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Crofton Black

@cr0ft0n.bsky.social

Research consultant. Senior reporter @lighthousereports.com. PhD medieval philosophy @warburginstitute.bsky.social. 📚 Negative Publicity (2016) | CIA Torture Unredacted (2019) | Cosmopolemos (coming 2025). www.crofton.black

Posts Replies Media

Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Story, film and audio documentary links getting added here across this week www.lighthousereports.com/investigatio...

lighthousereports.com

Surveillance Secrets

Trove of surveillance data challenges what we thought we knew about location tracking tools, who they target and how far they have spread

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

& foundational partners @papertrailmedia.de esp @bastianobermayer.bsky.social @vonelisa.bsky.social @rettermaria.bsky.social @hmnzngr.bsky.social @leahruschka.bsky.social

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

This investigation would not have been possible without @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social who got the initial scoop & colleagues @emmanfre.bsky.social @orariccardo.bsky.social @daniel-howden.bsky.social

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

And it was also a surprise to be able to dig into what many people have long suspected, previously unproven, which was how this type of govt-grade software ended up being used for corporate & private interests

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Maybe people are getting inured to tales of hostile tracking by authoritarian governments. But it was a surprise to us to find the Vatican aka "Pope City" looming large in here as a surveillance tech consumer, via the good offices of a British corporate intel firm

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

This is real in-the-wild targeting data from First Wap and it extends across a mindblowing range of targets www.motherjones.com/politics/202...

motherjones.com

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.

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

We've seen SS7 location tracking data before. But often what's recorded is thwarted efforts, things that got caught by firewalls. Not this time.

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

Why this happened: last year my colleague @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social stumbled across a trove of data from then-unknown surveillance company First Wap. A big trove of data. 1.5 million rows in fact

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Crofton Black @cr0ft0n.bsky.social · 15/10/2025

People often ask what it's like behind the scenes at the world's top spy tech trade fair, ISS World. Turns out it's like this bsky.app/profile/ligh...

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