat actors selling compromised credentials and/or access, targeting banking credentials, cryptomining, and ransomware and extortion. TAG is still looking for and stopping a variety of financially driven organizations and users in Mexico.

Among these, the first four most often observed groups over the last year included three that were first access brokers for extortion groups. Threat actors have been observed by Mandiant to use a range of initial access vectors, such as password spraying, phishing, malware, and infected USB devices. Threat actors offering compromised access and/or credentials for sale, cryptomining, ransomware, and extortion operations were among the threat activities that this initial access later facilitated.

Mexico is subject to threat activities from actors predominantly operating in Latin America as well as global operations, similar to other countries in the region. Using banking trojans like METAMORFO dubbed “Horabot,” BBtok, and JanelaRAT, as well as other methods, a considerable number of campaigns that have been reported concentrate on obtaining login credentials for banking or other financial accounts. It seems that a large number of threat actors operating in the Latin American underground concentrate on easier activities like credit card theft and fraud, where they can make quick and easy earnings.

Mexico’s Effects of Extortion

Organizations in all countries and industries, including Mexico, are still being impacted by extortion operations, which result in large financial losses and disruption of business. These operations include ransomware, multidimensional ransomware, and extortion. Please refer to blog post, Ransomware Protection and Containment Strategies: Practical Guidance for Hardening and Protecting Infrastructure, Identities, and Endpoints, as well as the related white paper, for comprehensive instructions on defensive tactics against ransomware.

Mandiant monitors a number of data leak sites (DLSs) that are devoted to disclosing victim data after ransomware and/or extortion attacks where the targets decline to comply with a ransom demand. From January 2023 to July 2024, counts of DLS listings showed that, although the global distribution of extortion activity as indicated by DLS listings continues to be heavily skewed towards the U.S., Canada, and Western Europe, Mexico was the nation in Latin America and the Caribbean most affected by ransomware and extortion operations, with Brazil coming in second.

In Mexico, the industries most commonly affected include manufacturing, technology, financial services, and government. LockBit, ALPHV, and 8BASE are among the DLSs that list Mexican organizations the most frequently.

Disseminating malware by pretending to be official government services

Tax and finance-themed lures are often used in malware distribution operations aimed at Mexican users, with the goal of tricking receivers into opening harmful links or files. Mandiant saw UNC4984 activity spreading the SIMPLELOADER downloader or malicious browser extensions during 2023 and early 2024.

The group used a variety of distribution methods, including as email lures, to spread the malware. The malicious websites used in these operations frequently pose as Chilean or Mexican government websites dealing with taxes or finance, and the malicious browser extensions target bank institutions in Mexico specifically.

Another financially driven gang, identified as UNC5176, compromises individuals from a number of nations, including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Spain, using emails and malicious advertisement campaigns. Mandiant discovered several malicious email campaigns that were spoofing Mexico’s state-owned power utility, Comisión Federal de Electricidad, in December 2023.

These efforts distributed the URSA backdoor to Latin American enterprises across many industries. Via malicious PDF attachments with an embedded link to a ZIP download, a UNC5176 phishing effort transmitted URSA to enterprises mostly based in Latin America in April 2024. In certain cases, the ZIP archives were stored and obtained from reputable file-hosting platforms like Dropbox, a Azure, S3 buckets, and Github.

In summary

Threat actors will continue to find Mexico to be a desirable target for a variety of reasons. Long-standing risks come from international cyber espionage actors, including cybercriminals from the PRC, North Korea, and Russia. Recognizing this particular interaction of threats and taking a proactive approach to cybersecurity are critical for protecting Mexican businesses and users.

