Julian Assange is tracking the movements of 19 spyware contractors

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The latest installment of Wikileaks came with a surprise: the organization is going on the offensive. Assange has announced something called the Wikileaks Counterintelligence Unit, a project to actively surveil various surveillance contractors to provide a rare view into their business dealings — in Assange's words, "tracking the trackers."

The inaugural release zeroes in on 19 different contractors as they travel visit countries like Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Spain, and Brazil. The location data displays only a time stamp and a country for each entry, but occasionally displays the message, "phone is currently not logged into the network," indicating the data likely comes from some kind of cell-tracking service. The contractors in question work for Western companies like Gamma International, designer of the infamous FinFisher spyware tool — and as with previous Wikileaks releases marked as "Spy Files," readers will also find marketing brochures for surveillance products to intercept and monitor web traffic.

By looking at the movements of these companies' employees, Wikileaks hopes to reveal who they're selling software to, and what that software might have been used for. Speaking to the Sydney Morning Herald, Assange described the group's larger goal as, "to counter threats against investigative journalism and the public's right to know."

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/4/4695652/julian-assange-is-tracking-the-movements-of-19-spyware-contractors

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1. Wikileaks Release: Spy Files 3

Today, Wednesday 4 September 2013 at 1600 UTC, WikiLeaks released 'Spy Files #3' – 249 documents from 92 global intelligence contractors. These documents reveal how, as the intelligence world has privatised, US, EU and developing world intelligence agencies have rushed into spending millions on next-generation mass surveillance technology to target communities, groups and whole populations.

WikiLeaks' publisher Julian Assange stated: "WikiLeaks' Spy Files #3 is part of our ongoing commitment to shining a light on the secretive mass surveillance industry. This publication doubles the WikiLeaks Spy Files database. The WikiLeaks Spy Files form a valuable resource for journalists and citizens alike, detailing and explaining how secretive state intelligence agencies are merging with the corporate world in their bid to harvest all human electronic communication."

WikiLeaks' Counter Intelligence Unit has been tracking the trackers. The WLCIU has collected data on the movements of key players in the surveillance contractor industry, including senior employees of Gamma, Hacking Team and others as they travel through Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Brazil, Spain, Mexico and other countries.

Julian Assange, WikiLeaks' publisher, stated: "The WikiLeaks Counter Intelligence Unit operates to defend WikiLeaks' assets, staff and sources, and, more broadly, to know."

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/WO1309/S00097/wikileaks-release-spy-files-3.htm

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2. Does Britain know there a espionage agency operating

from the bedroom of the Ecuadorian embassy.