At Least 7 of the 9/11 Hijackers are Still Alive

National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

Outline of the 9/11 Plot

The muscle hijackers 'picked by bin Ladin':

• Satam al Suqami
• Wail and Waleed al Shehri (two brothers) Alive
• Abdul Aziz al Omari Alive
• Fayez Banihammad (from the UAE)
• Ahmed al Ghamdi
• Hamza al Ghamdi
• Mohand al Shehri Alive
• Saeed al Ghamdi Alive
• Ahmad al Haznawi
• Ahmed al Nami Alive
• Majed Moqed
• Salem al Hazmi (the brother of Nawaf al Hazmi)

How can the 9/11 Commission be taken seriously when they refer to 9/11 'hijackers' who are still alive?

Some of the suspects apparently used the stolen identities of at least five Saudis who worked in the airline industry as pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants — people who would have had increased access in airports, a Saudi government official told the Sun-Sentinel.

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American Airlines Flight 11

• Aircraft: Boeing 767-223ER
• Fuel Capacity: 24,000 gallons
• Seating Capacity: 181
  • Passengers: 81 (including hijackers)
  • Flight Attendants: 9
  • Pilots: 2

Alleged Hijackers:

• Satam M.A. Al Suqami
• Waleed M. Alshehri - Alive
• Wail M. Alshehri - Alive
• Mohamed Atta - Alive?
• Abdul Aziz al Omari - Alive

Full details:
Scheduled flight: Boston - Los Angeles
Flight departed: 07:59 a.m.
Crashed into WTC 1: 08:46 a.m.

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United Airlines Flight 175

• Aircraft: Boeing 767-222
• Fuel Capacity: 24,000 gallons
• Seating Capacity: 181
  • Passengers: 56 (including hijackers)
  • Flight Attendants: 7
  • Pilots: 2

Alleged Hijackers:

• Marwan Al-Shehhi
• Fayez Rashid Ahmed Hassan Al Qadi Banihammad
• Ahmed Alghamdi
• Hamza Alghamdi
• Mohand al Shehri - Alive

Full details:
Scheduled flight: Boston - Los Angeles
Flight departed: 08:14 a.m.
Crashed into WTC2: 09:03 a.m.

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American Airlines Flight 77

• Aircraft: Boeing 757-223
• Fuel Capacity: 11,000 gallons
• Seating Capacity: 200
  • Passengers: 58 (including hijackers)
  • Flight Attendants: 4
  • Pilots: 2

Alleged Hijackers:

• Khalid Almihdhar - Alive?
• Majed Moqed
• Salem al Hazmi - Alive
• Nawaf Alhazmi
• Hani Hanjour

Full details:
Scheduled flight: Washington to Los Angeles
Flight departed: 08:20 a.m.
Crashed into the Pentagon: 09:38 a.m.

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United Airlines Flight 93

• Aircraft: Boeing 757-222
• Fuel Capacity: 11,000 gallons
• Seating Capacity: 200
  • Passengers: 38 (including hijackers)
  • Flight Attendants: 5
  • Pilots: 2

Alleged Hijackers:

• Saeed al Ghamdi - Alive
• Ahmed Ibrahim A. Al Haznawi
• Ahmed al Nami - Alive
• Ziad Samir Jarrah

Full details:
Scheduled flight: Newark to San Francisco
Flight departed: 8:42 a.m. (delayed 41 mins)
Crashed in Pennsylvania: 10:06 a.m.

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Hijackers

• AMERICAN AIRLINES Flight 11: Crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center
• UNITED AIRLINES Flight 175: Crashed into the South Tower of the World Trade Center
• AMERICAN AIRLINES Flight 77: Crashed into the Pentagon
• UNITED AIRLINES Flight 93: Crashed in rural Pennsylvania

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9/11 Airport Surveillance Video Discrepancies

The BBC reported a transcript of a phone call made by Flight Attendant Madeline Amy Sweeney to Boston air traffic controls in which she gave the seat numbers occupied by the hijackers, and these seat numbers did not correspond with those of the men claimed by the FBI to be responsible for the hijacking.