Read more on govindhtech.com

[disruptiveempathy]

This makes data-mining and policing activities online as important as, if not more than, surveiling people IRL. Enter Pegasus – spyware developed by an Israeli defence firm called NSO Group, which enables users to access the encrypted communications data of any type of smartphone. Pegasus was first released into the global market in 2011 and sold exclusively to intelligence agencies, ostensibly for investigations pertaining to organised crime syndicates, terrorist attacks, and trafficking. In one of its first publicised successes, Mexican authorities used Pegasus to capture the drug lord El Chapo. But even in its earliest days Pegasuswas being used to monitor civilian activities; the Mexican government was also spying on political dissidents and journalists. The UAE used Pegasus to thwart any inklings of protest movements, Saudi Arabia to track women’s rights activists and, more famously, the Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi (who was killed by Saudi agents in 2018). India was keen on the technology, and in 2021 the independent newspaper The Wire was one of the investigating bodies of ‘The Pegasus Project’ which broke the story of the extent of Pegasus’s capacity for surveillance. Despite New Delhi’s insistence that the allegations of India’s use of the technology were ‘baseless’, Pegasus was found on hundreds of Indian phones, including leaders of the BJP’s opposition parties, journalists, activists and lawyers. Dozens of people from the Kashmir Valley – separatist leaders, human rights activists, journalists, politicians – were targeted. Since its creation in 2011, Pegasus had grown ever more sophisticated. As smartphone technologies evolved, so did Pegasus, allowing for the remote access of all data stored on a phone: texts, emails, images, contacts, browsing histories. Cameras and microphones could be externally activated and controlled, calls intercepted, and a phone’s location tracked. In 2016 NSO Group released an update called Phantom, the brochure for which – leaked by Vice – reads ‘Turn Your Target’s Smartphone into an Intelligence Gold Mine’. On the front page is a note that explains how a phone can be used to wiretap a room. ‘The Phantom Advantage’ the brochure continues, is essentially ‘unlimited access’ to a target. Israel’s tactic of espionage diplomacy has also resulted in nation states subtly shifting their foreign policy to favour Israel, so that they may build strong enough bilateral relations to purchase defence technologies. Mexico and Panamafor instance, the New York Times reports, began to align their positions with Israel in key UN votes so they could access Pegasus. By the 2000s, Israeli weapons companies were increasingly privatised, attracting foreign investment – particularly American – and especially to the largest growing sector of its economy: cyber weapons and surveillance infrastruc-ture, which had initiated a new industry worth billions of dollars. By the time Pegasus entered the global market, cyber weapons outvalued fighter jets in their strategic importance. NSO was born in 2010, in a former chicken coop just outside Tel Aviv. The owner of the building had realised that coders were more profitable than poultry. NSO moved in, and developed the first prototypes of what was to become Pegasus. From as early as the 1980s, a tenth of the Israeli workforce was already employed by the arms industry. Pegasus is classified by many as a ‘weapon’, and The Wire reported reported of a ‘strong possibility’ that Pegasus was obtained by India in 2017, when Modi first visited Tel Aviv.

—Skye Arundhati Thomas and Izabella Scott, from "Pleasure Gardens: Blackouts and the Logic of Crisis in Kashmir," in The New Inquiry

[trickycactus]

im getting ads in spanish on my phone and im pretty sure this has something to do with how one of the lolcows i keep track of has had his most recent drama in mexico. between reading the forum and listening to streams about it the spyware has come to certain conclusions lol

[reasoningdaily]

We live in an age of unprecedented digitization. But with the ease of paying for a sandwich with your phone comes greater surveillance and the ability for authorities and corporations to track your every move—and limit access to services instantly, if they so choose..

Countries around the world are deploying technologies—like digital IDs, facial recognition systems, GPS devices, and spyware—that are meant to improve governance and reduce crime. But there has been little evidence to back these claims, all while introducing a high risk of exclusion, bias, misidentification, and privacy violations.

It’s important to note that these impacts are not equal. They fall disproportionately on religious, ethnic, and sexual minorities, migrants and refugees, as well as human rights activists and political dissidents.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence, drones, and facial recognition mean that invasive tracking systems will become even more widespread. In response, we’re seeing growing pushback, including lawsuits against the use of facial recognition and spyware, protests by workers, and greater pressure for legislation.

In this reading list you’ll find examples of surveillance from around the world that shine a light on its uneven impact. You can also see more in Context’s newsletter, Dataveillance, where we highlight some of the most pressing issues around digital surveillance, as well as dispatches and more recommended reading from our correspondents around the world.

