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VOICE ARCHIVE

Byron Tau

@byrontau
35 posts
2025-10-29
AP INVESTIGATION: For decades, the US government allowed and even helped US firms sell tech used for surveillance in China — enacting a loophole-ridden export control regime that failed to accomplish its big goals.  By @garanceburke.bsky.social, @dakekang.bsky.social & me.  —  apnews.com/article/chin...
2025-10-29 View on X
Associated Press

Investigation: the US government allowed and even helped US companies sell tech used for China's surveillance across five GOP and Democratic administrations

enacting a loophole-ridden export control regime that failed to accomplish its big goals.  By @garanceburke.bsky.social, @dakekang.bsky.social & me.  —  apnews.com/article/chin... ...

2025-10-15
Incredible reporting from Lighthouse, Mother Jones, and an international consortium of journalists into how a single company in Indonesia is able to track people worldwide through a vulnerability in the mobile phone system. https://www.motherjones.com/ ...
2025-10-15 View on X
Mother Jones

Inside First Wap, a European-led phone tracking company in Indonesia that has exploited the SS7 telecom protocol to target politicians, journalists, and others

Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.

2025-09-09
A blockbuster AP investigation from @dakekang.bsky.social and @yaelwrites.com finds that US tech companies designed and built China's repressive surveillance state trapping tens of thousands of ordinary Chinese citizens in a digital cage. apnews.com/article/chin...
2025-09-09 View on X
Associated Press

Investigation: IBM, Dell, HP, Cisco, Oracle, Microsoft, Intel, Nvidia, and other US tech companies helped design and build China's digital surveillance state

BEIJING (AP) — The body camera hung from the top of the IV drip, recording the slightest twitch made by Yang Guoliang as he lay bloody …

2024-10-23
NEW: We watched as privacy advocates geofenced an abortion clinic in Florida, where the procedure remains legal, and identified specific devices that came from Alabama, where it is not. Inside the wild world of phone tracking data for sale. https://www.notus.org/...
2024-10-23 View on X
404 Media

Privacy advocates leak hours of footage of Locate X, a global, warrantless phone tracking tool made by Babel Street and used by US agencies like ICE and CBP

This article was produced with support from the Capitol Forum.  —  On a computer screen a map shows the movements of smartphones around the globe.

2024-08-22
Good for @SilvermanJacob, who with the help of @rcfp intervened in a California lawsuit involving Twitter/X and forced disclosure of X's shareholders on a public docket. X had been trying to keep them sealed. https://protos.com/... Journalists: Do👏More👏Legal👏Motions👏!
2024-08-22 View on X
Washington Post

Court filing: the unsealed list of X Holdings shareholders names nearly 100 entities, such as 8VC, Italy-based UnipolSai, and a fund tied to Sean “Diddy” Combs

A court filing obtained by The Post lists which firms and individuals have a financial stake in the platform.

2024-03-28
Wild @dmehro and Dell Cameron story in @WIRED on how the controversial data broker Near left an analysis of mobile devices visiting to Jeffrey Epstein's islands on a publicly accessible website. Wired says they're combing through the data still. https://www.wired.com/...
2024-03-28 View on X
Wired

Investigation: data broker Near Intelligence left the coordinates of nearly 200 mobile devices of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein's island exposed online

A WIRED investigation uncovered coordinates collected by a controversial data broker that reveal sensitive information about visitors … Mastodon: @wchr@mastodon.social . Bluesky: @...

2024-01-25
Another day, another ugly look at the widespread abuse of the digital advertising system by nation-state linked entities — this time from @josephfcox using research from @WolfieChristl, @johnnyryan and @RonWyden about an Israeli company called Patternz. https://www.404media.co/...
2024-01-25 View on X
404 Media

An investigation details a spy tool called Patternz, which can track billions of phone profiles via ads in hundreds of thousands of apps, including 9gag and Kik

Hundreds of thousands of ordinary apps, including popular ones such as 9gag, Kik, and a series of caller ID apps …

2024-01-14
There are levels to the enshittification at work here.
2024-01-14 View on X
The Verge

Amazon sells products with titles like “I'm sorry, I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy”, as sellers use ChatGPT to write listings

Fun new game just dropped!  Go to the internet platform of your choice, type “goes against OpenAI use policy,” …

2024-01-13
There are levels to the enshittification at work here.
2024-01-13 View on X
The Verge

Amazon sells products with titles like “I'm sorry, I cannot fulfill this request as it goes against OpenAI use policy”, as sellers use ChatGPT to write listings

Fun new game just dropped!  Go to the internet platform of your choice, type “goes against OpenAI use policy,” …

2023-12-07
Wow, Reuters has withdrawn this story worldwide due to an Indian court order. Reuters “stands by its reporting and plans to appeal the decision,” it says. https://www.reuters.com/... Luckily, it's in Wayback Machine where you should definitely read it: https://web.archive.org/...
2023-12-07 View on X
Reuters