CNN reported that the men who hijacked the aircraft used phony IDs containing the names of real people living in Arab nations in the Middle East.

Even the FBI says there is no evidence to link the above men to the 9/11 hijackings.

So, one fact is apparent. If those who hijacked the 9/11 airplanes were using stolen identities, then we don't know who they were or who they worked for. We can't. It's impossible.

A Saudi embassy official said it was difficult to know for certain whether the hijackers used bogus names. "You cannot throw a stone in Saudi Arabia without hitting an Al Ghamdi," he said, referring to the alleged last name of three of the hijackers. [Chicago Tribune]

Now, people who are intending to commit suicide normally don't worry about whether anyone knows their real name, and it is here that some other odd aspects of this case take on a new meaning.

We are told that the group that planned and carried out the hijackings and subsequent attack on the World Trade Towers were highly trained (possibly by the CIA) experts, with knowledge of how to steal identities and forge fake IDs.

Yet at the same time, we are being told that these same hijackers spent the night before the attack getting drunk in bars, making noise, screaming insults at the "infidels", and doing everything they could to attract attention to themselves. They used the credit cards issued in their stolen names, allowed their driver's licenses with the stolen names to be photocopied, and used public library computers to send emails back and forth using their stolen names signed to unencrypted messages about their plans to steal aircraft and crash them into buildings, then decorated their apartments with absurdly obvious props such as a crop dusting manual to the point where the whole affair reads like a low-budget "B" detective movie from the 1930s.

In short, these men did everything they could to make sure everyone knew who they were, or more to the point, who they were pretending to be.

Because the IDs used by the hijackers were phony, we cannot know who they really were or who they really worked for. But what is apparent is that those who planned the hijackings and the 9/11 attacks went out of their way to leave plenty of clues pointing to citizens of Middle Eastern Arab nations.

Many of the investigators believe that some of the initial clues that were uncovered about the terrorists' identities and preparations, such as flight manuals, were meant to be found. A former high-level intelligence official told me, "Whatever trail was left was left deliberately—for the F.B.I. to chase." [The New Yorker]

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Conclusion

We don't know who planned the 9/11 attacks. But we do know who they wanted us to think they were. We do know who they intended America to blame for the attacks.

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See also:

• Nine Hijackers Drew Scrutiny on Sept. 11, Officials Say
• Tracking All Hijackers
• 9/11 - An Inside Job?
• What Really Happened

SUPPRESSED DETAILS OF CRIMINAL INSIDER TRADING LEAD DIRECTLY INTO THE CIA's HIGHEST RANKS

CIA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR "BUZZY" KRONGARD MANAGED FIRM THAT HANDLED "PUT" OPTIONS ON UAL

by Michael C. Ruppert

[© COPYRIGHT, 2001, Michael C. Ruppert and FTW Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. - May be reprinted or distributed for non-profit purposes only.]

FTW, October 9, 2001

Although uniformly ignored by the mainstream U.S. media, there is abundant and clear evidence that a number of transactions in financial markets indicated specific (criminal) foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. In the case of at least one of these trades -- which has left a $2.5 million prize unclaimed -- the firm used to place the "put options" on United Airlines stock was, until 1998, managed by the man who is now in the number three Executive Director position at the Central Intelligence Agency. Until 1997 A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard had been Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown. A.B. Brown was acquired by Banker's Trust in 1997. Krongard then became, as part of the merger, Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust-AB Brown, one of 20 major U.S. banks named by Senator Carl Levin this year as being connected to money laundering. Krongard's last position at Banker's Trust (BT) was to oversee "private client relations." In this capacity he had direct hands-on relations with some of the wealthiest people in the world in a kind of specialized banking operation that has been identified by the U.S. Senate and other investigators as being closely connected to the laundering of drug money.

Krongard (re?) joined the CIA in 1998 as counsel to CIA Director George Tenet. He was promoted to CIA Executive Director by President Bush in March of this year. BT was acquired by Deutsche Bank in 1999. The combined firm is the single largest bank in Europe. And, as we shall see, Deutsche Bank played several key roles in events connected to the September 11 attacks.