View Original

Surveillance Tech Makes U.S.-Mexico Border Even Deadlier

Avi Asher-SchapiroContext

Zoe Tabary: “Hi-tech surveillance like cameras, sensors, and drones on the U.S.-Mexico border is pushing migrants toward more dangerous routes, resulting in more deaths. For this story, which was part of our series on surveillance of refugees and migrants, reporter Avi Asher-Schapiro visited the Arizona-Mexico border to get a fuller picture of the impact.”

View Original

Mahsa Amini: Facial Recognition to Hunt Down Hijab Rebels in Iran

Sanam MahooziContext

ZT: “Last year, we saw mass protests in Iran after the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested over the country’s strict new hijab policy. During the protests, authorities used facial recognition technology to spot women who didn’t adhere to the hijab law, as Sanam Mahoozi reports.”

View Original

Surveillance Nation: India Spies on World’s Largest Population

Rina ChandranContext

ZT: “India is the world’s most populous nation, and its 1.4 billion people are tracked constantly, through the biometric national ID Aadhaar. It’s linked to dozens of databases including bank accounts, SIM cards, and voters’ lists, as well as CCTV and facial recognition systems. Will a recent death—caused by wrongful arrest based on CCTV footage—bring on a turning point?”

View Original

Xinjiang to London: Chinese Surveillance Tech in the UK

Cormac O’BrienContext

ZT: “Over half of London’s councils have bought surveillance tech made by Chinese companies Hikvision and Dahua, both of which have been linked to Uighur persecution in Xinjiang province. We went looking for some of their cameras.”

View Original

Brazil Turns Facial Recognition on Rioters Despite Racism Fears

Leonardo CoelhoContext

ZT: “When thousands of protesters vandalized Brazil’s Supreme Court, Congress, and presidential offices in Brasilia, police said they would use facial recognition—which is deployed widely in the country—to identify the rioters, despite evidence that the technology often misidentifies those with darker skin.”

View Original

A Year on, Afghans Hide Out Fearing Death by Data

Rina ChandranContext

ZT: “Digital IDs and biometric data systems were introduced in Afghanistan by aid agencies and donors to improve efficiency and check corruption. But these systems were not secured when the Taliban took charge in August 2021, leaving hundreds of former government officials, judges, police, and human rights activists fearful of being tracked by the militants. The bottom line: Even well-intentioned technologies can be turned into surveillance tools.”

View Original

AI Surveillance Takes U.S. Prisons by Storm

David SherfinskiAvi Asher-SchapiroContext

ZT: “Dozens of U.S. prisons use AI to monitor inmates’ calls, ostensibly to keep prisons safe and curb crime. But critics say such systems violate the privacy of prisoners and other people, like family members, on the outside. Elsewhere in Asia and in Australia, facial recognition technology is being used in prisons for headcount checks and behavior detection, raising the risk of abuse of political prisoners and profiling of minorities who have disproportionately high incarceration rates.”

View Original

Why Delhi Has so Many CCTV Cameras [WATCH]

ContextYouTube

ZT: “Delhi is among the most surveilled cities in the world, yet India does not have a data protection law and there is little clarity about how this data is stored or used.”

View Original

Migrants in UK Face ‘Degrading’ Surveillance Ankle Tags

Lin TaylorContext

ZT: “Britain has stepped up its use of electronic tags on people detained over their immigration status so that the police and courts can monitor their location and keep them from absconding. But the devices generate huge amounts of data that violate privacy—on top of being degrading and stigmatizing, reporter Lin Taylor found.”

View Original

Saudi ‘Surveillance City’: Would You Sell Your Data to the Line?

Menna FaroukContext

ZT: “In Saudi Arabia’s futuristic NEOM, residents will be paid for sharing their data from their smartphones, their homes, facial recognition cameras, and other sensors. It’s an innovation that could be the model for other smart cities—and a potential privacy nightmare, as Menna Farouk reports.”

