Military, Security & Surveillance

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

In May 2022, Boeing announced it would be moving its headquarters out of Chicago after a city investigation and a successful direct-action campaign organized by “Boeing Arms Genocide,” a Black-led, youth activist group. Just weeks prior, the organizers also succeeded in blocking the company from getting a $2 million tax break from the city. 55% of Boeing’s revenue comes from weapons sales. Read More

Three months after Russia invaded Ukraine, the winner and losers are apparent. The losers are civilians in Ukraine and soldiers on both sides of the conflict, while the winners are weapons manufacturers like BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Technologies and Rheinmetall. Read More