Как выследили Аятоллу и как выследят Путина | Диктатуры и технологии (English subtitles) @Max_Katz

As the war widens across the Middle East, Israeli intelligence is lifting the veil off all sorts of wondrous things.

One particular revelation is as natural as it is shocking.

It turns out that the Mossad hacked Tehran’s traffic cameras and monitored movement patterns to plot the operation to decapitate the regime’s leadership.

But this isn’t unique to Iran really.

This story could’ve easily come from Russia as well.

One thing the overwhelming majority of the 20th- and 21st-century dictatorships have in common is the religious faith they put in technological progress.

They believe that political institutions, human rights, freedoms, anti-corruption activity, and protected competition all belong to the horse-riding era.

Instead, they’re gung-ho about solving all of their problems by purchasing and designing all kinds of gadgetry.

All of the public and political woes can ostensibly be fixed technologically.

Why would we want to reform our law enforcement and intelligence agencies?

Why would we worry about the social calamities, the crime rate predictors, and those who’ll come back from the battlefield and gang up against the public?

We have facial recognition security cameras.

We’ll have bunches of these things dangling from every street corner in Moscow, and nobody will ever slip unnoticed.

Regardless of the efficiency of our PDs, the entire Moscow— that’s all we care about is being surveilled day and night.

We needn’t be worried about the public sentiment or potential mass protests.

We needn’t be afraid of a potential elite coup plot as long as the entire nation, from janitors to oligarchs, is being closely watched by our digital Gulag.

Our digital Stasi will be collecting and aggregating all sorts of data on every single individual.

Every online message, every hotel booking, every bus ride, every purchase of a chewing gum stick, all of the online views and liked videos.

People’s movements, hang-outs, photos, and conversations over dinner.

We’ll ferret out everything about a potentially dangerous individual as soon as they start thinking bad stuff.

It doesn’t matter if our regime defies the will of the public as long as our surveillance officers control everyone and everything.

Nobody will be able to hatch a plot as long as we can peek into their closets.

But time and again, the cutting- edge 21st-century tech wielded by a regime that resembles a primitive ancient despotism proves to be a dangerous thing to dally with.

Incompetence and corruption are a dangerous combo already.

But once you throw some robotic devices into the mix, these robots will soon rise against you.

This will be the topic of our today’s episode.

But before we roll, as always, click the link below for our list of options to bypass the online bans in Russia.

We’ve added a new rather complex yet efficient solution.

Give it a shot.

IN A CHOKEHOLD We know for a fact that any data on the Russian citizens the Russian government is collecting immediately enters a free market.

Banking details, air travel histories, official residence addresses, phone numbers, cars, border crossings, property, and people’s I.D.’s—

all of it can be purchased through a Telegram bought for chump change.

The real-time data, security camera feeds, itemized phone call lists, geolocations, card transactions tied to specific locations, flights and train rides booked— these details can be bought for merely hundreds of dollars.

A few hundred dollars can buy one a level of access to anyone’s data that even the FSB isn’t allowed to have without a court order.

The entire surveillance toolset the government has been putting together for its own gains is now publicly available.

The corrupt and incompetent government has amassed a gargantuan bulk of data.

Technology has handled it.

But no amount of technology will ever help them retain it in their hands.

We’ve already seen it in action.

Alexei Navalny and his team along with Christo Grozev exposed a highly classified group of individuals who’d been stalking him for years in a bid to poison him.

On one hand, it may look like a perfect investigation bordering on sci-fi.

On the other hand, at the core of it is a simple trick.

Scour the travel histories for the flights Navalny was on over the course of the years and identify the recurring name matches—and voila.

Given the widespread availability of the data, it doesn’t take Einstein’s nephew to conduct an “investigation” that may appear to be something only a handful of intelligence agencies can successfully carry out.

You don’t need to hack into something or hire a team of agents.

Instead, you just assume that the poisoners may have been stalking you for years, and then corruption will do the trick.

You’ll have access to the flight histories, residence addresses, phone numbers, employment details, and property of the nation’s most classified undercover assassins.

The same is true of the Russian saboteurs in Europe whose sequential passport numbers.

Remember the story where multiple Russian spies blew their cover because of the sequential numbers of the passports they held?

The same goes for Petrov and Boshirov and all sorts of other Russian intelligence-led plots.

The investigations aren’t based on espionage capabilities.

You don’t need to hire a mole to infiltrate the FSB and have him rise through the ranks to access the classified information you’re looking for.

Everything comes at a highly affordable price tag.

As we realize how far one can go having a PC, access to Telegram and Tor, and $1,000 in crypto currency, it’s easy to extrapolate it onto the actual intelligence capabilities.

The Mossad accessed the Iranian surveillance system.

That’s a fact.

Now, will you doubt if the CIA or the SBU have access to the Russian system?

Seeing as a private individual can purchase the camera feeds, wouldn’t you say folks in Kyiv and at Langley have round-the-clock live access to them?

Is there any doubt that the Tor data that’s available online has already been purchased by the well- established intelligence agencies and large private security firms in bulk?

They may know the details of the meeting venues, their attendees, their addresses, their families, their problems and debts, potential pressure points and weak spots, the color of their walls, and the names of their pets.

Professionals have access to all of this information.

Do you remember the hilarious story where the government recommended that boots on the ground avoid using MAX?

There’s nothing mind-blowing about it.

Even the Russian government operatives know that any data that’s available to a mid-rank Russian intelligence officer will instantly be used by a Ukrainian sergeant.

So, you better stick with Telegram.

If the FSB has a terminal allowing them to enable a person of interest’s mic without them knowing, take a screenshot, and share the geolocation, the same buttons will be available to Liechtenstein’s intelligence as well.