[beautifult999]

So the rappers that wrote about me said that they have spyware in their song, and that they’re “glitching shit” (which happens completely to my phone) and then they wrote a song about Voice to Skull and remote neural monitoring technology, which I have been talking about for the past year. WHAT IF THE VOICES HAVE TO DO WITH VOICE TO SKULL TECHNOLOGY?????? They could all be on it throughout the day and night and be pretending to be Ezikiel, Tim and Paul 0_____e it would take some of them on it around the clock but there’s many of them so whenever one can’t go on it, someone else does? Or what if they hired someone in like Mexico to do the V2K to me to get more information out of me than what I say online 0____e I’m so confused

[garudabluffs]

“The Palestine Laboratory”: Antony Loewenstein on How Israel Exports the Technology of Occupation

Israel's military industrial complex uses the occupied, Palestinian territories as a testing ground for weaponry and surveillance technology that they then export around the world to despots and democracies. For more than 50 years, occupation of the West Bank and Gaza has given the Israeli state invaluable experience in controlling an "enemy" population, the Palestinians. It's here that they have perfected the architecture of control.

Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein, author of Disaster Capitalism, uncovers this largely hidden world in a global investigation with secret documents, revealing interviews and on-the-ground reporting. This book shows in-depth, for the first time, how Palestine has become the perfect laboratory for the Israeli military-techno complex: surveillance, home demolitions, indefinite incarceration and brutality to the hi-tech tools that drive the 'Start-up Nation'. From the Pegasus software that hacked Jeff Bezos' and Jamal Khashoggi's phones, the weapons sold to the Myanmar army that has murdered thousands of Rohingyas and drones used by the European Union to monitor refugees in the Mediterranean who are left to drown. Israel has become a global leader in spying technology and defence hardware that fuels the globe's most brutal conflicts. As ethno-nationalism grows in the 21st century, Israel has built the ultimate model.

"In 1965 and 1966, under the authoritarian rule of General Suharto, Indonesia killed hundreds of thousands in a blood-soaked anti-communist purge.

Nicolae Ceausescu, notoriously anti-Semitic, began his steel-fisted rule of Romania in 1965, a 24-year tenure that included blocking Holocaust survivors from leaving.

Over nearly 29 years, the Duvalier family mass murdered and exiled political opponents in Haiti until their regime's belated collapse in 1986.

In all three cases, the dictatorships in question enjoyed warm - and politically lucrative - relationships with Israel.

But you don't have to crawl too far back in history to find such grim examples. From the European Union's borders to the US-Mexico frontier, and from Myanmar's violence against Rohingya to India's assaults on Kashmir, Israel has played a part in supplying its weaponry or technology later used in violations of human rights."

Loewenstein takes a hard look at Israel's support for autocrats across the world

READ MORE https://www.middleeasteye.net/discover/palestine-laboratory-israel-antony-loewenstein-book-review

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: Thanks so much for having me on, Amy.

"What I mean by that is that the occupation of Palestine by Israel is now the longest occupation in modern times, 56 years and counting. There’s obviously been an occupation of sorts since 1948, but particularly since 1967. And during those years, what Israel has done, very successfully, from its perspective, is find various tools and technologies to maintain and control Palestinians. And what they’ve done during that time, what Israel has done, is increasingly export those tools and technologies, but also those methods, those so-called counterinsurgency methods."

"So, what I look at in the book, both being on the ground in Palestine for many years and also through declassified documents and various interviews across the world, is that you find in over 130 countries across the globe in the last decades, Israel has sold forms of anything from spyware, so-called smart walls, facial recognition tools — a range of tools of occupation and repression, that have initially been tested in Palestine on Palestinians. So, in other words, what I’m saying is that the occupation of Palestine is not staying there. It’s not a conflict that remains geographically based just in Palestine. It’s become so-called global Palestine.

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: "Look, what India is doing under Modi, of course, is not solely because of Israel. But traditionally, Israel and India were not particularly good friends. But in the last 10 years or so, since Modi took power in 2014, there’s been a real ideological alignment.

But the relationship is really twofold. One, it’s a defense relationship. So India buys huge amounts of technology, defense equipment, spyware. I interview a number of people in my book, individuals in India, lawyers, others, who are spied on by Israeli spyware, particularly Pegasus by NSO Group. But also, there’s an ideological alignment, a belief that many Indian officials in the Hindu fundamentalist government there are openly talking about admiration for what Israel is doing in the West Bank, and wanting to do something similar in Kashmir.

