Military, Security & Surveillance

A new BBC documentary charges Spear Operations Group, a company previously incorporated in the U.S. state of Delaware, with training Yemeni forces to conduct assassinations on behalf of the government of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). These forces allegedly later recruited members of Al Qaeda to work for them. Read More

Elbit Systems, a major arms manufacturer which supplies Israel’s military, has multiple factories in the UK. Palestine Action, an activist group, has targeted these facilities together with affiliated businesses such as the recruitment agency iO Associates, to protest Israel’s war on Gaza. After multiple protests against iO, the recruiter announced it would cut ties with Elbit Systems in December 2023. Read More

Three Iraqi men who brought a lawsuit against military contractor CACI for torturing them at the U.S. military-run Abu Ghraib prison will be allowed to take the case to trial after a court in Virginia denied an 18th attempt by the company to get the case dismissed. Read More

On a secure military base in Tecamachalco, a Mexico City suburb, lies the country’s only gun shop. Prospective customers must fill out multiple forms before being allowed to enter and view weapons locked in glass cases. Advertising the store is illegal – so most Mexicans remain ignorant of its existence. Read More

Twitter, the social media company, quietly assisted Pentagon officials involved in putting a positive spin on the U.S. wars in the Middle East, according to new research into the Twitter Files, a tranche of internal company data provided to selected members of the media by CEO Elon Musk. Read More

Morgan Simon, a social justice activist, wrote several articles about how CoreCivic, which operates prisons and immigration detention centres, was profiting off the policy of the Trump administration of separating migrant children from their parents. CoreCivic sued Simon for $60 million but a U.S. judge in California ruled in Simon’s favor. Read More

On April 14, 2022, the UK government signed a £20 million deal with the Rwandan government to accept asylum seekers deported from the UK. Such deportations are typically conducted under contract with charter airlines. Under pressure from human rights groups, many airlines refused to take the contract. Read More

Six rockets landed on Ugimba village in Intan Jaya regency of West Papua, Indonesia, early on a January morning in 2020. Locals found unexploded parts that were stamped with the number FZ-68 so they took pictures to share with international activists who circulated them on Twitter requesting help. Read More

Undercover Global (UC Global), a now defunct private military contractor, is at the center of a lawsuit brought by a group of journalists and lawyers against the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency for allegedly spying on them when they met with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at Ecuador’s embassy in London. Read More

Citizen Lab, a research group at the University of Toronto that studies digital threats to civil society, discovered that at least 65 people linked to the Catalan pro-independence movement were targeted or infected with Pegasus spyware made by the NSO Group between 2017-2020. This scandal has led to the firing of Paz Esteban, Spain’s spy chief. Read More