The New Jersey Drone Panic

Summary

The New Jersey Drone Panic: Unpacking the Mass Hysteria

Introduction

In this episode of The 404 Media Podcast, hosts Joseph Cox, Sam Cole, Emanuel Mayberg, and Jason Kebler delve into the recent drone sightings in New Jersey, exploring whether the ensuing panic is justified or merely a mass hysteria akin to previous incidents. The discussion provides a comprehensive analysis of the situation, drawing parallels with past events and examining the role of media and political figures in amplifying public fear.

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1. Surge in Drone Sightings in New Jersey

Jason Kebler initiates the conversation by outlining the recent spike in drone sightings across New Jersey. Residents have reported observing various drones—ranging from small to large sizes—with different lighting patterns moving swiftly through the night sky. These sightings mirror traditional Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP) reports.

“More than a week ago, residents of New Jersey started reporting seeing drones in the night sky... a very traditional, stereotypical UAP sighting.” [02:32]

The proliferation of videos on social media platforms like TikTok has further fueled public concern, drawing attention from lawmakers who are now demanding explanations from law enforcement agencies.

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2. Historical Context: Colorado 2019 Drone Sightings

To provide context, Jason references a similar incident from December 2019 in Colorado. At that time, numerous drone sightings initially caused alarm but were later attributed to commercial planes, hobby drones, agricultural drones, stars, and even SpaceX satellites.

“In December of 2019, in Colorado, there was a series of mystery drone sightings... the drones that they found were commercial planes or other passenger planes.” [04:34]

The Colorado episode concluded without any substantial findings, showcasing how initial panic often subsides once rational explanations emerge.

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3. Intersection of Drones and UFO/UAP Narratives

Joseph Cox highlights the overlap between drone sightings and UFO/UAP discussions, emphasizing how both phenomena often feed into each other, complicating public understanding.

“Jason, you wrote an article that put this panic into context. We're not here to debunk every single video... Your article actually demonstrates that as well.” [04:34]

Jason adds that many reported UFO sightings are later identified as drones or other explainable aerial objects, making it challenging to address each incident individually.

“A lot of things that are reported as UFOs end up being explainable drones.” [10:40]

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4. Political Amplification and Public Fear

The hosts discuss the role of political figures in escalating the situation. Notable politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Larry Hogan have made sensational claims linking the drone sightings to foreign entities or astronomical phenomena, furthering public anxiety.

“Marjorie Taylor Greene is threatening to shoot these drones down herself... Larry Hogan tweeted a photo that turned out to be stars in Orion's Belt.” [10:40]

Sam Cole remarks on the politicization of the issue, noting that conspiracy theories about government or foreign interference are more divisive than whimsical alien theories.

“People are using it as this way to kind of stoke fears about your own government, other governments.” [19:15]

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5. The Vicious Cycle of Reporting and Panic

Jason elaborates on how media coverage perpetuates the panic. Each new sighting triggers more reports and media attention, which in turn leads to more sightings—a self-perpetuating cycle that only breaks when public interest wanes or other news takes precedence.

“It's a no win clusterfuck for everyone except the attention seeking grifters within the government... It's not going to go away until there's some other news story to distract people.” [15:27]

“All of this has become a no win situation here.” [15:27]

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6. Reflections and Call for Rationality

Emanuel Mayberg and Sam Cole express their frustration with the irrational fear surrounding the drone sightings. They advocate for the public to remain calm and rely on verified information rather than sensationalist theories.

Emmanuel: “Keep your eyes on the road. Look at your beautiful family. Get back to work.”

Sam: “I would rather people speculate about aliens. It’s a much nicer conspiracy theory to have than like, it’s China or something.”

Jason shares personal anecdotes about the impact of the panic, including receiving anxious messages from family members worried about the drones.

“I have family members texting me, literally scared. And I'm just like, okay, maybe not so good.” [20:02]

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Conclusion

The hosts collectively underscore the importance of skepticism and critical thinking in the face of widespread panic. By drawing lessons from past incidents and highlighting the role of media and politics in exacerbating fears, The 404 Media Podcast encourages listeners to approach such events with a balanced perspective.

“It's nothing. It's not even a thing to talk about.” [17:36]

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Additional Discussion: Cellebrite and Phone Privacy

In a subsequent segment, the podcast shifts focus to discuss Cellebrite, a company known for unlocking mobile phones for law enforcement. Joseph Cox and Jason Kebler explore alarming reports from Amnesty International about Serbian authorities using Cellebrite's tools not just to extract data but to install malware on journalists' phones.