THE SCOPE OF KNOWN INSIDER TRADING

Before looking further into these relationships it is necessary to look at the insider trading information that is being ignored by Reuters, The New York Times and other mass media. It is well documented that the CIA has long monitored such trades - in real time - as potential warnings of terrorist attacks and other economic moves contrary to U.S. interests. Previous stories in FTW have specifically highlighted the use of Promis software to monitor such trades.

It is necessary to understand only two key financial terms to understand the significance of these trades, "selling short" and "put options".

• "Selling Short" is the borrowing of stock, selling it at current market prices, but not being required to actually produce the stock for some time. If the stock falls precipitously after the short contract is entered, the seller can then fulfill the contract by buying the stock after the price has fallen and complete the contract at the pre-crash price. These contracts often have a window of as long as four months.
• "Put Options," are contracts giving the buyer the option to sell stocks at a later date. Purchased at nominal prices of, for example, $1.00 per share, they are sold in blocks of 100 shares. If exercised, they give the holder the option of selling selected stocks at a future date at a price set when the contract is issued. Thus, for an investment of $10,000 it might be possible to tie up 10,000 shares of United or American Airlines at $100 per share, and the seller of the option is then obligated to buy them if the option is executed. If the stock has fallen to $50 when the contract matures, the holder of the option can purchase the shares for $50 and immediately sell them for $100 - regardless of where the market then stands. A call option is the reverse of a put option, which is, in effect, a derivatives bet that the stock price will go up.

A September 21 story by the Israeli Herzliyya International Policy Institute for Counterterrorism, entitled "Black Tuesday: The World's Largest Insider Trading Scam?" documented the following trades connected to the September 11 attacks:

• Between September 6 and 7, the Chicago Board Options Exchange saw purchases of 4,744 put options on United Airlines, but only 396 call options. Assuming that 4,000 of the options were bought by people with advance knowledge of the imminent attacks, these "insiders" would have profited by almost $5 million.
• On September 10, 4,516 put options on American Airlines were bought on the Chicago exchange, compared to only 748 calls. Again, there was no news at that point to justify this imbalance; Again, assuming that 4,000 of these options trades represent "insiders," they would represent a gain of about $4 million.
• [The levels of put options purchased above were more than six times higher than normal.]
• No similar trading in other airlines occurred on the Chicago exchange in the days immediately preceding Black Tuesday.
• Morgan Stanley Dean Witter & Co., which occupied 22 floors of the World Trade Center, saw 2,157 of its October $45 put options bought in the three trading days before Black Tuesday; this compares to an average of 27 contracts per day before September 6. Morgan Stanley's share price fell from $48.90 to $42.50 in the aftermath of the attacks. Assuming that 2,000 of these options contracts were bought based upon knowledge of the approaching attacks, their purchasers could have profited by at least $1.2 million.
• Merrill Lynch & Co., with headquarters near the Twin Towers, saw 12,215 October $45 put options bought in the four trading days before the attacks; the previous average volume in those shares had been 252 contracts per day [a 1200% increase!]. When trading resumed, Merrill's shares fell from $46.88 to $41.50; assuming that 11,000 option contracts were bought by "insiders," their profit would have been about $5.5 million.
• European regulators are examining trades in Germany's Munich Re, Switzerland's Swiss Re, and AXA of France, all major reinsurers with exposure to the Black Tuesday disaster. [FTW Note: AXA also owns more than 25% of American Airlines stock making the attacks a "double whammy" for them.]

On September 29, 2001 - in a vital story that has gone unnoticed by the major media - the San Francisco Chronicle reported, "Investors have yet to collect more than $2.5 million in profits they made trading options in the stock of United Airlines before the Sept. 11, terrorist attacks, according to a source familiar with the trades and market data.

"The uncollected money raises suspicions that the investors - whose identities and nationalities have not been made public - had advance knowledge of the strikes." They don't dare show up now. The suspension of trading for four days after the attacks made it impossible to cash-out quickly and claim the prize before investigators started looking.

"October series options for UAL Corp. were purchased in highly unusual volumes three trading days before the terrorist attacks for a total outlay of $2,070; investors bought the option contracts, each representing 100 shares, for 90 cents each. [This represents 230,000 shares]. Those options are now selling at more than $12 each. There are still 2,313 so-called "put" options outstanding [valued at $2.77 million and representing 231,300 shares] according to the Options Clearinghouse Corp."