And what I mean by that is, they say that — two reasons. One, because Israel gets away with it. No one’s stopping it. There’s a complete state of impunity that Israel has globally, really. But secondly, this idea of bringing in, according India’s view, huge numbers of Hindus to Muslim-majority Kashmir to settle that territory, to build so-called settlements akin to what Israel is doing in the West Bank. And I think there’s a really disturbing ideological alignment. I would actually make the comparison between Israel and India today to Israel and apartheid South Africa back in the day — nations that were very, very close ideologically and got inspiration from each other, in the belief, in Israel’s case, of course, being a Jewish supremacist state, in India’s case, being increasingly a Hindu fundamentalist state. And that, to me, is something that should concern people, including the U.S. president."

AMY GOODMAN: Antony, we were talking about the horrific shipwreck last week of migrants, maybe up to 700 dead. Can you talk about Israeli technology used by the European Union to surveil and target asylum seekers?

ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN: "This really shocked me, you know, years ago, when I started doing some work on this issue. The short version is that the European Union in the last years after 2015, when they were, in their view, overwhelmed by particularly Muslim refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and elsewhere, didn’t want to ever repeat that. And they put in place almost a fortress-type Europe, which has occurred in the last years, which is a range of tools and technologies to keep people out — mostly Muslim and Brown and Black bodies, of course.

And part of that arsenal is using Israeli drones. They’re unarmed, but they are flying over the Mediterranean 24/7, and they’re used mostly by Frontex, which is the EU’s sort of border security arm. And they’re the eyes in the sky, essentially. So, they are sending back all these images 24/7 to Warsaw, which is where Frontex is based. And the EU has made a decision — of course, they don’t admit this, but this is the reality — of letting people drown. This is the new policy. There are very, very few rescue boats. The EU barely rescues anyone. There are some NGOs that are trying to do so, and I deeply admire what they’re doing. So, the Israeli drone becomes a key arsenal in part of this infrastructure of essentially allowing people to drown. And to me, it really goes to the heart of why Israeli drones are used by the EU, because they were battle-tested in Palestine over Gaza in a number of years in the last 15 years.

And you see this almost Israeli border-industrial complex exported across the U.S.-Mexico border, for example. There are massive amounts of Israeli surveillance towers, made by Elbit, which is Israel’s leading defense company, dotted across the border. It’s a key part of the U.S. arsenal across its border with Mexico. And why was that company chosen by the U.S.? Because, of course, it was tested first in Palestine."

"And a huge amount of evidence, through declassified documents and interviews, much of which is in the book, virtually goes to the heart of showing that the U.S. and Israel became almost like invaluable partners during that period, to the point where today — look, America remains the world’s biggest arms dealer. Forty percent of the world’s arms is sold by the U.S. Israel is now 10th. And just last week, in fact, Israel released its 2022 arms figures: $12.5 billion U.S., the biggest amount ever. And 25% of that was going to Arab autocracies, after the so-called Abraham Accords, the Trump deal from a few years ago. So we’re talking about Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others. So, what are they selling? They’re selling repressive technology, spyware, intelligence gathering, a range of other tools, to prop up U.S.- and Israeli-backed dictatorships in the Middle East. So, this is what the Israeli arms industry is about. Like, this, to me, is not just a moral failing, but a really dark stain on the Jewish legacy 75 years after the Holocaust. Like, this is what we’ve become — “we” meaning the Jewish population of the world. The legacy seems to be backing and supporting and arming the worst regimes in the world. Forty percent of the world’s arms is sold by the U.S. Israel is now 10th. And just last week, in fact, Israel released its 2022 arms figures: $12.5 billion U.S., the biggest amount ever. And 25% of that was going to Arab autocracies, after the so-called Abraham Accords, the Trump deal from a few years ago. So we’re talking about Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Morocco and others. So, what are they selling? They’re selling repressive technology, spyware, intelligence gathering, a range of other tools, to prop up U.S.- and Israeli-backed dictatorships in the Middle East. So, this is what the Israeli arms industry is about. Like, this, to me, is not just a moral failing, but a really dark stain on the Jewish legacy 75 years after the Holocaust. Like, this is what we’ve become — “we” meaning the Jewish population of the world. The legacy seems to be backing and supporting and arming the worst regimes in the world.