“They get the phone, they then use Celebrate to unlock it... then used that unlocked phone... to install very powerful malware.” [29:23]

The conversation delves into the implications of such misuse, the response from Cellebrite, and Google's role in mitigating the threat by removing malicious apps from affected devices.

“Cellebrite is not an active surveillance technology... Celebrate told me in an email, and then they sort of double down in a statement.” [34:43]

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Final Thoughts

The episode wraps up with a reminder of the importance of digital privacy and the ongoing challenges posed by technological advancements in surveillance. The hosts encourage listeners to stay informed and support ethical journalism.

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Notable Quotes:

• “The vast majority of the things that people have been freaking out about have been explained, can be explained.” — Jason Kebler [10:40]
• “It's a no win situation here.” — Jason Kebler [15:27]
• “Keep your eyes on the road. Look at your beautiful family. Get back to work.” — Emanuel Mayberg [20:23]

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Timestamp Highlights:

• 02:32 — Introduction to the New Jersey drone sightings.
• 04:34 — Comparison with Colorado 2019 drone incidents.
• 10:40 — Discussion on UFO/UAP and drone overlap.
• 15:27 — The cyclical nature of media reporting and panic.
• 20:02 — Personal impact of public fear.
• 29:23 — Introduction to the Cellebrite and phone malware issue.
• 34:43 — Cellebrite's and Google's responses to the malware reports.

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This comprehensive analysis by The 404 Media Podcast provides listeners with a nuanced understanding of the New Jersey drone panic, emphasizing the need for rational discourse in an era dominated by rapid information dissemination and sensationalism.

Transcript

[Jason Kebler]

This podcast is brought to you by the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The US and the world might be headed into uncharted territory, which means defending digital privacy is more important than ever. When you consider that Google search data can tell police if you looked up the address of an immigration attorney and online chat logs can reveal that you talked about an abortion, what was often benign data before could quickly become potentially criminal evidence now. For more than 30 years, the activists, technologists and attorneys of the Electronic Frontier foundation have worked to protect your privacy and your ability to control your personal data. Data that can reveal where you go, who you talk to, who you love, and what information you seek online. EFF def defends user privacy, free expression and innovation regardless of the obstacles. In these uncertain times, their work is more crucial than ever. Learn [e-mail] 404 Media support the Electronic Frontier foundation because in a world where your data can be used against you, defending digital freedom is defending yourself.

[Joseph Cox]

Hello and welcome to the 404 Media podcast where we bring you unparalleled access to hidden worlds, both online and IRL. 404 Media is a journalist founded company and needs your support. So subscribe. Go to 404 Media Co as well as bonus content every single week. Subscribers also get access to additional episodes where we respond to the best comments. Gain access to that content at 404 Media co. I'm your host Joseph and with me are the 404 Media co founders, Sam Cole. What's up? Emmanuel Mayberg.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Hello.

[Joseph Cox]

And Jason Kebler.

[Jason Kebler]

Hello. Good morning. Good afternoon.

[Joseph Cox]

Real quick bit of housekeeping. We have some new merch. Jason, do you want to tell people about that and stress that it's pre orders?

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, we talked about this I think last week, but it's up in the Shopify now. Some cool hoodies, a crew neck sweatshirt and two new T shirts. Sam, thank you for getting these. All designed by Ronan. What's Ronan's last name?

[Sam Cole]

Ronan Wood.

[Jason Kebler]