Reuters temporarily removes its article titled “How an Indian startup hacked the world” to comply with an Indian court order, and plans to appeal the decision

Reuters has temporarily removed the article “How an Indian startup hacked the world” to comply with a preliminary court order issued …

2023-05-19
NEW with @patiencehaggin: a Midwest nonprofit was “geofencing” abortion clinics and extracting the unique IDs of devices that appeared there to serve them antiabortion messaging. It's a real-life example of what privacy activists warned about after Dobbs. https://www.wsj.com/...
2023-05-19 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Sources and docs: Midwest nonprofit Veritas Society used geofenced data to serve abortion clinic visitors anti-abortion ads on Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat

Wall Street Journal :

2022-12-23
TikTok accessed data on two US journalists. All reporters—not just those covering national security—need to understand the risks of letting *any* company have access to their data in order to best protect sources from retaliation, job loss and lawsuits. https://www.nytimes.com/...
2022-12-23 View on X
Forbes

ByteDance fired four employees after finding that they had accessed data on US TikTok users, including reporters, while trying to learn the sources of a story

ByteDance confirmed it used TikTok to monitor journalists' physical location using their IP addresses, as first reported by Forbes in October.

2022-06-07
When every civilian with a cell phone is a military sensor, are there any civilians anymore? Very interesting piece raising questions about what it means for civilians in places like Ukraine to be providing the military with information. https://www.wired.com/...
2022-06-07 View on X
Wired

How Ukrainian civilians are helping the army using apps, blurring the lines between civilians and soldiers, raising questions of international humanitarian law

Lukasz Olejnik / Wired :

2022-02-17
Journalists should not user automated transcription services like https://otter.ai/ for anything remotely sensitive, as @PhelimKine writes in a deep dive on his experiences getting answers from Otter about what it shares and how. https://www.politico.com/...
2022-02-17 View on X
Politico

Experts say automated transcription app Otter.ai and its competitors offer only lax security that could endanger sources

Otter.ai has saved reporters countless hours transcribing interviews.  Caveat emptor.  —  Mustafa Aksu is a wanted man.  —  Though he lives in Washington, D.C. …

2021-11-19
How your phone became a spy: Five people who work in marketing or advertising have separately described to me being approached by members of intelligence agencies, law enforcement or the military looking to acquire data. https://www.wsj.com/...
2021-11-19 View on X
Wall Street Journal

In a letter to Sen. Wyden, data broker Mobilewalla says it was the source of some data used by the DHS, IRS, and US military for warrantless tracking of devices

Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @byrontau , @anthony , @byrontau , @lrozen , @rebeccaballhaus , and @ronwyden Tweets: Byron Tau / @byrontau : How your phone became a spy...

From your phone to the government: A look under the hood of how data is collected by marketing companies such as Atlanta-based Mobilewalla, flows to specialized software vendors and contractors and ends up being used for warrantless phone tracking. https://www.wsj.com/...
2021-11-19 View on X
Wall Street Journal

In a letter to Sen. Wyden, data broker Mobilewalla says it was the source of some data used by the DHS, IRS, and US military for warrantless tracking of devices

Byron Tau / Wall Street Journal : Tweets: @byrontau , @anthony , @byrontau , @lrozen , @rebeccaballhaus , and @ronwyden Tweets: Byron Tau / @byrontau : How your phone became a spy...

2021-09-14
This highlights the problem with creating private institutions to do quasi-legal functions or perform industry self-regulation is there is zero penalty for not being truthful to those institutions unlike a court or a legislature.
2021-09-14 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Internal docs: Facebook's own research shows Instagram is harmful to a sizeable percentage of users, especially teen girls, but it has taken few remedial steps

Its own in-depth research shows a significant teen mental-health issue that Facebook plays down in public

This highlights the problem with creating private institutions to do quasi-legal functions or perform industry self-regulation is there is zero penalty for not being truthful to those institutions unlike a court or a legislature.
2021-09-14 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Internal Facebook documents detail XCheck, a program that shields VIP users from normal content enforcement policies, which included over 5.8M users in 2020

2021-08-27
A 21-year old American hacker named John Binns took credit for the massive T-Mobile breach in an interview with the WSJ. https://www.wsj.com/...
2021-08-27 View on X
Wall Street Journal

Q&A with John Binns, a 21-year-old American living in Turkey, who claims responsibility for the recent T-Mobile hack and says its security is “awful”

revealing your full legal name and location—is an interesting strategy. https://www.wsj.com/... Daniel Lippman / @dlippman : “The young hacker said he did it to gain attention. ‘Ge...

2021-07-21
“Anonymized” cell phone data outs top Catholic official as a Grindr user who visits gay bars, triggering his resignation. This is data advertisers collect off mobile devices and insist with a straight face contains no personally identifiable information. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ ...
2021-07-21 View on X
Washington Post

Top US Catholic Church official resigns after a Catholic media site obtained his alleged Grindr app and phone location data from an undisclosed data broker

The top administrator of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops resigned after a Catholic media site told the conference it had access …