+"_ _when, in fact, companies like Pegasus actually are only private in name. They are basically arms of the state. Netanyahu and the Mossad, who have been going to various countries in the last 10 years — I document this in the book, and this has also been shown by Haaretz, the Israeli newspaper — often go to nations, like Saudi Arabia, Rwanda and others, and they hold Pegasus and other tools as a diplomatic carrot: “If you support us in the U.N. or elsewhere, we will sell you the most powerful spyware in the world.” And it works, because it’s been sold in UAE, in Saudi, in Rwanda and many other repressive states. So, unless there is a complete ban or massive regulation, which currently does not exist at all, these technologies will continue. And even if NSO Group disappears tomorrow — and it’s currently in financial crisis — many other companies do exactly the same thing, and which is why Israel is now one of the leading spyware exporters in the world."

LISTEN READ MORE Transcript https://www.democracynow.org/2023/6/23/the_palestine_laboratory_author_antony_loewenstein

[lutoogyan]

Pegasus spyware found on phones of Mexican president's close ally

It’s not unusual to hear of countries using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware to surveil the public, but there are now concerns one government is spying on itself. Sources for The New York Times and The Washington Post claim Pegasus has been found on the phone of Mexico undersecretary for human rights Alejandro Encinas, a longtime ally of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, as well as at least two…

[newstfionline]

Wednesday, May 24, 2023

Climate: ‘dangerous heat’ could afflict billions by 2100 (AFP) Current policies to limit global warming will expose more than a fifth of humanity to extreme and potentially life-threatening heat by century’s end, researchers warned Monday. Earth’s surface temperature is on track to rise 2.7 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels by 2100, pushing more than two billion people—22 percent of projected global population—well outside the climate comfort zone that has allowed our species to thrive for millennia, the scientists reported in Nature Sustainability. The countries with the highest number of people facing deadly heat in this scenario are India (600 million), Nigeria (300 million), Indonesia (100 million), as well as the Philippines and Pakistan (80 million each).

Bracing for Default (Foreign Policy) U.S. President Joe Biden and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy once again failed to reach a deal extending the $31.4 trillion U.S. debt ceiling on Monday. With less than 10 days until the United States potentially defaults on its debt, countries around the world are bracing for the economic waves that could ripple through the global economy if no deal is reached. The United States has never intentionally defaulted on its debt, so the exact impact that doing so now could have on the international financial system is unknown. However, most economists predict it would be bad—and widespread. “No corner of the global economy will be spared,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, told The Associated Press. More than $500 billion in U.S. debt is traded globally every day, and much of that debt is held by foreign governments and investors. A default could see foreign investors charging the United States more money to borrow if Washington becomes a risky investment. Already high interest rates could soar. But one nation’s economic tragedy is another’s golden ticket. Fueled by fears of U.S. sanctions, both Russia and China have long sought to replace the dollar with the renminbi, with the BRICS nations considering establishing a common currency to spark de-dollarization. Defaulting on the country’s debt could be enough to convince third-party nations that the United States isn’t trustworthy and that their economies would be better served by investing in Moscow and Beijing.

He Was Investigating Mexico’s Military. Then the Spying Began. (NYT) He is a longtime friend of the president, a close political ally for decades who is now the government’s top human rights official. And he has been spied on, repeatedly. Alejandro Encinas, Mexico’s under secretary for human rights, was targeted with Pegasus, the world’s most notorious spyware, while investigating abuses by the nation’s military, according to four people who spoke with him about the hack and an independent forensic analysis that confirmed it. Mexico has long been shaken by spying scandals. But this is the first confirmed case of such a senior member of an administration—let alone someone so close to the president—being surveilled by Pegasus in more than a decade of the spy tool’s use in the country. The attacks on Mr. Encinas, which have not been reported previously, seriously undercut President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s pledge to end what he has called the “illegal” spying of the past. They’re also a clear sign of how freewheeling the surveillance in Mexico has become, when no one, not even the president’s allies, appears to be off limits.