Ronan Wood. Fantastic work. Again, it's a pre order. You are not going to get it before Christmas, but you'll get it beginning of next year so you can go buy those. I think they're really cool. I can't wait to have them.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, I'm really looking forward to having the sweatshirt and the hoodie specifically. All right, let's get going. This is going to be a fun one, an interesting one. Jason wrote about the drones all over New Jersey. The headline is WTF is going on with the New Jersey Mystery Drones? Maybe mass panic over nothing. Let me just lay out sort of The. The backstory just a little bit. So more than a week ago, at this point, around a week ago at this point, residents of New Jersey started reporting seeing drones in the night sky. Sometimes they were small, sometimes they were large. Lots of different lights. They'd move very quick before darting away. Sort of a very traditional, stereotypical UAP sighting. There have been lawmakers demanding answers from US Law enforcement. I think, you know, even in Congress or something, right? Like grilling the head of agencies or senior officials for answers. More and more people are posting videos to social media of these apparent sightings. But it's become clear, and we'll go into this in a bit more detail, but it's become clear that many of these sightings are actually normal planes. People are even shining lasers at them. And the FBI has warned people, please do not shine a laser at a commercial jetliner. That's a really, really stupid idea. Jason, you wrote an article that put this panic into context. And to be clear, we're not here to debunk every single video that's been put on TikTok. That is almost a fool's errand at this point. And I think your article actually demonstrates that as well. So to go back, you bring up this recent historical example, which put this all into context. What happened in Colorado in 2019.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, so I just finished writing and filing, but we haven't published it yet. By the time this is up, we'll have published another story about this. And my, like, whole reaction to this is just like, I cannot believe this is happening. It's so. It's so frustrating as just like someone who has. I've covered drones since before they were allowed in US Airspace. Like, since the very, very early days. Like, that was my first beat as a tech reporter. And people have always been really crazy about drones. They've just been really. No one is ever normal about these things. They're never, ever, ever normal about them. And there's definitely things that we should worry about with drones. It's like cops doing persistent surveillance, like Department of Homeland Security flying Predator drones over the border, which they do. You know, things like this are concerning people using them to spy on others, people flying them unsafely. This sort of thing happens. But they've been in our airspace for a very long time. And In December of 2019, in Colorado, there was a series of mystery drone sightings that was very similar to what we're seeing in New Jersey now. It was like, a few local reports, and then there were more local reports, and then the news covered it and then it became national news. And then there were many, many, many, many reports. And then what happened was the military got involved, the Federal Aviation Administration got involved, the Department of Homeland Security got involved. There was like a cross state task force where all of these local police and sheriffs got involved and started doing an investigation. And what they found was nothing. They found nothing. Which is to say that the drones that they found, the quote unquote drones, they were able to track many of them to being commercial planes or other passenger planes. Others of the drones were legal hobby drones being flown by random people. Other of the drones were being flown by farmers. And then in some cases, the quote unquote drone sightings were stars or they were SpaceX satellites or they were other things in the sky. I live in Los Angeles, talked about this a lot. On Friday, I went outside random time, looked to the sky and I saw so many blinking lights in the sky. Things moving around looked exactly like every, every video that I've seen on Twitter and TikTok. Just these blinking lights and it's like, oh, what is that? And you can take a video of it and on your shitty cell phone it's gonna look like a drone. And it's like, this is what a lot of people are seeing. And that, that has been like here in New Jersey, the Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon, the FAA and one other group, I don't have it up right now, did a joint press release saying most of these things. We've gotten 5,000 reports, almost all of them are confirmed passenger planes of some sort. Please stop shooting at them. Please stop shining lasers at them. I'm flying into New Jersey tomorrow. When you're listening to this, please don't shoot at my plane. It's like, it's crazy. It's absolutely crazy. And I know that I'm sound like, like distraught. And I actually, I find all this to be quite fun and funny and fun to write about and follow. But it's also bad. It's not good.

[Joseph Cox]

Oh yeah, it could get really, really scary. When the FBI and authorities put out that message saying, please stop shining lasers at planes, I'm like, holy shit, this is real now. This isn't either people, you know, believing one thing on TikTok when it's something else or, you know, and I think we'll get into this until your piece hasn't been published yet. I haven't read the copy, I just saw the headline, I think. But potentially grifters as well, just trying to latch onto it. Right? So you mentioned that you are a longtime drone reporter. You did that years and years ago. I remember that. A motherboard as well. But interestingly, this is like a perfect intersection of two of your interests because you've actually also covered UFOs and UAPs and all of that sort of world. A shit ton. Right. So you worked on a documentary for Netflix called Encounters. Just briefly. What was that documentary? And sort of. How does that apply here?

