The UAE’s secret hacking team of U.S. mercenaries
Reading this article made me really frustrated. As an individual I can't do much about government sanctioned surveillance but at least I'd have hoped that people such as Stroud that worked for US intelligence would have a stronger moral compass than what the article describes.<p>She was comfortable targeting human rights activists (such as Ahmed Mansoor who are working hard to make a positive change in the world) on behalf of a country with a horrible track record of human rights / etc. But she felt "sick to her stomach" when these targeted individuals were US citizens? How can she justify that citizenship is the differentiator between what's right and wrong?<p><i>> Stroud said her background as an intelligence operative made her comfortable with human rights targets as long as they weren’t Americans.</i><p><i>> Prominent Emirati activist Ahmed Mansoor, given the code name Egret, was another target, former Raven operatives say. For years, Mansoor publicly criticized the country’s war in Yemen, treatment of migrant workers and detention of political opponents.</i><p><i>> Mansoor was convicted in a secret trial in 2017 of damaging the country’s unity and sentenced to 10 years in jail. He is now held in solitary confinement, his health declining, a person familiar with the matter said.</i><p><i>> She found the work exhilarating. “It was incredible because there weren’t these limitations like there was at the NSA. There wasn’t that bullshit red tape,” she said. “I feel like we did a lot of good work on counterterrorism.”</i><p><i>> “I was sick to my stomach,” she said. “It kind of hit me at that macro level realizing there was a whole category for U.S. persons on this program.”</i>