Surveillance Secrets

Summary

In June, a sharp-suited Austrian executive of one of the world’s most significant yet little-known surveillance companies told a prospective client that he could “go to prison” for organising the deal they were discussing. But the conversation did not end there. The executive, Günther Rudolph, was seated at a booth at ISS World in Prague, a secretive trade fair for advanced surveillance technology companies. He went on to explain how his firm, First Wap, could provide sophisticated phone-tracking software called Altamides, capable of pinpointing any person in the world. The buyer? A private mining company, owned by an individual under sanction, who intended to use it to surveil environmental protestors. “I think we’re the only ones who can deliver,” Rudolph said. What Rudolph did not know: he was talking to an undercover reporter from Lighthouse. The road to that conference room in Prague began with a vast archive of data, found by a Lighthouse reporter on the deep web, containing more than a million tracking operations: efforts to grab real-time locations of thousands of people worldwide. Investigating that archive — and First Wap’s activities — drew together more than 70 journalists from 14 media outlets. What emerged is one of the most complete pictures to date of the modern surveillance industry. The tracking archive is unprecedented in scope, and reveals how the company and its clients surveilled all types of people from all over the world. Reporters interviewed more than a hundred victims, as well as former employees and industry insiders. A trove of confidential emails and documents provide a detailed inside account of how First Wap’s tech was marketed to authoritarian governments and accessed by corporate actors. Behind closed doors, First Wap’s executives touted their ability to hack WhatsApp accounts, and laughed about evading sanctions. The surveillance industry has long maintained that its tools are deployed exclusively by government agencies to fight se...