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, so the documentary was called Encounters. We worked on it for several years at Vice, and it came out in 2023. And it follows four mass UFO sightings. One in Texas, one in Wales, one in Zimbabwe, and one in Japan. And it tried to sort of like, answer this question of one, why do humans look for aliens? How do they try to explain things in the sky? What are scientific explanations for this? And then also, like, what is the psychology of mass psychosis? Like a mass delusion, more or less. Which is not to say that people aren't seeing anything. It's just that, like, what causes these sorts of mass sightings. And I'll be very honest, it's like I find the topic of UFOs and unidentified aerial Phenomena to be quite interesting. And I think that there are people who are approaching it in a way that is interesting. And I think that there are definitely, like, US Military, like classified US Military projects where they're flying things in the sky and they're not telling you what they are. Other governments have similar programs. There's no evidence that anything that's happening in New Jersey is that.

[Joseph Cox]

And the Pentagon said it was not US Military craft. Now, as you say in your piece, they don't have the best history when it comes to being transparent. But hey, they said that.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the Pentagon has the latitude to lie about classified programs in particular. And some of these programs, like, are classified and some of them have been declassified. And one of my former bosses, Garrett Graff, wrote a book about this and how that, like a really well reported book about how the Department of Defense has lied about some of these things. So I find, like, the US government's sort of like research into UFOs and UAPs to be interesting. I think that in the last few years, there's been a lot of congressional hearings about this. There's been pentagon reports about UFOs. A lot of the actual reports that have been given to Congress have been sort of pleased by the Department of Defense for more funding to study UFOs, which is quite interesting. But you're right, it's like there's a this crossover between drones and UFOs and fain Greenwood, who is a really good drone reporter. And I also wrote a similar story like several years ago, like separately covering separate things. But a lot of things that are reported as UFOs end up being explainable drones. And then a lot of things that are reported as drones are just passenger airplanes, things in the sky. People don't usually look at the sky like it's. It's just there's been studies about this and people are quite oblivious until there is a situation like this. And then everyone is looking at the sky and looking for something, some sort of explanation for what is going on. So I understand that. I've been like railing about this for a little while and it is entirely possible that some of the things in New Jersey are, I don't know, like Pentagon projects or not easily explained. But the vast majority of the things that people have been freaking out about have been explained, can be explained. Many of them have been debunked by like random people on Twitter or Blue sky, where you'll have a politician or someone tweet a video and it goes viral. And then they'll cross reference it with the flight tracking software and the tail lights that are on this, you know, aircraft, and it'll be like, no, this is actually just a passenger flight or this is a helicopter, or this is something else that is easily explained. But it's really hard to debunk each and every one of these. You also have like, you have things like local police saying it's a car sized drone that was 100ft over whatever. And there's also been studies that people can't tell how far away things are at night or how big they are in the sky because they're really far away. And human eye depth perception, like, doesn't work very well at night especially. So there's like a lot of this happening. And then the story that I'm publishing now is that every political grifter has come out of the woodwork to talk about this in some way. It's like Marjorie Taylor Greene is threatening to shoot these drones down herself. Donald Trump is doing AI photos of Chris Christie with McDonald's and DJI Phantom drones. I don't know if y'all saw that. Yes, I think you did. Larry Hogan, who was the former governor of Maryland, tweeted a photo that got millions and millions of views. Turned out to be a stars in Orion's Belt. Like things like this are happening. And then you have the sort of like slightly more serious people in New Jersey who are like, this is a threat, like I'm gonna try to get the government on it, and so on and so forth. But like, all of these people are sort of stoking the fear of people and then they're leveraging this into high profile appearances on Fox News, on cnn, on News Nation, on all these cable news networks. And this isn't going to go away until there's some other news story to distract people.

[Joseph Cox]

And you think that's the case because even if a video gets debunked or a sighting gets debunked and it's like, well, no, that was this plane or whatever, there's just going to be another sighting, another sighting until people basically get bored or there's something else to distract them. Is that what you mean?

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah. So here's a sentence that I wrote that I thought was pretty good, which is all of this has become a no win clusterfuck for everyone except the attention seeking grifters within the government who are themselves railing against the government to focus attention on themselves. To these people, government inaction is unacceptable and government actions and explanations cannot be trusted. So it's like the Pentagon not shooting these drones down is unacceptable to them. The Pentagon saying there's nothing to worry about means that the Pentagon is gaslighting and lying to you. Like the. It. There's no, there's like a no win situation here. And what happened in Colorado, I mean, this is crazy, but what happened in Colorado was the coronavirus pandemic started and all the news attention went to that and then suddenly no more drone sightings. No one saw any drones.

