Breaking the serious news is tough

And it's even harder when your government taps your phone and can track your whereabouts and contacts

“Anne Hull (born June 8, 1961) is an American journalist and writer. She was a national correspondent for the Washington Post for nearly two decades, writing about immigration, gay youth in the Bible Belt and U.S. soldiers coming home from the war in Iraq. Her reporting on the mistreatment of wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center with fellow Post reporter Dana Priest and photographer Michel duCille brought wide-sweeping national reform. For this work, the Post was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Public Service.” (via Wikipedia)

She won other major awards as an investigative journalist but the Walter Reed Story is the most remembered. Her co-researcher/reporter on that has an even greater resume.

She became well known prior to the Walter Reed story.

”Dana Louise Priest (born May 23, 1957) is an American journalist, writer and teacher. She has worked for nearly 30 years for the Washington Post and became the third John S. and James L. Knight Chair in Public Affairs Journalism at the University of Maryland's Philip Merrill College of Journalism in 2014. Before becoming a full-time investigative reporter at the Post, Priest specialized in intelligence reporting and wrote many articles on the U.S. "War on terror" and was the newspaper's Pentagon correspondent. In 2006 she won the Pulitzer Prize for Beat Reporting citing "her persistent, painstaking reports on secret "black site" prisons and other controversial features of the government's counter-terrorism campaign.” (via Wikipedia)

She previously had won another major award for a November 2005 article on secret CIA detention facilities in foreign countries and when interviewed by Frontline less than a year before the Walter Reed story broke, she responded to criticism by some US politicians that her reporting compromised national security, two of her replies stand out:

"There's no floodgate of information out there in the realm of intelligence; there just isn't. That defies looking at the newspapers every day. People who say that, they're just taking the word of the government. I think we did do a very responsible job at what we did. We tried to figure out a way to get as much as information to the public as we could without damaging national security."

And about disclosing US intelligence capabilities to enemies:

"Does that make sense to you? Letting the bad guys know that we can eavesdrop on them, they don't know that? I think one of the revealing facts about the NSA [wiretapping] case, if you take the government on the face value, is the extent to which they are underestimating the enemy, which is not a good thing if you want to defeat the enemy." (both quotes also from the previous Wikipedia cite)

In short, Dana Priest doesn’t suffer fools happily. She’s embedded in multiple countries with US Special Forces and has broken several must read critical stories without compromising US security. Every time I see her byline, I feel a certain sense of pending awe. She investigates some of the deepest secret stuff, digs out the important facts that trigger debate, further investigation and some serious reforms, and keeps us apprised when governments start pursuing directions every citizen should find concerning.

I dig great investigators and when I critique mainstream media, there are not many that rise above the rest like she always has.

And yesterday, Dana Priest with two others released another blockbuster in WaPo.

A list of those targeted had more than 50,000 numbers on it.

”Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and Amnesty International, a human rights group, had access to the list and shared it with the news organizations, which did further research and analysis. Amnesty’s Security Lab did the forensic analyses on the smartphones.” (Washington Post July 18, 2021)

More than 80 journalists working for sixteen media partners around the world were involved in The Pegasus Project Investigation.

”The numbers on the list are unattributed, but reporters were able to identify more than 1,000 people spanning more than 50 countries through research and interviews on four continents: several Arab royal family members, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials — including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officers. The numbers of several heads of state and prime ministers also appeared on the list.

Among the journalists whose numbers appear on the list, which dates to 2016, are reporters working overseas for several leading news organizations, including a small number from CNN, the Associated Press, Voice of America, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg News, Le Monde in France, the Financial Times in London and Al Jazeera in Qatar.” (also from the Washington Post cite)

This matters because it means anyone in touch with journalists, activists and government officials can be identified and tracked and face repercussions. It violates critical press freedoms and may subject some to government persecution. Because spyware like this can be sold by a private firm with little oversight or regulation.

The company who sold the spyware claims total innocence of any wrongdoing by the company or its buyers.

”NSO describes its customers as 60 intelligence, military and law enforcement agencies in 40 countries, although it will not confirm the identities of any of them, citing client confidentiality obligations. The consortium found many of the phone numbers in at least 10 country clusters, which were subjected to deeper analysis: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Citizen Lab also has found evidence that all 10 have been clients of NSO, according to Bill Marczak, a senior research fellow.

Forbidden Stories organized the media consortium’s investigation, and Amnesty provided analysis and technical support but had no editorial input. Amnesty has openly criticized NSO’s spyware business and supported an unsuccessful lawsuit against the company in an Israeli court seeking to have its export license revoked. After the investigation began, several reporters in the consortium learned that they or their family members had been successfully attacked with Pegasus spyware.” (I added the boldface, also from the same Washington Post cite)

Spyware can also turn on a phone’s video and audio to create live recordings that the targeted reporters and others are unaware of.

So yeah, under the claim that it’s targeting terrorists, the spyware is being regularly abused by multiple governments and undermines essential freedoms that healthy democracies require.

That’s a huge amount of work that Priest and her co authors had to sort through and distill to report on well. I read each example, had to pause and consider all the potential ramifications to those targeted, before proceeding to the next example.

It’s hardly the first time the reach of governments utilizing anti-terror surveillance has been exposed. Wikileaks and Eric Snowden are older examples of that.

It’s an area that has to be regulated and outlawed because it almost inevitably leads to more countries becoming anti-democracy authoritarian states while propping up some already despised authoritarian regimes.

So yeah, when Anne Priest writes, I already know to pay close attention. As should you. She’s pointing the way democracies should go and keeping us notified when they don’t. And you could also be observed and tracked in real time doing ordinary stuff like grocery shopping or having sex with your partner.

You really need to read the article. It’s breathtaking and frightening. Multiple media outlets are covering it now, since it was published early Sunday.

---

Covid, Part Whatever: Because of treatment protocols developed by trial and error, and because some have vaccinated, upcoming death rates from the Delta variant won’t produce death rates like the first wave did, before we even had useful tests.

Without the vaccines, however, it would. Because it is the most deadly variant yet. Now in new case totals, the US is number one in the world again. And death rates are already rising in several states.

Is this the mythical great America that the whiny mask hating minority dreamed of? We’re already back to October 2020 infection levels in under 4 weeks. TAKE COVER NOW!

The next 4 weeks will be the steepest of any phase we’ve previously experienced. Florida alone makes up more than 1 in 5 cases in the country. Florida, Texas, California, Missouri, Louisiana and Arkansas have more than half the US cases and three of those aren’t big population states.

Also for the past two days several Olympic athletes have tested positive for covid and can’t take part. The games start Friday in Japan, where only 26% of the coiuntry is vaccinated. Why are top global athletes being exposed to such risks? Because big money still matters more than extremely talented hardworking people.

I hope some athletes choose to stand up, refuse to go and call out the Japanese government, the promoters, the Olympic Federation and every ad sponsor.

How many corpses will have to accrue before some say ‘ENOUGH!!’ ?

What concerns epidemioogists most is that spreads like this allow new variants to develop that could be immune from any vaccine currently in use.

There are much better things to catch instead of Covid.

We should be in this fight together.