Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

@lorenzofb.bsky.social

19218 Followers 2570 Following

Real-time historian of the late cyber capitalist era @TechCrunch, writing about the intersection of hackers, human rights, and spies. Also writing a book about Hacking Team and the history of government spyware. ☎️ Signal: +1 917 257 1382

—PATRICK: Now we're actually on to something that is somewhat relevant to your day job, Andy, because we've got a story here from 404 Media where they are suing the US government, or they're suing ICE to get its spyware contract with Paragon. I guess this is interesting for a couple reasons, right? I understand that ICE is extremely unpopular in the United States, and in my opinion, quite reasonably so, given some of the stuff that they've been doing on the streets of the United States. They've earned some scrutiny, in my opinion. But I think also we've got to remember that Homeland Security Investigations is a division of ICE. So the idea that Homeland Security Investigations might want this sort of software is entirely reasonable. So just reading from HSI's website, "It is the principal investigative component of DHS and is responsible for investigating, disrupting and dismantling transnational criminal organizations and terrorist networks that threaten or seek to exploit the customs and immigration laws of the United States." So if I had to bet, it would be dollars to donuts that that is the sort of use that, you know, HSI is using it for that sort of thing, not just deploying spyware onto the devices of people who are suspected of entering the United States without prior approval. Now, we have you here. So I figured I wanted to ask you about this report to see if you've got anything to say because we have had your company come out and make statements along the lines of, well, we don't actually have a relationship with ICE because that means, well, maybe a contract expired and then we've had now suspicions from other quarters of the media "Oh, well, perhaps they're accessing this technology through a third party." We've got you here. Do you have anything you can share with us on this?
"Daily struggle" meme making fun of myself in the context of having to choose between following a spyware/zero-day maker on Twitter in hopes of being able to DM them, or instead adding them to a private list.
“The FBI is aware of malicious actors targeting Director Patel’s personal email information, and we have taken all necessary steps to mitigate potential risks associated with this activity,” a spokesperson for the FBI told TechCrunch in a statement. “The information in question is historical in nature and involves no government information.”
A screenshot of a tweet by Anduril's Trae Stephens: The world is splitting between people who engage with reality to build the future and professional outrage artists spinning fantasy in the name of “accountability.” Wired has cast its lot with the latter. Wired talked to 37 people (including trying to talk to one employee's mother!) and discovered some Pultizer-winning stuff: defense manufacturing is hard, Grimm didn't like his lunch, and that we hold our people to the highest standards. Truly groundbreaking. After I suggested someone should buy them last month, this reads less like journalism and more like a petty grudge. An increasingly irrelevant tech publication put us in their burn book. Newsflash @Wired : this changes nothing about what the Pentagon needs or what our adversaries fear. What this half-reported screed can't capture (because it wouldn't know how and didn't take us up on our offers to help) is where we actually are: scaling faster than anyone in this industry, fixing problems as we find them, and building things this country hasn't built in generations. Don't like it? Don't Work at Anduril.
A screenshot of a response by Google's AI Gemini, which shows it can't even count.
NYTimes breaking news item: With the original 2020 charges pending in the Southern District against Maduro, the U.S. secretary of state, Marco Rubio, had referred to Maduro as a "fugitive from American justice," which appeared to bolster the U.S. government's efforts to oust Maduro and seize him as it would any criminal on the run from the law.
A screenshot of a post on X that quotes Elon Musk saying we may live in a simulation.