2024-04-18
Some takeaways: - ByteDance was originally called Xiangping - Zhang Yiming created a prototype called Pretty Babes （an investor's translation; the Chinese was .实.女） - The firm of Republican megadonor Jeff Yass was deeply involved w/ @LaurenSHirsch https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
US court documents, mistakenly made public, reveal ByteDance and TikTok's complex origin story, spawning from GOP donor Jeff Yass' failed real estate venture
Court records, mistakenly made public, tell a story about the birth of ByteDance, its bumpy road to success and the role of the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass's firm.
The court resealed the records after we starting asking questions. But you can read about them in detail here https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
US court documents, mistakenly made public, reveal ByteDance and TikTok's complex origin story, spawning from GOP donor Jeff Yass' failed real estate venture
Court records, mistakenly made public, tell a story about the birth of ByteDance, its bumpy road to success and the role of the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass's firm.
NEW: I obtained thousands of pages of court documents about the birth of TikTok parent ByteDance after they were mistakenly unsealed by a Pennsylvania judge. They include emails, chats, and memos and are a fascinating window into ByteDance's origins. https://www.nytimes.com/...
New York Times
US court documents, mistakenly made public, reveal ByteDance and TikTok's complex origin story, spawning from GOP donor Jeff Yass' failed real estate venture
Court records, mistakenly made public, tell a story about the birth of ByteDance, its bumpy road to success and the role of the Republican megadonor Jeff Yass's firm.
2022-03-29
Google joins the list of entities (ahem, @UN) to instruct employees not to call the war a war. @samfbiddle and @tatikmd with the goods https://theintercept.com/...
The Intercept
Internal email: complying with a new Russian censorship law, Google ordered its contracted Russian translators to not call Russia's war in Ukraine a “war”
2022-02-09
NEW: When Cellebrite went public last August, @samfbiddle and I noticed that they claimed to have sold phone-cracking tech to nearly every U.S cabinet department. We confirmed those contracts - and found some other unsettling ones. https://theintercept.com/...
The Intercept
Purchase records and docs show that 14 of the 15 US Cabinet departments and several other federal agencies bought Cellebrite phone hacking tools in recent years
The Intercept :
Among our findings: the day before the Commerce Department blacklisted NSO Group, a DC lobbying firm registered to lobby on behalf of the Israeli phone cracker outfit Cellebrite. https://theintercept.com/... https://twitter.com/...
The Intercept
Purchase records and docs show that 14 of the 15 US Cabinet departments and several other federal agencies bought Cellebrite phone hacking tools in recent years
The Intercept :
2021-11-04
Definitely big. Now do Cellebrite https://twitter.com/...
The Record
US sanctions four companies, including NSO Group, that sell spyware or hacking tools, adding them to a list of entities engaging in “malicious cyber activities”
The US government has sanctioned today four companies that develop and sell spyware and other hacking tools, the US Department of Commerce announced today.
2021-09-23
Leakers get the last laugh https://twitter.com/...
The Verge
Leaked email: Tim Cook says recent leakers of info about Apple products and internal meetings “do not belong here” and the company is tracking them down
The CEO says the company is doing everything in its power to track down workers — Tim Cook sent an email …
2021-08-06
We're at that point in the evolution of social media where good people get banned for nothing, while known trolls who peddle disinformation get blue checks https://twitter.com/...
VICE
Scammers are abusing Instagram's protections against self-harm and impersonation to purposefully target and ban Instagram accounts, some charging $60 per ban
2021-05-26
Oracle later rolled Endeca functionality into Big Data Discovery. A slide deck given at a 2018 conference in California says police in Liaoning province used Big Data Discovery to do crime analysis and create heat maps. 7/ https://theintercept.com/... https://twitter.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
After marketing the software to US police, Oracle took it overseas and promoted it for invasive surveillance work in China. 5/ https://theintercept.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
Oracle documents boast that the CIA-backed software, Endeca, could help police sift through data in search of unknown threats (what Donald Rumsfeld famously called “unknown unknowns"). Civil liberties advocates have something to say about that. 3/ https://theintercept.com/... https://twitter.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
CPD used Oracle's software, which was funded by CIA venture capital firm In-Q-Tel, to surveil protesters during the 2012 NATO summit in Chicago. The software purportedly mined thousands of tweets an hour, flagged “negative” tweets, and kept them even if deleted. 2/ https://twitter.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
NEW: Chicago police used CIA-backed Oracle software to surveil protesters and mine their Twitter feeds. Oracle then peddled that same software for police work in China. I bring you a tale of global surveillance. 1/ https://theintercept.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
People have compared Endeca to Palantir Gotham. Like Palantir, it's used extensively by government agencies - including at Guantánamo. A full list of GTMO awards is here, thanks to @tech_inquiry. https://techinquiry.org/... 4/
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
Oracle documents marked “CONFIDENTIAL” peddle Endeca and other software for use by Chinese public security entities - for behavioral and language analysis, for example. 6/ https://theintercept.com/... https://twitter.com/...
The Intercept
A look at Oracle's effort to sell Endeca software to Chinese authorities beginning in 2012, and how Oracle touted its use in Chicago for predictive policing
2021-05-22
Reportorial patience pays off https://twitter.com/...
Wired
RSA executives recount the hack of its SecurID seeds in 2011, which affected millions of users around the world and redefined the cybersecurity landscape
In 2011, Chinese spies stole the crown jewels of cybersecurity—stripping protections from firms and government agencies worldwide.
2021-04-07
The internet regularly wishes me a happy birthday on the wrong day (because I fudge dates when registering with data-hungry sites). I now kinda look forward to my fake birthdays https://twitter.com/...
Wired
A first person narrative on the persistence of digital memories and how social media and photo apps that surface old photos make painful memories hard to forget
In 2019, I made a painful decision. But to the algorithms that drive Facebook, Pinterest, and a million other apps, I'm forever getting married.
2021-02-19
SCOOP: The Oracle TikTok deal was supposed to prevent TikTok from passing data to Chinese police. Turns out Oracle has been marketing its own data analytics software to...Chinese police. a.k.a. the weirdest China tech story I've ever written 1/1 https://theintercept.com/...
The Intercept
Docs: Oracle has been marketing its data analytics tools to Chinese police, touting its ability to mine DNA, vehicle records, and facial recognition databases
I found dozens of Oracle documents detailing how Chinese police can use the company's analytics software to mine databases containing DNA, vehicle records, facial recognition images, hotel registrations, and lists of drug users. 2/2
The Intercept