The Surveillance Empire That Tracked Everyone

[MsAmerica]

The Surveillance Empire That Tracked World Leaders, a Vatican Enemy, and Maybe You
Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.
Mother Jones
By Gabriel Geiger, Crofton Black, Emmanuel Freudenthal, and Riccardo Coluccini

Last year the investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports obtained a secret archive, containing more than a million instances where Altamides was used to trace cell phones all over the world. This data trove, the majority of which spans 2007 to 2014, is one of the largest disclosures to date of the inner workings of the vast surveillance industry. It does not just list the phone numbers of people who were monitored; it offers, in many cases, precise maps of their movements, showing where they went and when. Over months of research, Lighthouse, Germany’s Paper Trail Media, Mother Jones, Reveal, and an international consortium of partners dug into these logs to understand who was being spied on and why. We identified surveillance targets in 100 countries and spoke to dozens of them. We obtained confidential documents and communications outlining how Altamides—an acronym for “Advanced Location Tracking and Mobile Information and Deception System”—was marketed and deployed.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/firstwap-altamides-phone-tracking-surveillance-secrets-assad-erik-prince-jared-leto-anne-wojcicki/

Here is the "Lighthouse Report" the above comes from.

Surveillance Secrets - Lighthouse Reports

Nothing earth shattering that I can see. Eg, from that article :

"The surveillance industry has long maintained that its tools are deployed exclusively by government agencies to fight serious crime, portraying instances of misuse as rare exceptions. This investigation definitively dismantles that narrative."

But the lighthouse report article does not really have any earth shattering revelations of proven connections. For example, this -

"And in South Africa, associates of Rwandan opposition leader Patrick Karegeya were tracked before his assassination in a Johannesburg hotel room."

It says associates of. It does not say when they were tracked, or where. It is suggestive, not proof of anything.

It has this re the data :

"It contains 1.5 million records, more than 14,000 unique phone numbers, and people surveilled in over 160 countries. "

That is not a lot. And we are talking pre GPS here. It looks to be using mast triangulation data obtained from phone networks. Data that the phone networks have already.

thats the thing the more society needs or uses tech the more it is to track etc

And it always seems to work against the consumer.

🙁

well thats because they are not trained as if they are gchq agents

I am not sure about that. Not in theory anyway. Country where I am there is one app. Does SM, chat, keeps contacts, payment, and yes, tracking too. Everyone was tracked during covid. Even had the cops at my door, because the system had alerted them that I had been in a closed area. I hadn't, it was because my phone had connected with a mast there. Yup, big brother is real and is bad.

But it got me thinking. What if the town planners could access all that information? What people buy, where they it, what transport to get there. It could mean transport links that people need, shops they need in the local area, facilities on a national level. What is the best location for a health clinic?

It could be used as a real force for good. But also bad. It is an interesting thought experiment to do for the area one lives in I think.

I suppose that, first, I was thinking of corporate surveillance, and second, I am living with the specter not only of the horrifying surveillance in China, but much wariness about what's happening in the U.S.
But, yes, sadly there is so much that could be a force for good - but isn't.