In fact, to anyone who has a stake in it and slightly more money than pocket change.

It may sound like a perfect tech solution: force the entire nation to download spyware.

Everyone’s lives will be utterly transparent and strangled in the government’s chokehold.

But the caveat is that it’s not the government but any government.

And the Russian government itself will find itself monitored by foreign forces.

Given the above, it’s funny how the Russian government that made itself completely transparent and vulnerable is trying to be all conspiratorial.

They exhibit almost childish gullibility as they build identical offices while everyone entering them is giving away their data automatically.

Journalists even found out about the firms where Putin is looking to hire nannies for his younger kids.

Meanwhile, he’s repainting the office interiors. The name’s Bond. Brooke Bond.

We’ll give you a specific example after a brief commercial.

AD

Let’s keep rolling. So, the cyber-gulag the Russian government was intending to use against the dissenting individuals is now working against them.

Remember a series of Ukraine’s operations to assassinate the Russian generals in Moscow?

Ukraine’s intelligence agencies didn’t have to blow up residential buildings or flatten entire neighborhoods.

Far from it, a deadly scooter would explode at the feet of their target the moment that target showed up.

Not an old lady, not a kid, not a dog, or any other random victim. It was the general.

The acts of sabotage were anything but random. They weren’t striking public spaces.

They could only be a success if Ukraine’s intelligence agencies knew everything about the highest-profile Russian generals, including their residence addresses, their schedules, guards, or unguarded outings.

How did they find it all out?

The same way the FSB I.D.’s the participants of protest rallies.

Leaked databases, Moscow CCTV cameras, phone geolocations, and bugged phone conversations.

In fact, they have access to so much information—importantly, courtesy of the Russian government—they can blow up a general not just in a specific location but at the specific time he turns up there.

The same generals take part in the meeting chaired by Putin as well as the General Staff briefings.

They’re the ones visiting the offices that are being so diligently camouflaged.

!Alarming Takeaway!

At this point, we arrive at the conclusion whose legitimacy the Iranian regime has already fallen victim to—and the Russian one is about to.

Technology alone can’t solve any problems. If yours is a robust political system with effective institutions, competition, leadership changes, the rule of law, and a respect for human rights, the technology will serve to reinforce your fortes.

It’ll help you become more efficient and productive and facilitate your operations.

It’ll help your police catch the bad guys.

Your relevant agencies will be more efficiently planning the road network and managing the traffic.

The same goes for fairer and well-coordinated taxation and welfare payments.

By amassing large amounts of data, you can tackle the epidemics, including child obesity, way more efficiently.

You can track the effects of new legislative acts and recalibrate them.

When the bulk of data is handled by the elected politicians and the reasonable professional bureaucrats, they’ll be highly beneficial to both the robust political system and the public.

But whenever these tools are handled by the system steeped in corruption, the one that values loyalties over competence, where everyone is looting the things they’re supposed to take care of, it only serves to cement corruption.

An IRGC general is milking an oil refinery.

A law enforcement major is milking a restaurant. A police captain is milking a lemonade stand.

A lieutenant has access to the databases and camera feeds.

He’ll have a diverse clientele. Those include a jealous husband, the Mossad, and the Mossad impersonating a jealous husband.

The government and its security agencies aren’t all staffed with generals.

99% of them are regular operatives, often scraping by to make ends meet.

The lead analyst at the firm that was in charge of the e-draft notice register that had all sorts of personal details was making 100,000 rubles a month.

How much will he charge, including the government of Tuvalu, for leaking everything he has access to? Not a lot, I’d say.

The lead analyst with the MoD’s most important contractor is making 100K rubles.

A junior FSB officer is pocketing 80K-ish a month.

These guys know everything about everyone.

They are seeing the swanky residences and the luxury vehicles owned by their higher-ups and generals. They want them, too.

But the billions of rubles skimmed by the government officials can’t be divvied up fairly.

Someone’s sole asset is the data.

These guys will be offering them at a modest price tag, especially by the standards of the warring countries’ expenses.

How much would one have to shell out to be able to surveil and then assassinate the highest-flown general in the middle of the enemy’s capital city?

100s of 1,000s of bucks? Maybe millions?

Is it even on sale, in the first place? It must cost one fortunes.

But if the data regarding the general and his movement patterns is handled by the lowest-paid employees within an extremely corrupt regime, it may only cost you 100s of bucks.

It turns out that the very technology the regime has introduced to protect itself becomes its undoing.

Tehran’s surveillance system was designed to track down the protesters who then could be hanged.

It wasn’t intended to offer the Mossad a virtual sightseeing tour.

But that’s precisely the way it worked.

The MAX messaging app boils down to total control and censorship.

It’s not intended as either a pathfinder or a scope to track down the generals, Cabinet ministers, security officials, or the president.

But that’s how it’ll inevitably play out.

The folks who sold Putin on the idea of MAX only did so to siphon off billions of dollars earmarked for the app’s development and implementation.

That’s the reason they’re serving the system and devising new surveillance tools.

But those who missed out on the billions of rubles but are now handling the surveillance tools understandably seek to make some money off them.

There are 100s of 1,000s of those. They can’t be controlled.

As you’re making our citizens more transparent, you’re bolstering your own transparency, including for your military adversaries.

Your enemy is as serious, motivated, and technologically advanced as Israel.

A glass screw poses a huge threat if wielded by a fool.

Wielded by a corrupt regime, a fancy tech solution intended to bust a disgruntled student will help an enemy missile hit their target sooner or later.

Good luck to the present-day dictators!

See you tomorrow!