Mexicans near Popocatepetl stay vigilant as volcano’s activity increases (AP) At the edge of this town near the Popocatepetl volcano, away from the din of traffic, there was an occasional low rumble Monday, like an idling engine. A cloud of superfine ash descended, slightly reducing visibility and coming to rest on vehicles’ windshields. For more than a week, the 17,797-foot (5,425-meter) mountain just 45 miles (about 70 kilometers) southeast of Mexico City and known affectionately as “El Popo,” has been increasingly explosive, spewing great plumes of gas, ash and incandescent rock into the air. The activity led the Mexican government to raise the warning level and to close schools in dozens of municipalities across three states. On Monday, local, state and federal officials held drills for the possibility of evacuations. On Sunday, national Civil Defense Coordinator Laura Velázquez said in a news conference that the stoplight-style warning system for the volcano remained on yellow, but had risen to phase 3. Still, she said, “there is no risk to the population at this time.” In this phase, large domes develop and explode in increasing intensity, launching incandescent rock into the air and pyroclastic flows down its flanks. Velázquez said only three of the volcano’s 565 explosions since September had been big, and the current activity was not the greatest of this century.

IMF says UK is no longer heading for a recession in 2023 (Reuters) The International Monetary Fund no longer expects Britain’s economy to fall into a recession this year, it said on Monday as it upgraded forecasts published last month and warned that the outlook remains subdued. “Economic activity has slowed significantly from last year and inflation remains stubbornly high following the severe terms-of-trade shock due to Russia’s war in Ukraine and, to some extent, labour supply scarring from the pandemic,” the IMF said.

Germany’s ‘China City’ doesn’t want you to call it that anymore DUISBURG, Germany—(Washington Post) Trains laden with containers of clothes and solar panels straight from China still trundle into the station here about five times a day, but other plans to forge links between this German rust-belt city and Beijing have ground to a halt. Local officials who not long ago touted Duisburg as Germany’s “China City” say that’s not a tagline they want to use anymore. “Public opinion has changed, political opinion has changed,” said Markus Teuber, the China commissioner for Duisburg, the sole German city to have such a post. The shift in this western German city of 500,000 mirrors a broader rethink in Europe on relations with Beijing. Trade continues to flow—China remains the 27-nation European Union’s top trading partner. Yet the E.U. has inched closer to Washington’s skeptical view of Beijing, a trend the United States expects to continue despite a Chinese “charm offensive,” according to U.S. military documents leaked on the group-chat platform Discord. Hopes that China would help boost Europe’s economies have been clouded by concerns about competition, influence and exposure. Beijing’s authoritarian turn under President Xi Jinping, its belligerence toward self-ruled Taiwan and its failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have all raised alarms. European policymakers are wary after seeing how dependence on Russian energy limited their leverage when President Vladimir Putin’s tanks rolled toward Kyiv.

The cyber gulag (AP) When Yekaterina Maksimova can’t afford to be late, the journalist and activist avoids taking the Moscow subway, even though it’s probably the most efficient route. That’s because she’s been detained five times in the past year, thanks to the system’s pervasive security cameras with facial recognition. She says police would tell her the cameras “reacted” to her—although they often seemed not to understand why, and would let her go after a few hours. “It seems like I’m in some kind of a database,” says Maksimova, who was previously arrested twice: in 2019 after taking part in a demonstration in Moscow and in 2020 over her environmental activism. For many Russians like her, it has become increasingly hard to evade the scrutiny of the authorities, with the government actively monitoring social media accounts and using surveillance cameras against activists. Rights advocates say that Russia under President Vladimir Putin has harnessed digital technology to track, censor and control the population, building what some call a “cyber gulag”—a dark reference to the labor camps that held political prisoners in Soviet times. It’s new territory, even for a nation with a long history of spying on its citizens.