"The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Bank Alex Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of these options." This was the operation managed by Krongard until as recently as 1998.

As reported in other news stories, Deutsche Bank was also the hub of insider trading activity connected to Munich Re. just before the attacks.

CIA, THE BANKS AND THE BROKERS

Understanding the interrelationships between CIA and the banking and brokerage world is critical to grasping the already frightening implications of the above revelations. Let's look at the history of CIA, Wall Street and the big banks by looking at some of the key players in CIA's history.

• Clark Clifford - The National Security Act of 1947 was written by Clark Clifford, a Democratic Party powerhouse, former Secretary of Defense, and one-time advisor to President Harry Truman. In the 1980s, as Chairman of First American Bancshares, Clifford was instrumental in getting the corrupt CIA drug bank BCCI a license to operate on American shores. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and banker.
• John Foster and Allen Dulles - These two brothers "designed" the CIA for Clifford. Both were active in intelligence operations during WW II. Allen Dulles was OSS station chief in Berne, Switzerland, where he met frequently with Nazi leaders and looked after U.S. investments in Germany. John Foster went on to become Secretary of State under Dwight Eisenhower and Allen went on to serve as CIA Director under Eisenhower and was later fired by JFK. Their professions: partners in the most powerful - to this day - Wall Street law firm of Sullivan, Cromwell.
• Bill Casey - Ronald Reagan's CIA Director and OSS veteran who served as chief wrangler during the Iran-Contra years was, under President Richard Nixon, Chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. His profession: Wall Street lawyer and stockbroker.
• David Doherty - The current Vice President of the New York Stock Exchange for enforcement is the retired General Counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency.
• George Herbert Walker Bush - President from 1989 to January 1993, also served as CIA Director for 13 months from 1976-7. He is now a paid consultant to the Carlyle Group, the 11th largest defense contractor in the nation, which also shares joint investments with the bin Laden family.
• A.B. "Buzzy" Krongard - The current Executive Director of the Central Intelligence Agency is the former Chairman of the investment bank A.B. Brown and former Vice Chairman of Banker's Trust.
• John Deutch - This retired CIA Director from the Clinton Administration currently sits on the board at Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank, which has been repeatedly and overtly involved in the documented laundering of drug money. This includes Citigroup's 2001 purchase of a Mexican bank known to launder drug money, Banamex.
• Nora Slatkin - This retired CIA Executive Director also sits on Citibank's board.
• Maurice "Hank" Greenburg - The CEO of AIG insurance, manager of the third largest capital investment pool in the world, was floated as a possible CIA Director in 1995. FTW exposed Greenberg's and AIG's long connection to CIA drug trafficking and covert operations in a two-part series that was interrupted just prior to the attacks of September 11. AIG's stock has bounced back remarkably well since the attacks. To read that story, please go to http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ciadrugs/part_2.html.

One wonders how much damning evidence is necessary to respond to what is now irrefutable proof that CIA knew about the attacks and did not stop them. Whatever our government is doing, whatever the CIA is doing, it is clearly NOT in the interests of the American people, especially those who died on September 11.

In June 2001, Cooper would make a prediction that would earn him the legacy as the man who predicted the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

Cooper pulled on historical threads of tragic events and tied them to what he saw as the government and media colluding to make a boogeyman out of Osama bin Laden. Cooper predicted an awful event would soon occur in the United States and that the country’s leaders would blame it on bin Laden.

On Sept. 11, 2001, the day his prophecy was realized, Cooper stayed on air for 10 hours. According to audio archived on the Cooper tribute website, BeholdAMessenger, in the initial hours after the attack, Cooper theorized the towers of the World Trade Center came down by controlled demolition.

A suspected developer of a new malware strain called Styx Stealer made a “significant operational security error” and leaked data from his computer, including details about clients and earnings, researchers have found.

