For our third installment of our Vaporstate series, @alixdunn.com spoke with two phenomenal journalists from @lighthousereports.com: @daniel-howden.bsky.social and @bearamalhosilva.bsky.social about their months-long investigation into TBI and Oracle. They’ve got the goods. Check it out:

1/Stop everything and read/watch/bookmark this massive investigation between @motherjones.com @lighthousereports.com Le Monde, Der Spiegel, Paper Trail Media a vast global surveillance empire used to target politicians, journalists, tech CEOs, and... Jared Leto. ow.ly/2LUF50Xb7KE

On a Saturday night I stumbled across something on the internet that made me feel like ****** my pants. A giant dataset of real surveillance operations targeting 1000s of people across nearly every country. Unraveling it and the mysterious company behind it has consumed 1.5 years of my life

Legendary work from @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social. He and a team uncovered a trove of data from a surveillance firm — location data from thousands of phone numbers from nearly every country on Earth. The firm had been tracking everyone from Erik Prince to journalists to Jared Leto.

The surveillance empire that tracked world leaders, a Vatican enemy, and maybe you www.motherjones.com/politics/202... A stunning investigation by @lighthousereports.com of what I call "despotism as a service"👇

🧵What’s the biggest lie the surveillance industry tells? That they only sell to legal clients. That there are red lines. But what do these companies say when they think nobody is watching? We went undercover to find out

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...

Revealed: How Tony Blair is lobbying on behalf of tech billionaire Larry Ellison We expose former PM’s unprecedented influence over the UK govt & how this is shaped by the interests of his Institute’s largest donor & one of the world’s richest men www.newstatesman.com/politics/202... Thread

🔴 Tony Blair's ties to Larry Ellison should disqualify him from any role in Gaza - or in Britain's tech future. New by me and @daniel-howden.bsky.social on Democracy for Sale and @lighthousereports.com democracyforsale.substack.com/p/tony-blair...

Breaking ‘shouldn’t happen to white people’ immigration news. Canadian actress detained by ICE. Follows ridiculous blow up in Uk over couple fined for stowaway. No mention of non white detainees or context on racist dragnet catching human whitebait www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Norway’s criminal justice system ranks as one of the most impartial in the world. Yet with partner NRK, we found that people are on trial not only for what they may have done, but for who they are.

What is happening at Europe's borders, and how can human rights be protected? Come to WORM Rotterdam on TUE 21 JAN 25 & join the De Dependance's Nuria Ribas Costa, @lhreports.bsky.social Klaas van Dijken, @gesanchez.bsky.social & local activists. 🕣19:30 📍Boomgaardstraat 71 Tickets: dedependance.eu

Across Europe college-educated migrants are locked out of the skilled workforce due to policy failures. @publico.pt & @lhreports.bsky.social reveal how Portugal mitigated brain waste, as well as the limits of this success

The Premium Times reveals how the US government program on GMOs in Nigeria steamrolled resistance from health+environmental advocates. We discovered derogatory profiles of Nigerians who raised concerns about GMOs, the activist Nnimmo Bassey + Labour Party candidate Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour among them.

The Rio Grande on the Texas-Mexico border has become a graveyard for migrants. In the latest episode of Backlight, we speak to @mdelbosque.bsky.social about the human toll of US border militarization and untold stories of those who drowned. 🎙️ Listen now: www.lighthousereports.com/investigatin...

A year ago, I pushed off with a kayak down the Rio Grande in the great company of Jesse Fuentes and @mdelbosque.bsky.social We entered the water from what used to be the park in Eagle Pass, Texas

Thinking today of Syrian friends & so many other amazing Syrians met over the last decade on the reporting trail. Hard to comprehend the scale of damage wrought by the despicable and belatedly deposed Assads

amazing work by my colleague @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social in a series that exposes the racism built into algorithms used by govt agencies and its real, human consequences.

Trying to follow closely what’s happening in Syria & Georgia where there’s a news lag. Twitter lists were brilliant for this, curious if Bsky can provide. Recommendations for follows v welcome

Serious impact in Sweden where the welfare agency has been called before parliament to answer questions over discriminatory algorithms used to profile benefits recipients www.svd.se/a/63VOxo/eft...

Come, work with us at @investigate-eu.bsky.social and help take investigative cross-border journalism to the next level. Apply now (until 6 December 2024) or share if you know someone who knows someone. Happy also to answer any questions. Link: www.investigate-europe.eu/en/opportuni...

Amazing work by @gabrielgeiger.bsky.social on the latest @lhreports.bsky.social suspicion machines investigation. This is a crazy tale of AI ethics washing: The welfare agency had been told that it's tool was crappy. It responded by making up a ludicrous fairness definition.

So we have a podcast, it’s good. The latest Backlight is about how to get sources to talk. The least I can do is get people to listen www.lighthousereports.com/how-to-get-s...

Secretive algorithms deployed in Sweden's vaunted welfare system cast suspicion on innocent women & migrants while ignoring men & the affluent. We reveal with @SvD how Sweden built this system then stonewalled journalists

How FOIA actually works, as opposed to how it’s meant to work, in model Sweden

I do a lot of FOIA and I’m used to stonewalling. But Sweden surprised me. After 3 years of telling me no, a high level official at Sweden’s welfare agency Försäkringskassan accidentally left me on cc, writing “Now we must hope that we are done with him.”

The 2024 class of GIJN Board members are: 🇧🇷 @guilherme-https://twp.ai/1IXE2Y 🇺🇸 @branthouston.bsky.social 🇳🇱 @daniel-howden.bsky.social 🇷🇴 @paulradu.bsky.social 🇿🇦 Rana Sabbagh 🇧🇫 Elza Sandrine Sawadogo 🇺🇸 Marina Walker Guevara Learn more about the results: gijn.org/stories/gij...

Delighted to be joining some incredible journalists on the board of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (hopefully soon to join Bluesky). It’s going to be an incredibly intense period for the community doing this work gijn.org

Daily life in Kinshasa's tallest residential tower, the "Presidential Galeries", built in the 1970s by Mobutu with luxurious marble floors and escalators. My film will be screened at the beautiful Dakar biennale on Nov 30.

Newsletter from me on the democratic implications of Labour's desperation for Big Tech investment, the chilling effects of message discipline, and why the UK needs a progressive tech movement (clue: it's to balance out the fascists) buttondown.com/justenoughin...

Hello Bluesky friends! We'll be posting here more often going forward In the meantime, sharing a starter pack of current/former staff and contributors to Lighthouse Reports investigations. Will update as we go! go.bsky.app/J6a68Yg

Hey y'all! No time like the present to head to BlueSky. 🕊️ On freedom, I wrote for Project Syndicate about how the EU must now shore up its independence - and how Teresa Ribera, the new competition commissioner, can make it possible by breaking up big tech: www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/b...

Breaking up with Twitter hasn’t been easy. 15yrs of fascination with direct access to almost everyone worth following on everything that interests me. Holding on recently I’d bypassed the algorithm using lists to curate a defence against waves of shit. So now we start again