WhatsApp has alleged in new court filings that an Israeli spyware company used US-based servers and was “deeply involved” in carrying out mobile phone hacks of 1,400 WhatsApp users, including senior government officials, journalists, and human rights activists. The Guardian reports: The new claims about NSO Group allege that the Israeli company bears responsibility in serious human rights violations, including the hacking of more than a dozen Indian journalists and Rwandan dissidents. For years, NSO Group has said that its spyware is purchased by government clients for the purpose of tracking down terrorists and other criminals and that it had no independent knowledge of how those clients — which in the past have reportedly included Saudi Arabia and Mexico — use its hacking software.

But a lawsuit filed by WhatsApp against NSO Group last year — the first of its kind by a major technology company — is revealing more technical details about how the hacking software, Pegasus, is allegedly deployed against targets. In the court filings last week, WhatsApp said its own investigation into how Pegasus was used against 1,400 users last year showed that servers controlled by NSO Group — not its government clients — were an integral part of how the hacks were executed. WhatsApp has said victims of the hack received phone calls using its messaging app, and were infected with Pegasus. Then, it said: “NSO used a network of computers to monitor and update Pegasus after it was implanted on users’ devices. These NSO-controlled computers served as the nerve centre through which NSO controlled its customers’ operation and use of Pegasus.”

NSO has said in legal filings that it has no insight into how government clients use its hacking tools, and therefore does not know who governments are targeting. But one expert, John Scott-Railton of Citizen Lab, who has worked with WhatsApp on the case, said NSO’s control of the servers involved in the hack suggests the company would have had logs, including IP addresses, identifying the users who were being targeted. “Our products are used to stop terrorism, curb violent crime, and save lives. NSO Group does not operate the Pegasus software for its clients,” the company said in a statement. “Our past statements about our business, and the extent of our interaction with our government intelligence and law enforcement agency customers, are accurate.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – WhatsApp: Israeli Firm ‘Deeply Involved’ In Hacking Our Users

Amazon CEO and founder Jeff Bezos says it will take virtually all of its upcoming second-quarter operating profit to fund protective gear for employees and get products to customers. CNET reports: “If you’re a shareowner in Amazon, you may want to take a seat, because we’re not thinking small,” he wrote Thursday. “Under normal circumstances, in this coming Q2, we’d expect to make some $4 billion or more in operating profit. But these aren’t normal circumstances. Instead, we expect to spend the entirety of that $4 billion, and perhaps a bit more, on COVID-related expenses.” That spending includes higher wages for workers, more safety gear like face masks and Amazon’s internal development of COVID-19 testing capabilities. That spending could drive Amazon to report an operating loss in the second quarter, the company said Thursday. While Amazon’s stock hit an all-time high this month, shares tumbled more than 5% after the market’s close following Bezos’ warning about these additional costs.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – Amazon Sales Surge But Bezos Says Coronavirus Costs Could Hit Billion

An anonymous reader quotes a report from BuzzFeed News: Clearview AI, the facial recognition company that claims to have scraped over 3 billion photos from social media to power its face-matching tool, is now facing questions from Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey about recent claims that it’s developing a digital contact tracing tool for COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel coronavirus. Clearview AI CEO Hoan Ton-That claimed in a recent NBC interview that the company is in talks with “federal and state” authorities about developing a tool that would use facial recognition to track where a person diagnosed with COVID-19 has traveled and whom they may have come in contact with. Clearview has not identified any of these authorities nor the length of the agreements or contracts it has signed or is seeking. It’s also unclear how Clearview’s facial recognition tools would aid in contact tracing efforts or how the company would obtain pictures of people diagnosed with the disease and track their movements at scale.

In a letter to Ton-That, Markey asked Clearview to name the government agencies it claims to be communicating with and to disclose any agreements it may have reached with them. He also asked if Clearview is planning to use real-time facial recognition to power its contact tracing tool. BuzzFeed News previously reported that Clearview had developed a sister company called Insight Camera that partnered with at least two organizations to do real-time facial recognition and surveillance. In response to a detailed list of questions, Ton-That told BuzzFeed News: “We just received the letter from Senator Markey, for whom we have great respect. We will be responding to him directly.” Asked by BuzzFeed News, Ton-That did not comment on which state or federal authorities the company is working with. “Technology has an important role to play in mitigating the COVID-19 pandemic, but this health crisis cannot justify using unreliable surveillance tools that could undermine our privacy rights,” the letter reads. “Given that your responses to my previous letter failed to address ongoing concerns about your product — particularly around accuracy and bias testing — any plans to deploy it widely to fight the coronavirus could further increase Clearview’s threat to the public’s privacy.”

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot – US Senator Wants To Know Which Federal Authorities Are Using Clearview AI To Track the Coronavirus