Styx Stealer is “a powerful malware” capable of stealing browser data, instant messenger sessions from Telegram and Discord, and cryptocurrency. The Israel-based cybersecurity firm Check Point, which analyzed the malware, said that it was used against its customers, though further details were not provided.

“The developer made a fatal error and leaked data from his computer, which allowed Check Point to obtain a large amount of intelligence,” researchers said in a report published last week.

The developer of Styx Stealer was found to be linked to one of the Agent Tesla threat actors known as FucosReal, who was involved in a spam campaign also targeting the company’s customers. Agent Tesla is a remote access malware that has been targeting Windows systems since 2014.

According to Check Point, the creator of Styx Stealer revealed his personal details, including Telegram accounts, emails and contacts, by debugging the stealer on his own computer using a Telegram bot token provided by a customer involved in the Agent Tesla campaign in March 2024.

“This critical OpSec failure not only compromised Styx Stealer's anonymity but also provided valuable intelligence about other cybercriminals, including the originator of the Agent Tesla campaign,” researchers said.

Following the analysis, researchers were able to link Styx Stealer to a Turkish hacker known as Sty1x. This, in turn, allowed Check Point to track down FucosReal to an individual in Nigeria.

“The case of Styx Stealer is a compelling example of how even sophisticated cybercriminal operations can slip up due to basic security oversights,” researchers said.

One of the largest companies that conducts background checks confirmed that it is the source of a data breach causing national outrage due to the millions of Social Security numbers leaked.

In a statement on Friday, National Public Data said it detected suspicious activity in its network in late December, and subsequently a hacker leaked certain tranches of data in April and throughout the summer.

“The incident is believed to have involved a third-party bad actor that was trying to hack into data in late December 2023, with potential leaks of certain data in April 2024 and summer 2024. We conducted an investigation and subsequent information has come to light,” the Florida-based company said.

“The information that was suspected of being breached contained name, email address, phone number, social security number, and mailing address(es).”

National Public Data said it “cooperated with law enforcement and governmental investigators and conducted a review of the potentially affected records.”

The company plans to notify those affected if there are other updates. It is unclear how someone would know they are affected by the breach, but the company urged people to monitor their financial accounts for unauthorized activity.

Cybersecurity experts have known about the leaks since April, but since then the company has refused to respond to repeated requests for comment from Recorded Future News. The company stayed tight-lipped about the incident until this week, when concern about the troves of Social Security numbers (SSNs) exposed went viral on social media.

Companies and private investigators pay National Public Data to obtain criminal records, background checks and more — with the company allowing them to search billions of records instantly.

On April 7, a well known hacker going by the name USDoD posted a database on the criminal marketplace Breached claiming it contained 2.9 billion records on U.S. citizens. The cybercriminal — best known for leaking data stolen from European aerospace giant Airbus — said it came from another hacker named “SXUL" and offered the information for $3.5 million.

While it is unclear whether anyone paid for the information, the hacker began leaking parts of the database in June and others continued to offer it for sale throughout the summer.

Several cybersecurity experts, including data breach expert Troy Hunt, have confirmed that while the database contains duplicates, much of the information is accurate.

The data contains a person’s first and last name, three decades of address history and Social Security number. Some experts said they were also able to find a person’s parents, siblings and immediate relatives. The database includes people living and dead.

Some have noted that people who use data opt-out services were not included in the database.

While some news outlets and social media platforms have erroneously reported that 2.9 billion people had information in the breach, Hunt estimated that the database included about 899 million unique SSNs.

The FBI and other U.S. cybersecurity agencies did not respond to requests for comment.

National Public Data is already facing lawsuits over the breach. A complaint was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida two weeks ago after a California resident said he got a notice from his identity-theft protection service provider in July about the breach.

DataGrail vice president Chris Deibler said the breach shows we “are reaching the limits of what individuals can reasonably do to protect themselves in this environment.”

“The balance of power right now is not in the individual's favor. [The European Union’s] GDPR and the various state and national regulations coming online are good steps, but the prevention and consequence models in place today clearly do not disincentivize mass aggregation of data,” he said.

Akhil Mittal of Synopsys Software Integrity Group added that the number of records will draw headlines but the long tail of effects on people could last years. Millions of real people will be dealing with identity theft, fraud and more for years to come due to the breach, he said.

