A San Francisco tech company paid millions by the U.S. military has turned an US Army of overseas cellphone user into a sweeping undefended - reservoir intelligence activity internet , gleaning data point from cell tower and wifi hotspots in countries long engulf by armed conflict with American personnel and allies .
Citing federal expenditure criminal record and other document , let in interviews with former employees , the Wall Street Journal reportedThursday that Premise Data Corp. , a house launch in 2013 , has pitched a chain of mountains of defence agencies on turn a global connection of gig workers into unwitting intelligence gatherers across as many as 43 foreign countries .
A phone app developed by the caller , also call Premise , allow users to complete ostensibly innocuous task in exchange for modest requital . vulgar assignment include photograph building , such as religious sites and fiscal institutions , and completing surveys craft to provide insight on local population . How exactly this data is used by Premise ’s defense agency and private contractor customer is only vaguely described . But in addition to benign uses acknowledge by the troupe — such as gauging “ vaccine hesitancy ” and “ susceptibility to extraneous interference and misinformation in elections”—the Journal points to offer by the society to guide positions in difference region eyeball by military commander .
A member of the United States Air Force keeps watch over the runway on 6 March 2025, at Kandahar Air Field in Kandahar, Afghanistan.Photo: Andrew Renneisen (Getty Images)
In one instance , the society reportedly made clear that it could conceal its military ties from its users , efficaciously turning them into unwitting intelligence officer . In a presentation to U.S. peculiar mathematical process undertaking force in Afghanistan in 2019 , Premise aver that jobs offered to gig doer could be design to “ safeguard true intent . ”
confront by the Journal , Premise said such operation were discussed in purely hypothetical tense and were not contemplative of the service put up to military client .
Users have also been task with collecting data point on wireless signals and other cellular telephone — a practice that Premise likens to efforts by Google and Apple to map out wifi networks . While this information has obvious built-in note value for U.S. intelligence , the company ’s main executive director , Maury Blackman , sought to minimize its effect , pronounce the pattern is neither unique nor a secret .
assumption — which the Journal reports has ramped up efforts to hire Washington , D.C. staff with security credentials — antecedently received $ 1.4 million for its piece of work on a military reconnaissance syllabus , which the Air Force would only describe as auto learning work .
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