[Joseph Cox]

Right. And crucially, I know they're kind of linked, but crucially, you don't necessarily mean there was just no more media coverage about it because, oh, the media had to go cover Covid or whatever. You mean there were fewer drone sightings? There were fewer people reporting sighting the drones in the first place.

[Jason Kebler]

Yes, because there was less media attention. So there are less people looking at the skies, so there's less people reporting the drones. And because there are less people reporting the drones, there was less media coverage, so on and so forth, cycle, cycle, and it was over.

[Joseph Cox]

I guess just sort of the last thing I wanted to touch on that is sort of the flip of it is that with this New Jersey example today, is it something of like a self fulfilling prophecy where you have. I don't even know what the patient zero of this sighting is. I'm sure you do, Jason. I'm sure you've seen it, But There was one initial sighting or some initial sightings, and everybody jumps on that. And it keeps going and going and going. Does it even get to the. And I think you mentioned this, that happened in Colorado where sometimes it's the sightings or even people flying their drones to try to look at the other drones they think they're perceiving. It just becomes this endless cycle, basically.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, that did happen in Colorado where the police were investigating drones. Drone sightings, and to investigate them, they were flying their own drones looking for the drones that may or may not have existed. And then the drones that they were flying were being reported as sightings and so on and so forth. And it's so good. It's really good. I don't know. I don't know. I know I just, like, ranted for a long time. But I'm curious what Emmanuel and Sam think of this because I don't know if anyone else even finds it interesting, but it's been blowing up like every group text that I have for like two weeks. And I feel like such a buzzkill being like, sorry, they're nothing. Everyone's like, oh, it's aliens. And I'm like, it's nothing. It's nothing. It's not even. It's not even a thing to talk about.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

I would say, I would consider a progress that the idea that it's aliens has not been the dominant thing I've seen in the news, which is good because it's slightly less fantastical. As you were talking, I just checked out the UFO subreddit r ufo. And as I'm sure you know, it's like every post, it's hundreds of posts, and it's all about this. So they certainly think it's UFOs, but I haven't seen that in the mainstream as much, which seems good, right? Like people imagining drones. Not great. But at least they're saying it's Iran.

[Jason Kebler]

It's Iranian mothership.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah. At one point, I believe a lawmaker said it was an Iranian mothership that was firing out the drones. And then they go back to the mothership and the. And the big mothership is off the east coast. Even when I'm saying it out loud.

[Jason Kebler]

I sound like it's the plot of.

[Sam Cole]

Like Men in Black or something.

[Joseph Cox]

Right.

[Sam Cole]

I sound like Independence Day.

[Joseph Cox]

A little baby doing like a stream of consciousness Hollywood script. And then the boat was off the east coast and then the drones came out and then they were like, okay, mate, it's not that. Relax.

[Sam Cole]

I would rather people speculate about aliens. Though, like, that's so much more whimsical and fun and, like, humankind versus aliens. It's a much nicer conspiracy theory to have than like, it's China or something, you know? I don't know. I find that. I find, like, the. The politics, politicization of this to be a really interesting turn, that people are using it as this way to kind of stoke fears about your own government, other governments. Yeah, I'd rather it be aliens.

[Jason Kebler]

I really do like talking about it. Like, I think it's fun to talk about, but then. But then you had to see people, like, shining these powerful lasers at passenger planes. Like, I have family members texting me, literally scared. And I'm just like, okay, maybe not so good.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Dude, people need to stop looking up. Keep. Keep your eyes down.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, keep your eyes on the road.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Keep your eyes on the road. Look at your beautiful family. Get back to work. You know what I mean? Why aren't people walking around looking at the sky?

[Joseph Cox]

A lot of people reference this tweet, but there's the really good one that I've just brought up a screenshot, a screenshot of, and it's like, pigs can't look up. I could pick up a pig one night and show them the sky and that sort of. I'm not saying anyone's a pig. I'm just saying it's a pretty good tweet that people are referencing in regards to this incident, which, yeah, people don't really look up. I don't really look up. What's going on up there then? Used to worry me.

[Jason Kebler]

At nighttime, you should be inside. Let's be real. That's phone scrolling TV watching time, right?

[Joseph Cox]

Exactly. You need to be consuming media at that point. You need to move from the. From the bad screen to the good screen. All right, let's leave that there. When we come back, we're going to talk about a story I published about Cellebrite being used to unlock phones and then the cops putting malware on them. Very nice. We'll be right back after this.