Mittal echoed Deibler’s comments, arguing that a larger conversation needs to be started about data privacy and protection.

“It’s time for stricter regulations and better enforcement to make sure companies are really protecting our information,” Mittal said.

Popular flight-tracking app FlightAware has admitted that it was exposing a bunch of users' data for more than three years.

It made the admission via a notification filed last week with Rob Bonta, California's attorney general, saying the leak began on January 1, 2021, but was only detected on July 25 of this year.

The incident was blamed on an unspecified configuration error. It led to the exposure of personal information, passwords, and various other personal data points you'd expect to see in a breach, depending on what information the user provided in their account.

The full list of potentially impacted data points is below:

• User ID
• Password
• Email address
• Full name
• Billing address
• Shipping address
• IP address
• Social media accounts
• Telephone numbers
• Year of birth
• Last four digits of your credit card number
• Information about aircraft owned
• Industry
• Title
• Pilot status (yes/no)
• Account activity (such as flights viewed and comments posted)
• Social Security Number

How was this data exposed? We asked FlightAware and will update the story if it responds.

The downside of filing data leak notifications in California is that the state doesn't require companies to publicly disclose how many people were affected, unlike Maine, for example, which does.

Although we cannot determine the exact number of affected users, FlightAware reports having 12 million registered users. If all were affected, that would be quite the security snafu indeed.

"FlightAware values your privacy and deeply regrets that this incident occurred," it wrote in a letter being sent to affected individuals.

"Once we discovered the exposure, we immediately remedied the configuration error. Out of an abundance of caution, we are also requiring all potentially impacted users to reset their password. You will be prompted to do so at your next log-in to FlightAware."

It's typical with these types of breach notifications to comment on whether the data in question had been accessed and/or misused by unauthorized third parties. The letter to affected users did not address this matter.

It's also typical for companies to offer free credit monitoring for users and the same is the case here. Anyone who receives a letter from FlightAware saying they may be affected was offered two years of service via Equifax.

A Kentucky man who hacked into a state registry and faked his own death to avoid paying child support was sentenced on Monday to 81 months in prison.

In January 2023, Jesse Kipf used stolen login credentials belonging to a physician to access the Hawaii Death Registry System, where he submitted and “certified” his own death — thereby avoiding paying more than $116,000 in owed child support.

He also hacked into other state death registry systems, as well as “governmental and corporate networks” using stolen credentials, and tried to sell access to those entities on the darkweb.

“Working in collaboration with our law enforcement partners, this defendant who hacked a variety of computer systems and maliciously stole the identity of others for his own personal gain, will now pay the price,” said Michael E. Stansbury, special agent in charge at the FBI’s Louisville Field Office. Kipf was convicted of computer fraud and aggravated identity theft.

In March 2023, Hawaii’s Department of Health began sending out breach notification letters after it was notified by the cybersecurity firm Mandiant that credentials belonging to an external medical death certifier account had been sold on the dark web. The account belonged to a medical certifier who worked for a local hospital but had left the job in 2021.

According to the Health Department release, the hacker accessed the account on January 20, 2023 — the same month Kipf breached the system.

That same year, Kipf also used stolen credentials to access networks belonging to Guest-Tek Interactive Entertainment Ltd. and Milestone, Inc. — specifically to networks related to the companies’ work with hotel chains, including internet connectivity services.

According to a sentencing memo from Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn M. Dieruf, Kipf offered for sale on darknet forums tips for how to access death registry systems, and he sold access to at least one company’s hacked databases to Russian customers. Other international buyers of stolen personal information were from Algeria and Ukraine, according to court documents.

While calling for a seven-year sentence — three more months than the one Kipf received — Dieruf asked the judge to send a message to cybercriminals.

“Similarly situated individuals must see the real danger they present to victims and be deterred from engaging in online criminal conduct by the fear of punishment,” she wrote.

“The cloak of anonymity afforded by the dark web is too alluring without the persistent threat of being brought to justice and serving a significant sentence.”

“Categorically unconstitutional” – that is how the US Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled about the use of geofence warrants.

