Executive at Swiss Tech Company Said to Operate Secret Surveillance Operation (bloomberg.com) 10
The co-founder of a company that has been trusted by technology giants including Google and Twitter to deliver sensitive passwords to millions of their customers also operated a service that ultimately helped governments secretly surveil and track mobile phones, Bloomberg reported Monday, citing former employees and clients. From the report: Since it started in 2013, Mitto AG has established itself as a provider of automated text messages for such things as sales promotions, appointment reminders and security codes needed to log in to online accounts, telling customers that text messages are more likely to be read and engaged with than emails as part of their marketing efforts. Mitto, a closely held company with headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, has grown its business by establishing relationships with telecom operators in more than 100 countries. It has brokered deals that gave it the ability to deliver text messages to billions of phones in most corners of the world, including countries that are otherwise difficult for Western companies to penetrate, such as Iran and Afghanistan. Mitto has attracted major technology giants as customers, including Google, Twitter, WhatsApp, Microsoft's LinkedIn and messaging app Telegram, in addition to China's TikTok, Tencent and Alibaba, according to Mitto documents and former employees.
But a Bloomberg News investigation, carried out in collaboration with the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, indicates that the company's co-founder and chief operating officer, Ilja Gorelik, was also providing another service: selling access to Mitto's networks to secretly locate people via their mobile phones. That Mitto's networks were also being used for surveillance work wasn't shared with the company's technology clients or the mobile operators Mitto works with to spread its text messages and other communications, according to four former Mitto employees. The existence of the alternate service was known only to a small number of people within the company, these people said. Gorelik sold the service to surveillance-technology companies which in turn contracted with government agencies, according to the employees.
But a Bloomberg News investigation, carried out in collaboration with the London-based Bureau of Investigative Journalism, indicates that the company's co-founder and chief operating officer, Ilja Gorelik, was also providing another service: selling access to Mitto's networks to secretly locate people via their mobile phones. That Mitto's networks were also being used for surveillance work wasn't shared with the company's technology clients or the mobile operators Mitto works with to spread its text messages and other communications, according to four former Mitto employees. The existence of the alternate service was known only to a small number of people within the company, these people said. Gorelik sold the service to surveillance-technology companies which in turn contracted with government agencies, according to the employees.
Let's not trust the Swiss (Score:1, Insightful)
The Swiss all but ended their banking secrecy (at the behest of the US government), and the Swiss crypto AG turned out to be a complete sell-out to the US government, and now these Swiss guys turn out to be stooges for the US government.
You'd say at some point we'd get the hint, don't you?
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In at least one instance, a phone number associated with a senior U.S. State Department official was targeted in 2019 for surveillance through the use of Mitto's systems, [...]
You think that the executive branch of the US government was spying on the executive branch of the US government? That would be pretty big news if true.
Hey Guys (Score:2)
Re: Hey Guys (Score:2)
GDPR? (Score:3)
I suspect that Switzerland will have an equivalent (Switzerland isn't in the EU, but tends to follow it on issues like this) and this will prove to be illegal under that. Here's hoping so, and that the guy gets locked up for it.
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Not yet but soon. The next revision of the Swiss Data Protection laws is basically establishment of an GDPR equivalent. I think this will become effective in 2022. I am not sure what current Swiss Data Protection laws say. Anyways, as a first offender he will probably get probation. Which is a real pity.
Similar stuff has happened before... (Score:2)
... with the US Government running the operation behind the curtains.
A Swiss company, Crypto AG [washingtonpost.com] ostensibly sold secure encryption communication devices to countries that didn't have their own NSA-equivalent to make it themselves.
The company was actually secretly owned by a CIA - West German partnership, and sold crackable encryption to customers of interest to those two agencies.
Continuously, from 1970 until 2018.
(Yes, the Washington Post article is behind a paywall - clear your washingtonpost.com cookies f