Sarah A | ساره

hacker | infosec + human rights + anti-surveillance丨past VP Security @OpenTechFund, @internetFF, @HRW丨past Fellow @mozilla @NewAmerica丨Beirut ➝ Brooklyn

[Zohran Kwame Mamdani @ZohranKMamdani]

In the audience tonight is Charlotte Bennett, one of the 13 women that Andrew Cuomo is credibly alleged to have sexually harassed while they worked in his government.

She can't speak for herself because Cuomo's lawyers have hounded her.

So I confronted him.

[Nate Bear @NateB_Panic]

New investigation: the developers behind hundreds of Android and iPhone apps which have been downloaded billions of times, from innocuous image and video editing apps to casual games, are ex-Israeli soldiers and spies🧵

[Nighat Dad @nighatdad]

Gunfire and explosions near Burki, Lahore my family is living through this nightmare. Civilians are gripped by fear, abandoned without info. India & Pak are at war, & the world watches in cowardly silence. Where is the diplomacy? De-escalate. Now before millions pay the price.

[Meredith Whittaker @mer__edith]

📣🚨 BAT SIGNAL: A law in France that would mandate a backdoor in end to end encrypted communications is set for a vote within the next day, after some start-stop skirmishes. 

The French Narcotraffic law would require encrypted communications providers—like Signal—create a backdoor by giving the government the ability to add themselves to any group or chat they like. In the name of (checks notes) fighting drug trafficking. 

While those hyping this bad law have rushed to assure French politicians that the proposal isn’t’ ‘breaking encryption’ their arguments are as tedious as they are stale as they are laughable. For those catching up, let’s review the basics: end to end encryption must only have two ‘ends’—sender and recipient(s). Otherwise, it is backdoored. Whatever method is devised to add a ‘third end’ —from a perverted PRNG in a cryptographic protocol, to vendor-provided government software grafted onto the side of secure communications that allow said government to add themselves to your chats—it rips a hole in the hull of private communications and is a backdoor. 

Indeed, the ghost participant proposal was roundly rebuked (humiliated, even) when it was first proposed in 2019 in the UK. The technical community was united, and it was never implemented in law or otherwise. 

We cannot accept any backdoor, however it’s dressed up. Communications don’t stay within jurisdictional boundaries. Which means a hole created in France becomes a vector for anyone wanting to undermine Signal’s robust privacy guarantees, anywhere. Instead of contending with unbreakable math, they only have to compromise a French government employee, or the vendor-provided software used to sideload government operatives into your private chats. 

This is why, as always, Signal would exit the French market before it would comply with this law as written. At this moment especially, there is simply too much riding on Signal, on our being able to forge a future in which private communication persists, to allow such pernicious undermining. 

We hope—WE HOPE—that this callow, dishonest attack will fail, and will be the last. We would love to get back to the work of maintaining and improving our core technologies, instead of fighting legislation which is distinguished in nothing as much as its refusal to listen to decades of expert consensus in its drive to imperil global cybersecurity and the human right of privacy.

[Kavita Algu @KavitaAlguMD]

Must read: Absolutely devastating piece in @guardian detailing some of the torture inflicted on Palestinian health workers by Israel:

- Abductions from the operating room
- Being stripped and kept in the cold
- Beatings to the point of being unable to walk
- Teeth being broken
- Rapes
- Murders
- Starvation
- Sleep derivation
- Being blindfolded and restrained for >100 days

Not one of these health workers has been charged with any crime.

One surgeon, Dr. Abu Ajwa was told by Israeli personnel that they wanted to make his hands not functional.

‘Since he was released from detention, Abu Ajwa has not managed to fix his broken teeth but has gone back to work in Gaza’s shattered healthcare system.

“As for the interrogator who was determined to make me lose sensation in my hands, I say: ‘no matter what you do … I am a doctor, and I will practice my profession. I will always continue, until my last breath, to be in the operating theatre.’”’

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

This is comforting

https://t.co/pTK7Rg5eG4

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

A Lithuanian company provided data on US military personnel in Germany to a databroker in Florida, which could then theoretically sell that data to essentially anyone. The global nature of commercial online ad surveillance should concern everyone.

https://t.co/JlYc5Fu1qF

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

Why do medical costs continue to skyrocket in the US? Well, manufacturers are forcing hospitals into 1st repair contracts, which means a hospital's own staff are prevented from repairing devices that they had long been able to fix.

https://t.co/5BGbmqA1LY

[Joseph Cox @josephfcox]

New from 404 Media: Employees working at DOGE have been ordered to stop using Slack while lawyers attempt to transition the agency to one that is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. Means DOGE will be even more secretive and unaccountable https://t.co/7HqVRTYBEZ

[Rachel Tobac @RachelTobac]

I've been getting more reports that folks are showing up to Zoom/Teams interviews w/ real time video deep fakes to alter their face in interviews + using chat bots to answer questions.
Attribution is hard, but 1 reason why this could be happening is this: https://t.co/shFdyFXfiY

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

So the Treasury is going on the blockchain... cool cool cool

https://t.co/6O9qFDhcrD

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

The hackers behind the massive breach of AT&T data last year hunted through the data for phone numbers and records of top officials and their families, including the Trump family (Melania and Ivanka Trump); Kamala Harris; and Marco Rubio’s wife

https://t.co/9CTti0DZTH

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

@citizenlab has some good resources on steps to take to try to secure your devices as much as possible:

https://t.co/1lJEvwkCsI

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

Nearly 100 journalists and civil society folks were targets of Israeli spyware company #Paragon.

The targeting was a “zero-click” attack, which means targets wouldn't have had to click on any malicious links to be infected.

https://t.co/gMiQVtWg0g

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

Trump's sudden freeze of federal aid has profound repercussions all around the world. Here are some of the stories that are coming up:

https://t.co/ezLN6nTUsM

[Nina Turner @ninaturner]

2020: attacks on “BLM”
2022: attacks on “CRT”
2024: attacks on “woke”
2025: attacks on “DEI”

BLACK.

THEY MEAN BLACK.

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

China’s repression of #Uyghurs in #Xinjiang extends beyond borders to target women Uyghur activists and their families, using digital threats, harassment, surveillance, and other means to silence them. Read @citizenlab's report: https://t.co/MknlScWHhp

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

Are you a journalist? Or do you work on investigative research?
The Global Investigative Journalism Network @gijn is offering a free, online cyber investigations training program for investigative journalists. The course will run for 6 weeks
https://t.co/yuj4UeMRmn

[Sarah A | ساره @sa0un]

Users are reporting that their posts are being taken down from #TikTok for saying "Free Palestine," yet TikTok denies that this is happening.

Still incredible to witness how afraid the world is of even the idea of a free Palestine.

https://t.co/qTv3UD1yGa

[Wall Street Apes @WallStreetApes]

This woman worked for UnitedHealthcare in the claims department, she was taught “thousands” of ways to deny people

“I'm here to talk about one specific claim”

- A widowed woman would call 3x a day because UnitedHealthcare was taking her to court
- Her husband had just passed from pancreatic cancer, and this was a hospice claim
- They were already garnishing her wages, and this was less than 60 days after he died

By the way, she was left with 5 boys by herself, she was a stay at home mom her whole life. She was just trying to figure out life

There was absolutely no reason why we couldn't just submit this claim and be done, but they told me every which way to deny this to get her off of our phone line. It was absolutely despicable.”

The claim they went after her for, from her now dead from cancer husband, was roughly $500,000. HALF A MILLION from a woman who had nothing