Vas Panagiotopoulos

The Israeli spyware maker, still on the US Commerce Department’s “blacklist,” has hired a new lobbying firm with direct ties to the Trump administration, a WIRED investigation has found.

A $2 million contract that United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement signed with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been paused and placed under compliance review, WIRED has learned.

US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed a $2 million contract with Israeli commercial spyware vendor Paragon Solutions, according to documents reviewed by WIRED.

The one-year contract between the company’s US subsidiary in Chantilly, Virginia, and ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations Division 3 was signed on September 27 and covers a “fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance and training.”

On New Year’s Eve, NSO Group—the Israel-based company behind the Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most sophisticated cyberweapons—quietly released a new transparency report.
The 27-page document is carefully worded—even apologetic—and is intended to demonstrate resilience, progress, and responsibility to further strengthen the company’s human rights compliance program. It claims the company has “opened 19 investigations into allegations of potential product mis...

Paragon Solutions, an Israeli commercial spyware vendor linked to the surveillance of European journalists and civil society members has set up shop in the EU’s most powerful country: Germany.

Twenty-two governments, including those of sixteen EU member states, have signed a Code of Practice outlining political commitments and recommendations to tackle the irresponsible use of commercial hacking tools, including spyware. The US confirmed only yesterday its willingness to sign the Code – several days after most other participating countries had done so – in a move that will undoubtedly inject greater geopolitical interest into the initiative.

Danny Mekić, an Amsterdam-based PhD researcher, was studying a proposed European law meant to combat child sexual abuse when he came across a rather odd discovery. All of a sudden, he started seeing ads on X, formerly Twitter, that featured young girls and sinister-looking men against a dark background, set to an eerie soundtrack.

This fall, more than 15,000 cameras will monitor soccer fans across eight stadiums and on the streets of Doha during the 2022 World Cup, an event expected to attract more than 1 million football fans from around the globe.
“What you see here is the future of stadium operations,” the organizers’ chief technology officer, Niyas Abdulrahiman, proudly told AFP in August. “A new standard, a new trend in venue operations, this is our contribution from Qatar ...

Wired reports on how Qatar will be using an unprecedented level of surveillance at the World Cup.

Paragon Solutions, the Israeli company behind Graphite spyware, appears to be active in more EU countries than it has been previously known, according to a new report published today.

Ein Mord, ein Abhörskandal, Klagen gegen missliebige Berichterstattung: Griechenland belegt auf der Rangliste der Pressefreiheit den niedrigsten Platz aller EU-Staaten. Wie griechische Journalisten damit leben - und arbeiten.

Die Witwe Statha Karaivaz geht fast nie an den Ort, an dem ihr Mann erschossen wurde. Es schaudert sie bis heute. Jetzt steht hier eine Gedenktafel aus schwarzem Stein. Es war Freitagnachmittag, der 9. April 2021, als eine Nachbarin anrief: Im Viertel gebe es eine Schieß...

Σε μία αποκλειστική για την Ελλάδα συνέντευξη, ο Ρον Ντίμπερτ, διευθυντής και συνιδρυτής του Citizen Lab του Τορόντο –που βεβαίωσε ότι το κινητό του Θανάση Κουκάκη είχε μολυνθεί με το Predator– μιλά εφ' όλης της ύλης.

'If you think it's important as a country for sovereignty reasons to have the option of using your own home-grown services, then you can't drive them off shore with bad laws.'

For more than two decades, the Danish People’s Party ran on an unapologetically anti-immigration, populist platform, pushing Danish politics to the right by rejecting multiculturalism and opposing the transfer of sovereignty to Brussels. Today, the DPP faces its own challenge from the right.

Ένας Έλληνας που ζει στις Βρυξέλλες και οργανώνει ξεναγήσεις στην γειτονιά των ευρωπαϊκών λόμπι, μας εξηγεί τα βασικά για τη σχέση ΕΕ και οργανωμένων συμφερόντων.