[Jason Kebler]

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[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, it's funny because when I wrote this piece and you edited it, you were like, you need to tell people what Celebrate is. And Sam's brought up that issue before and I'm definitely guilty of it, where you just assume people know stuff and you shouldn't do that. But anyway, this is what it is. Cellebrite is probably the most famous company that breaks into mobile phones for law enforcement agencies. They have a little tool called the. I mean, I pronounce it U Fed U F E D. And that comes as a tablet or it's software on a PC and you will plug the phone in, you know, an Android or an iPhone, and then it will either bypass the passcode if it needs to, or maybe or brute force it, or if there isn't a passcode, it will just grab the data. But it will not only gain access to that phone and then, you know, basically open up and you do whatever you want, it then grabs the data and archives it in a very nice way for law enforcement. It's like a tool that is used every single day by agencies all over the world. And I don't think in and of itself it's controversial at all. I think it's a very, very normal tool. But back at Motherboard, we did a series called Phone. I think it was called the Phone Crackers or something. And that was because Celebrate got hacked of 500 gigabytes of data. And that was given to me and it was just some very interesting stuff in there, like banks also Use Celebrate. And it's not just cops, necessarily.

[Jason Kebler]

Right, right. So traditionally, I mean, you just said other people used it, but I know it most in the context of cops use it to unlock people's phones when they have, you know, seized it as evidence. But what Amnesty International found was cops not using it just to, like, find out the contents of a phone, but actually to do something much more malicious. What was that?

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah. So Amnesty found multiple cases. One was a journalist who I'll speak about in a minute, and I think they were activists as well. And basically what the Serbian authorities were doing was getting the phone. And I'll go into more details about what happened with the journalists in a second. But they get the phone, they then use Celebrate to unlock it because they don't have the passcode. And then rather than just extract the data, which I think they did in some cases, they then used that unlocked phone, which had been broken into with Celebrate, to then install very powerful malware. And when I say powerful, I don't mean it's like super sophisticated in the sense that Pegasus by NSO Group is, which is malware that a lot of people have probably heard of and that can remotely infect your phone. This is physical access malware. They need to be holding the phone, but once they install it, it can turn on the microphone on the device, it can start taking screenshots, including of private social media posts or signal messages as well. And there's actually a screenshot in there showing some of the signal messages that were due to be collected. Of course, that does not mean signal is compromised in any way. It is that one of the ends on the end to end encryption, the phone has been hacked and there's been malware installed in this case.

[Jason Kebler]

Joseph, tell me about Slavisa Milanov.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah. Milanov is a journalist in Serbia who works for far. It's a Serbian outlet. They cover lots of local issues, but then also public corruption and that sort of thing. And Amnesty spoke to them for the report, and then I wanted to speak to Milanov directly as well. So we exchanged some messages and what they said was that one day in February they were driving to a particular part of the country with a colleague who was the editor in chief of far, and they were stopped by traffic police and they said, look, you have to be tested for drugs and you need to come to the police station. He complies. I don't really know what else you're going to do in that context. He gets there and they say, okay, now you need to give up your belongings before you go in here and do the tests and we speak to you. So he gives up his tobacco, his wallet, his keys, and crucially, his Android phone. He doesn't give them the passcode. He then goes in, he does these tests. He says, obviously the drug tests come back negative. And then he's asking the Serbian police, okay, well, what's going on? Can I go? Am I able to leave now? And then one of the officials says, we're just waiting to hear back from the boss or the chief or something like that. He then steps out. And then Milanov claims that he heard this officer phoning somebody up and saying, look, the tests are negative. I can't hold him for any longer, suggesting there has been some sort of other reason or pretense for the traffic stop.

[Jason Kebler]

Like they were looking for some reason to hold him. Possibly, Basically, yeah.