The part of the Constitution that this type of warrant, that enables dragnet-style mass surveillance, violates is the Fourth Amendment, the court found.

This amendment is meant to protect citizens from unreasonable searches or seizures – but, said the court of appeals, what geofence warrants do is allow for the opposite: “General, exploratory rummaging.”

We obtained a copy of the ruling for you here.

Geofencing works by essentially treating everyone who happens to be in a geographic area during a given time as a suspect, until established otherwise.

And, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group, an outspoken critic that often gets involved in legal cases to argue against this method of investigation, welcomed the court’s decision, noting that people should not have to fear having their phone with them in public because that could turn them into a criminal suspect.

The Circuit Court’s stance on geofence warrants came as it deliberated the United States v. Smith case, revolving around the police in Mississippi in 2018 resorting to obtaining this type of warrant to investigate an armed robbery and assault that took place in a post office.

Google, which is who law enforcement turns to with these warrants most of the time, obliged, turning over data from the phones to the police, who then managed to produce two suspects, later defendants.

But – even though it decided not to suppress the evidence, because it found the police were acting “in good faith” while geofencing was still a new phenomenon – the Fifth Circuit Court doesn’t think the warrants are inherently lawful, i.e., in compliance with the Constitution.

One problem cited by the judges is that police access to sensitive location data collected during the process of geofencing is “highly invasive” since it can reveal a lot about a person, including their associations, and, also lets the police “‘follow’ them into private spaces,” EFF explained the court’s decision.

Another is that the warrants never specify that they apply to a particular person, as law enforcement “have no idea who they are looking for, or whether the search will even turn up a result.”

You might still think about Eric Schmidt as a “(big) tech guy” and businessman, but his passion for (geo)politics was always evident, even while he served as Google’s CEO.

These days, Schmidt is the chair of the Special Competitive Studies Project (SCSP), a think tank that would like to position itself as a reference point to a military alliance, NATO, and get it to “monitor disinformation in real-time.”

SCSP’s ambition is no less than to help craft new national security strategies, always with an eye on the alleged attempts to increase disinformation (here AI is to blame) – but also ways to combat that, and here, SCSP says (the US) must strengthen its “AI competitiveness.”

The goal is to “win” what’s referred to as the techno-economic competition by 2030 – there’s that deadline, favored by many a controversial globalist initiative.

Here, the group would like NATO and its members to fight against what is described as AI disinformation, that new chapter in information warfare.

Schmidt’s think tank doesn’t like what’s seen as the current reactive approach and the tired old debunking. That means there must be an “active” one – and the replacement for debunking would logically be some form of the dystopian concept of “prebunking.”

(SCSP mentions both as desirable methods in a late 2022 report, but this time shies away from using the latter term.)

SCSP wants various actors to carry out real-time surveillance of “disinformation” by means of spending money on tools fed with publicly available online data (aka, the cynically named “open source” data).

In other words, real-time mass-scale internet data scraping. Such tools already exist and are used by law enforcement, causing various levels of controversy.

Next comes prebunking, even if the latest batch of SCSP recommendations stops short of calling it that.

But what would you call it?

“NATO should provide its own positive narrative to get out ahead of disinformation, and highlight failures of authoritarian regimes, especially on their own digital platforms.”

And to make this work, SCSP wants NATO to co-opt various governments and companies, as well as NGOs. Inside the alliance, a “disinformation unit” should be formed.

Last but not least, the think tank says – “Foster healthy skepticism.”

Perhaps starting with SCSP’s own roles, goals, and affiliations.

The Biden administration is working to expedite widespread adoption of digital IDs, including driver’s licenses, a draft executive order indicates.

Digital IDs are a contentious concept primarily because of the concentration of – eventually – the entirety of people’s sensitive private information in centralized databases controlled by the government, and on people’s phones, “client-side.”

That in turn brings up the issues of technical security, but also privacy, and the potential for dystopian-style mass surveillance.

Proponents, on the other hand, like to focus on the “convenience” that such a shift from physical to digital personal documents is promised to bring.

In the US, some states have started this process via digital driver’s licenses, and the executive order is urging (“strongly encouraging”) both federal and state authorities to accelerate this, as well as other types of digital ID.