Pakistan in uncharted territory as army seeks to vanquish Imran Khan (Reuters) Pakistan’s military has struck back after an unprecedented challenge to its hegemony by the popular Imran Khan and his followers, but the nuclear-armed nation remains caught between its most powerful institution and the man who was once a firm ally. Khan’s arrest on corruption charges earlier this month, which he says was at the behest of the generals, led to violent nationwide protests, attacks on military buildings and on the homes of senior officers, allegedly by the former prime minister’s supporters. There has never been that kind of challenge to Pakistan’s military, which has held sway over the country since independence in 1947 with a mixture of fear and respect. It has been in power for three of those decades and has wielded extraordinary influence even with a civilian government in office. Thousands of Khan’s supporters have been arrested, including Khan’s top aides. The government has said those accused of being involved in attacks on its installations will be tried by military courts—a platform typically reserved for enemies of the state. With Pakistan also grappling with a devastating economic crisis, a showdown between the military and its most popular political leader could push the nation of 220 million to the brink of chaos.

Lebanon set to be grey-listed by financial crime watchdog (Reuters) Lebanon is likely to be placed on a “grey list” of countries under special scrutiny over unsatisfactory practices to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing, three sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. Being added to the list would be another major blow to a country in a financial tailspin since 2019 and struggling to secure a deal with the International Monetary Fund. The local pound has lost more than 98% of its value, plunging most of the population into poverty, and diplomats have been expressing concern for months that the increasingly cash-based economy could hide growing illicit flows of money. In Lebanon’s case, the financial meltdown has already severely restricted banking transactions and many corresponding institutions have cut their ties to the country. But the listing would represent an indictment of Lebanon’s financial system at a painful time. The country has been slow to make progress on key reforms required for a deal with the IMF, and its central bank governor has been charged by France in a financial fraud case, triggering an Interpol red notice.

Tokyo’s trash-collecting samurai (The World) Passersby do a double take when they see Kaz Kobayashi and Ikki Goto. The two men glide through Tokyo’s bustling Ikebukuro district in full-length samurai outfits, while wielding objects that look like swords. They are members of the Gomi Hiroi Samurai or the trash-collecting samurai. On closer inspection, their samurai swords—or katanas—are actually just very long tongs, used to pick up litter. Kobayashi said the tongs are important for novelty value. The Gomi Hiroi Samurai do this three times a week. There’s four of them, and they’re professional actors. In their spare time, they volunteer to keep the streets of Tokyo clean. Goto formed the group in 2009. Since then, they have become a viral sensation on TikTok, with over 700,000 followers and counting. Here in Ikebukuro, they target back alleys and parking lots, which are rife with litter. Kobayashi and Goto, working in sync, slice and spin their tongs through the air, meticulously seizing cigarette butts one by one before tossing them into the wastebaskets strapped to their backs. They said that they hope to recruit more Gomi Hiroi samurai in Japan—and around the world. A growing sense of negativity is something that Kobayashi said worries him. “This is a problem in Japan,” he said. “People don’t go outside.” Last month, a government survey showed that 1.5 million people are living as social recluses in Japan. With loneliness and depression on the rise, Kobayashi said he hopes that their fun, zany take on something as mundane as trash-collecting helps people reengage with the outside world.

Ratio of sheep to people drops below five to one for first time in 170 years (RNZ) For the first time since the 1850s, New Zealand’s sheep-to-human ratio dropped below 5 to 1 on Monday—a 2 percent dip since the country’s last agricultural survey was taken five years ago. That’s a loss of 400,000 sheep. But don’t worry; 25.3 million fluffy farm critters remain.

[businesspr]

Mexican President Said He Told Ally Not to Worry About Being Spied On

The leader acknowledged that he had been told the government’s top human rights official was targeted by spyware, but sought to downplay the surveillance on Tuesday. source https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/23/world/americas/mexico-president-spying-pegasus.html

[fuojbe-beowgi]

"How Mexico Became the Biggest User of the World’s Most Notorious Spy Tool" by Natalie Kitroeff and Ronen Bergman via NYT World https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/18/world/americas/pegasus-spyware-mexico.html?partner=IFTTT

[triciansmithdesign]

How Mexico Became the Biggest User of the Pegasus Spyware

http://dlvr.it/SmgB1K