Anomaly 6: Private spying firm targets global population with illegal spyware

A Washington DC-area Anomaly 6 firm is marketing illegal spy tech that can scrape an individual's most sensitive personal data by tracking their smartphone. Anomaly 6's activities amount to a globe-spanning criminal dragnet, the reach of which could well extend further than even that of the CIA and NSA. As we shall see, its founders are extremely wary of media attention, not least because they fear the "Legal basis" of their operations "Is unlikely to stand-up to scrutiny" given past successful court actions against state spying agencies, such as GCHQ and the NSA. The company, which was founded by a pair of US military intelligence veterans, surreptitiously embeds software development kits, or SDKs, in hundreds of popular smartphone and IoT apps, allowing it to track a user's movements and much more besides. One of the most unsettling Anomaly 6 files reviewed by The Grayzone is a case study, demonstrating the company's ability to track the "Movements of individuals in completely denied terrain." The firm identified 100,000 separate smartphone users who traveled to North Korea over a 14-month period, among them US citizens, "To show the value of our data" for both counterintelligence and source development purposes. According to Anomaly 6, the academic's trip posed security risks not because they were a spy, but because Chinese intelligence could employ similar spying tools to track their movements and thereby uncover "Potential secret negotiations between the US and North Korea." This, in turn, "Could create tensions quickly" with Beijing, the firm fretted. Reached by The Grayzone via email, the academic named as a "Person of interest" by Anomaly 6 insisted the spying firm got it all wrong. Other leaked files reveal Prevail is acting as a cutout, secretly marketing and selling Anomaly 6 services to state and non-state customers across the globe. To head off the public relations and legal damage that could come with exposure of Anomaly 6's spying program, Prevail explored schemes through which data protection laws could be dodged, including "Whether a government exemption could apply." As part of its damage control measures, Prevail contracted elite law firms like the London-based Cooley to advise them on whether and how Anomaly 6's activities "Would be defensible in a European court."