Reckless III: Investigation Into Mexican Mass Disappearance Targeted with NSO Spyware (original) (raw)
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Reckless VII: Wife of Journalist Slain in Cartel-Linked Killing Targeted with NSO Group’s Spyware
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Citizen lab would like to thank Griselda Triana for consenting to share this case with the collaborating organizations, especially Article 19, and with the public. We are also grateful to the many other targets and victims of Pegasus for having shared the cases on which our continuing work is based. Special thanks to the teams at R3D, SocialTic, and Article19 for their careful and important investigative work. We would like to especially thank and highlight the contribution of Luis Fernando Garcia and his colleagues at R3D, and Article19 for their coordination in this particular case. Thanks to the whole Citizen Lab team, especially Miles Kenyon, Adam Senft, and Mari Zhou for graphical assistance. Thanks to Amnesty International and Access Now for assistance in earlier phases of the investigation.
Reckless V: Director of Mexican Anti-Corruption Group Targeted with NSO Group's Spyware
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The director of a prominent anti-corruption organization Mexicanos Contra la Corrupción y la Impunidad (MCCI) was sent infection attempts with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware The targeting took place as his organization was working on issues related to offshore holdings and corruption among prominent Mexicans and Mexican government officials This report raises the number to 22 known cases of abusive and improper targeting with NSO Group’s government-exclusive spyware
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More than 77,000 people have disappeared in Mexico since the beginning of the war on drugs, but very little is known about them. After analyzing the descriptions of a non-randomized sample of disappearance registries from governmental data, we find that those events associated with organized crime are better understood by analyzing four factors: migration to the U.S. border and traveling on highways, gender differences and individual vs. multiple-victim disappearances, the forced recruitment of skilled and unskilled workers, and cooperation with the authorities. These results should be used as a starting point for pushing the government to release better data and to improve search mechanisms.
Methodological and ethical issues in Citizen Lab's spyware investigation in Catalonia
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This document outlines a series of potential methodological and ethical issues that would suggest the need to launch an independent investigation and reassess the findings of the report: "CatalanGate; Extensive Mercenary Spyware Operation against Catalans Using Pegasus and Candiru", published on 18 April 2022, by Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto. This document is based on a careful examination of the report and the public statements of the authors of the report, as well as some of the participants in it. The public responses made by Prof. Ronald Deibert, Director of Citizen Lab to the questions posed by a group of European MPs, do not dissipate most of the doubts publicly expressed earlier. This document signals many serious inconsistencies and questionable choices at different stages of Citizen Lab's investigation.
The Pegasus spyware scandal A critical review of Citizen Lab's "CatalanGate" report
Renew Europe - European Parliament, 2023
This document dissects the report “CatalanGate: Extensive Mercenary Spyware Operation against Catalans Using Pegasus and Candiru”, published on 18 April 2022, by Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy, University of Toronto, and reveals a series of serious methodological and ethical issues that severely undermine its value as evidentiary basis for parliamentary committees and court trials. This critical review shows that Citizen Lab’s research design, fieldwork, and reporting of findings in the “CatalanGate” report clash with commonly accepted norms of academic research conduct and integrity. The variety and gravity of the pitfalls discovered suggest that Citizen Lab and the political organisations that collaborated with them in the elaboration of the report may have tried to purposefully induce a strong political bias to shape public opinion and achieve strong media impact. This critical review recommends the University of Toronto to launch an independent investigation on this report and to retract its publication. The CatalanGate report cannot be considered a rigorous academic work. It breaches most academic research conventions and does not respect the protocols and principles of digital forensic investigation. It appears to have been designed and conducted with the purpose of becoming a political instrument for Catalan nationalists, feeding evidence for lawsuits that both Apple and secessionist parties were planning, and attempting to justify ex-post the nullity of several trials that had taken place after the unilateral secession attempt in October 2017 —based on the pretended illegal monitoring of lawyers by the Spanish authorities at the time these trials took place—. As such, it could be considered as a key element in a disinformation campaign. It is beyond the scope of this review to assess whether Spain spied —legally or illegally— on some of the participants in the investigation or if Pegasus was the spyware of choice. This review shows, however, that the CatalanGate report does not meet the minimal requisites to be used as evidentiary basis for either legal procedures or parliamentary committees of enquiry. An independent investigation for research misconduct is expected in cases as serious as this one. Any parliamentary committee or court of justice investigating CatalanGate should request independent forensic experts —without connections to Citizen Lab or Amnesty Tech— to reproduce the analyses and assess their validity and reliability. It is important to rule out false positives as well as to identify any potential alterations or fabrications of evidence, such as manufactured positive results, taking advantage of the absence of a chain of custody of evidence in this investigation. The lack of checks on the actions of internet security and privacy watchdogs, such as Citizen Lab, and their potential “capture” by Big Tech corporations and partisan political groups should be a source of concern for the European Union. Citizen Lab is right to demand public accountability and transparency from European Member states, but it is also important that they also adhere to these same principles and that accusations against governments do not drive attention away from responsibilities and challenges incurred by Big Tech corporations regarding internet security.
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