Where this policy seems to be converging to is coming up, at long last, with a functional way to carry out online identity verification. Namely, digital ID would be combined with biometric data obtained through facial recognition, and other forms of biometrics harvesting.

Centralization of data – opponents say to better control it, even if that makes it less secure – is a key component of these schemes, and so the Biden executive order speaks about making it obligatory for federal agencies to join “a single government-run identity system, Login.gov,” reports say.

It is also noted that Biden initially mentioned such an executive order was coming during his 2022 State of the Union speech, but the wording reportedly became a cause of contention.

Now, that seems to have been resolved, and the only question for the administration is when Biden should sign the order, the same sources who saw the text, report.

At the same time, as states are launching their own (partial) digital ID programs, an increasing number are looking for ways to introduce online age verification and are enacting laws to this effect.

A federal-level digital ID scheme would help in these efforts to solve the “problem” of online anonymity – and in the process forever change the internet as we know it.

In Brazil, a significant upheaval in digital privacy and access to information is unfolding, as a notable number of reputable VPN services—including NordVPN, ExpressVPN, Surfshark, and VyprVPN—have vanished from the local iOS App Store. This move is widely believed to comply with Brazilian authorities’ directives, reflecting a concerning trend towards online censorship.

This development is particularly alarming in light of the recent decision X made to shutdown its operations in the country. X terminated its operations after a protracted legal confrontation with Brazilian officials, who had accused the platform of insufficient efforts to combat disinformation, specifically its failure to block accounts spreading false information and hate speech. Despite the shutdown, X’s app is still accessible in Brazil.

The closure of X’s offices and the removal of VPNs from the App Store have spurred a significant shift toward VPN usage among Brazilians, seeking to bypass increasing online restrictions. Proton VPN reported a staggering 580% surge in new registrations recently, highlighting the growing reliance on VPNs to maintain internet freedom.

Nevertheless, acquiring these tools has become challenging. Attempts to install these apps from the iOS App Store are met with no option to download, indicating a blockade rather than a mere removal.

The current scenario underscores the critical importance of VPN services in safeguarding internet freedom in Brazil. As digital platforms face governmental pressures and the landscape of internet accessibility continues to evolve, the role of VPNs as tools for ensuring unrestricted access to information becomes ever more vital.

California is one of the US states that have introduced digital license plates, amid opposition from a number of rights advocates.

Now, there is a legislative effort to have GPS location tracking embedded in these, to all intents and purposes, devices attached to the car.

Sponsored by Democrat Assemblywoman Lori Wilson, Bill 3138 is currently making its way through the state’s legislature. It refers to “License plates and registration cards: alternative devices,” and the bill has another sponsor – Reviver.

The company was founded by Neville Boston, formerly of the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV), and promotes itself as the first digital license plates platform. It has made its way to both this proposal, and the law the current draft builds on – AB 984 (also sponsored by Wilson) – which was signed into law two years ago.

The problem with Reviver is that it has already had a security breach that allowed hackers to track those using the company’s digital plates in real-time. It doesn’t help, either, that the company is effectively a monopoly – the only one, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) notes, “that currently has state authorization to sell digital plates in California.”

Meanwhile, the key problem with AB 3138, warns EFF, is that it “directly undoes the deal from 2022 and explicitly calls for location tracking in digital license plates for passenger cars.”

The deal in question refers to the way AB 984 eventually managed to become law, signed by Governor Gavin Newsom: a provision that would have allowed for location tracking of private vehicles was removed at the time.

But clearly, that was just a temporary move to pacify opponents, and now Wilson – and Reviver – are back to “complete” the original effort.

EFF is urging the legislature not to approve AB 2138 and is choosing to highlight those scenarios where such GPS tracking would be detrimental to those who are ostensibly among the voters or sympathizers of Wilson and her party.

Thus, the digital rights group speaks about those seeking abortion traveling (and being tracked, unawares) from state to state, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) using the tech, etc.

However, it’s difficult to see how adding another way for the authorities to track vehicles in real-time is not potentially detrimental to any person, as a form of invasive mass surveillance.