Daniel Howden
@daniel_howden
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Founder, Director @LHReports, focus on collaborative journalism, previously @TheEconomist @Independent @RefugeesDeeply Fellow @RefugeeStudies
Amsterdam
Joined November 2009
No one familiar with Paul Kagame's preferred methods will be surprised to learn Rwanda was a client of First Wap, a company which operated for years quietly under the radar, selling phone tracking technology.
motherjones.com
Inside the hidden world of First Wap, whose untraceable tech has targeted politicians, journalists, celebrities, and activists around the globe.
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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
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So there’s a surveillance company you’ve never heard of working in almost every country in the world. Our team @LHreports got the full story
🧵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
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Excellent thread that helps place the push for digital IDs in the context of corruption and totalitarianism
And after the government combines your personal, banking, and voting data under a single digital ID, it will add social media and vaccine information. Same with Real ID in the US. The Censorship Industrial Complex was dress rehearsal for digital ID.
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INSIDE THE TONY BLAIR INSTITUTE with @LHreports, @PeterKGeoghegan and @maybulman Since 2021, Larry Ellison’s personal foundation – the Larry Ellison Foundation – has donated or pledged at least £257m to the Tony Blair Institute, making it a think tank like no other in the UK.
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Glad to have got this over the line How Tony Blair is lobbying on behalf of Big Tech His Institute (TBI) is pushing AI solutionism on Starmer’s govt, which is embracing it w open arms, w TBI donor & tech billionaire Larry Ellison set to reap the benefits https://t.co/u3xQR9aUFi
newstatesman.com
Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?
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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 https://t.co/yVhnyrpmqI Thread
newstatesman.com
Who really benefits from the former PM’s tech evangelism?
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One of the most important stories we've covered. Extraordinary detail in this thread
When Assad’s security state collapsed, locked doors opened, spilling decades of secrets. Among them: 100s of stolen children, hidden in orphanages & used to blackmail parents. We’ve done the deepest dive yet into this cruel system. Here’s what we found 🧵 https://t.co/ZZJnqNWN6t
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It was economist Adam Smith who warned of an “invisible hand” manipulating rules and building monopolies in the 18thC. He’d recognise the phenomenon in the way that Big Tech exercises its power today
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The case of Alaa Hamoudi was one of the first I investigated as an OSI & investigative journalist with @LHreports. The chain of evidence we gathered was unprecedented, with most parts of Alaa's experience corroborated by digital evidence or third-party testimonies.
Big news! The EU Court of Justice has assigned our Hamoudi v. Frontex appeal to its Grand Chamber! It will hold a hearing on the groundbreaking damages claim filed by Alaa Hamoudi following a 17-hour pushback operation by Frontex and the Hellenic Coast Guard on 28-29 April
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For @WIRED & @LHreports, I looked inside the European companies (and one UN agency) selling governments around the world software that claims to predict "risky" travelers using AI: https://t.co/r9ZWll6AZ5
wired.com
Behind the scenes, companies and governments are feeding a trove of data about international travelers into opaque AI tools that aim to predict who’s safe—and who’s a threat.
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An absolute MUST READ: our partners @SIRAJ_SYRIA were under heavy surveillance by the Assad regime for work we did together @LHreports. @MoBassiki showing what brave journalism in exile looks like
EXECLUSIVE: Documents Found After the Fall of Assad Show Syrian Intelligence Spying on @SIRAJ_SYRIA and our journalistic activities. 📍A file discovered at GID General Intelligence Directorate headquarters details an operation to investigate SIRAJ, a Syrian journalist collective
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EXECLUSIVE: Documents Found After the Fall of Assad Show Syrian Intelligence Spying on @SIRAJ_SYRIA and our journalistic activities. 📍A file discovered at GID General Intelligence Directorate headquarters details an operation to investigate SIRAJ, a Syrian journalist collective
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Proud to see our story on the EU financed deportation system in Turkey among @gijn investigators of the year in that country.
gijn.org
Investigative journalism in Turkey faces many challenges and obstacles, but there are remarkable reporters digging into untold stories.
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If European states want to help democracy flourish in Syria, they should allow resident refugees to come and go, at least over the next year. The more people go home, the stronger civil society will be. But you can't expect people to immediately take their kinds out of school...
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Estas são as histórias de Gianna, Tahir, Grabiela e Jairo - quatro entre milhares de imigrantes que vieram para Portugal com os seus cursos universitários na esperança de integrar o mercado de trabalho
publico.pt
Em Portugal, milhares de professores estrangeiros enfrentam obstáculos burocráticos para conseguir leccionar. Gianna Conceição, educadora brasileira, conta a sua luta para validar o seu diploma e...
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Across Europe college-educated migrants are locked out of the skilled workforce due to policy failures. @publico & @LHReports reveal how Portugal mitigated brain waste, as well as the limits of this success
publico.pt
Across Portugal, thousands of foreign teachers are trapped in a bureaucratic maze, suffering from ‘brain waste’ as they are barred from professional positions that go unfilled
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Pleased to see our in-depth investigation into the human cost of the military build up on the US Southern border getting broader attention, thanks @arelisrhdz for your reporting and partnership
A Washington Post investigation found there have been more migrant deaths at the southern border than the U.S. and Mexico have reported. @arelisrhdz joins @jdbalart to share more on the investigation's findings about the humanitarian crisis. https://t.co/uW9yGbawrM
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In today’s @washingtonpost & @El_Universal_Mx, the story of the >1K people who drowned in the Rio Grande, 2017-23. Together w/@LHreports, we collected, analyzed data for a year to show a ghastly portrait of the human costs of border policy in both nations. https://t.co/KVVtPCQ1s2
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Texas has become the blueprint for the militarization of the US-Mexico border. This politically-driven show of force has sent the Rio Grande death toll soaring. We reveal for first time the true human cost of this
lighthousereports.com
More women and children are drowning trying to reach the US as Texas and Mexico militarize the border. Record requests reveal the soaring death toll in the Rio Grande amid official undercounts.
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