Khaberni - The spying industry has flourished widely in recent years, in tandem with the development of technical devices and their varied uses, coinciding with the emergence of a group of companies that have made this sector a source of livelihood.
Perhaps the Israeli "NSO" (NSO), the developer of the malicious "Pegasus" software - used in spying on many prominent figures, including journalist Jamal Khashoggi as reported by the "MotherJones" website - is one of the most prominent of these companies.
This does not mean that it is the only company working in this sector, as there are many companies that have made the spying sector their home, including one company that remained unknown until recently, but its danger exceeds the danger posed by "NSO".
This unknown company has managed to track the phones of many prominent personalities around the world across various sectors. This tracking was not based on a loophole that could be closed in the phones or even on malicious messages that breach the phones, as it was carried out without any intervention from the victim, whether by clicking on a link or downloading any application.
Over 7 years, the company "First Wap" conducted more than a million tracking and spying operations on a galaxy of characters, whether prominent or not, ranging from "Google" scientists in various sectors to the wife of Sergey Brin, a co-founder of the company, and health coaches in Hawaii.
So who is "First Wap," and how did it manage to remain in the shadows until today?
A cloak of secrecy and legal loopholes
The "Mother Jones" website, in cooperation with a group of other journalism sites including "Lighthouse Reports," conducted an investigation for a year and a half that uncovered many secrets of "First Wap" and its involvement in spying and tracking operations that exceed those exposed by Edward Snowden in 2013.
The report included a covert visit by a group of journalists to one of the major security company conferences held this year, specifically in Prague, at the "ISS World Training" conference, where many involved in security and surveillance meet, whether they are from governmental bodies or private companies.
There, the journalistic team spoke with Gunter Rudolf, the company’s senior salesman, as well as a group of other company executives, discussing the capabilities of the "Altamides" surveillance system to track phone movements within any country in the world, even penetrating WhatsApp without user intervention.
However, Rudolf expressed a problem in the deal that could connect "Altamides" with its potential customers, as he and a significant number of company employees hold European nationality, thus selling spy technologies to foreign countries or even participating in the selling process from a distance would place them under legal scrutiny.
Rudolf added that his company has a solution, as the deal contract would be signed in Jakarta, which has lenient laws with selling surveillance technologies, and the agreement would be signed by the Indian manager in the company, thus avoiding any legal challenges.
Later, "First Wap" denied this conversation, stating that the journalists misunderstood Rudolf’s statements, and that he was merely talking about the technical capabilities of their system.
The company also denied dealing with any party other than governments of countries that have justifiable legal and logical reasons for using such technologies and that its role ends after installing the system in the targeted country, uninvolved with any subsequent use.
By utilizing these legal loopholes, the company managed to avoid falling under the legal hammer and facing penalties and investigations similar to those faced by "NSO" in previous years.
It is noted that "First Wap" was founded in 1999 by Joseph Fox, a Swedish national who was working in Jakarta at the time.
Transitioning from working in marketing to spying on clients
The "Mother Jones" report indicates that the company started its journey as a marketing company using mobile phone networks to send marketing messages to users' phones across the globe. However, the shift of "First Wap" from merely a marketing company to tracking its clients occurred later.
This happened because one authority—which the report did not name—requested the company to develop a system used to counter terrorism and capable of tracking terrorists and users around the world, and within several years, the requested product was available.
While the company clearly and explicitly confirms that it only deals with governmental bodies under the most stringent conditions and restrictions, the data revealed in the report and interviews conducted with some former company employees suggest otherwise.
The operation mechanism of the "Altamides" system simply relies on collecting data from mobile phones and their locations through nearby communication towers, even if these towers are in a foreign country and anywhere in the world without needing access to an internet service provider or the network being used.
This means that a client in the United States can track the location of a victim in Southeast Asia without leaving his or her home or obtaining the necessary permissions from telecommunications companies, and one former employee described what the company does as "premature" even though he left it at the start of this century.
A myriad of victims
The "Mother Jones" report refers to a large and diverse group of victims against whom "Altamides" was used, even though the documents obtained by the site were only for the period between 2007 and 2014.
The list of victims includes a number of prominent names and figures such as the famous actor Jared Leto, who was tracked 4 times in 2012, as well as Anne Wojcicki, founder of the DNA testing company who later married Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google. She was tracked nearly a thousand times in 2009.
The list also includes figures in the Arab world like Asma al-Assad, the wife of the ousted Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was tracked more than 5 times in 2013.
The report reveals that the system was used to track David Batenga, the nephew of the exiled Rwandan Intelligence Chief Patrick Karegeya, who was assassinated at the Michelangelo Towers in Johannesburg in 2014.
Also, the Prime Minister of Qatar in 2013, where the report shows 18 tracking attempts for a phone linked to Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, who was then serving as the Prime Minister of Qatar at that time.
A disaster beyond measure
Ron Deibert, the director of "Citizen Lab" at the University of Toronto, describes what "First Wap" is doing as empowering a group of the world's worst tyrants and despots to undermine the foundational pillars of democracy, in his discussion with "Mother Jones".
"Citizen Lab" represents one of the strongholds defending freedoms around the world, and it played a significant role in exposing the efforts made by the "NSO" company and its malicious "Pegasus" software in spying on users.
Deibert adds, "You have a company that was able to operate in the shadows without any public accountability or transparency," increasing the danger of what the company does, in addition to a client list that has no red lines according to statements made by former company employees to the site.