[Joseph Cox]

At least that's the implication. Right. And Serbian. A lot of other outlets covered this story because it was under embargo to a lot of people. I don't think everybody necessarily got all the detail we got from Milnev, but outlets like Reuters at least got like a no comment out of Serbian authorities. So we have to read between the lines, obviously, and that's just how it is. But eventually, Milanov is taken to another building with two officials in plain clothes, and they start asking him questions, basically about his journalistic work, about his organization and that sort of thing, which is, you know, that wasn't the reason he was stopped, allegedly. He was to do some drug tests all over a traffic stop. Anyway, that passes. He then gets his belongings back and he's allowed to leave and he gets his phone back. He very quickly is suspicious of the phone. It looks like a lot of battery is being used up, I think he said. But he absolutely said that. He installed an application, I think, called Stay Free. I hadn't heard of it personally, but I looked it up, and then it showed that some apps were being used when the phone was in the hands of the authorities. Meaning that the police have been doing something with his device. Right. So he gets that and he's suspicious. He then contacts Amnesty International because he doesn't trust the Serbian authorities. They then investigate and they find this malware, which is what Amnesty dubs Novi Spy. Novi Hope. I'm pronouncing that right. The Serbian word for new and beyond. What I just said about taking screenshots and turning on the camera and that sort of thing, all of those sorts of normal things malware would do, it comes as two apps, and it kind of hides itself as a legitimate service. It calls itself an app, like com services something. So if you were scrolling through your Android phone, it. It may not jump out as suspicious. And Amnesty thinks that the Serbian authorities either bought or developed this malware internally.

[Jason Kebler]

Yeah, yeah. So I want to talk a little bit about the implications of this, because cellebrite sells to a lot of people, as you mentioned, and it's usually looked at as a forensics tool where you can get evidence off of a phone and often the like. Ideally, the cops have some sort of legal authority to look at a specific phone. It's like in the United States, it's. It's the phones of people who have been arrested. But they sell to a lot of authoritarian governments. They sell to a lot of places where the. The rule of law might not be the same as it is in, you know, the United States or elsewhere. So, I mean, in this case, they're. They're essentially like, helping cops hack phones to install malware. Even if Celebrate itself is not involved in the actual, like, installing of malware, it's like it's their product being used. So how is Celebrate responding to all of this? How has sort of, like, the international community responded to all of this? And how has Google responded this? Because I know Google is also involved.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, cellebrite was crucial to getting this malware on the phone, even if it wasn't the case that, oh, you have the cellebrite tablet or whatever, you push a button and that loads malware onto the phone. From all appearances, it would not have been possible for the Serbian authorities to get this malware onto the device without the cellebrite tool to bypass or brute force the passcode. So it is crucial there. And I know this, and I'm pretty sure listeners will know this as well. Cellebrite is not an active surveillance technology. I mean, you could argue it's a surveillance technology in a way, but I don't really want to break down semantics like that far. It's not active surveillance technology. It's not something you install and then monitor. But here it is being used to facilitate that. Absolutely. And Celebrate's response is interesting. Often these sorts of reports come out not about sort of the interesting malware, but, oh, Celebrite was being used by XYZ authoritarian governments, as you say, in this case, Celebrate told me in an email, and then they sort of double down in a statement. They are investigating it. And if they found what Amnesty says is true, that will mean the Serbian authorities have violated their sort of terms of use. Of Celebrate and they will reassess. Well, Celebrate will reassess whether it works with the Serbian authorities. Now is that going to happen or not? I don't know. Is the investigation from Celebrate actually any good or not? I really don't know. I can't imagine that Serbia provides that much business in the grand scheme of things for Celebrite when they have countries all over the world. Maybe it's worth, from a coal PR perspective dropping Serbia or whatever. I really, really don't know. Then obviously we'll keep an eye on it. But I thought that response was interesting at least when it comes to Google. This is interesting for a couple of reasons. Amnesty gets this information, it provides some of it and shares some of it with Google. Amnesty and Google also discovered one of the zero day vulnerabilities and exploits that Cellebrite was using to break into phones that got patched by Qualcomm, which is the chip manufacturer. Right. And that's sort of separate. I don't really get into that. But what Google also did after getting information from Amnesty was that it searched, it seems Android devices for this Novi spy malware for these malicious apps and then remotely removed them. I think that's obviously a pretty good thing. People in Serbia who may have been targeted by this, and it's probably way more than a handful of people based on some forensic evidence in the report. They don't really get into. It's probably a ton of people, but Google removed that. Okay, that's all well and good. I think it's also just an interesting reminder the Google has the ability to go and just remove stuff from people's phones. Again, I'm not saying that's a bad thing. Huh, that's interesting. I don't know if people know that.

[Jason Kebler]

You know, I did not know that. I didn't know they could do that.

[Joseph Cox]

Right. They can detect what apps are installed on what phone, at least in some way. You know, they would probably call it telemetry and then they can be like, we are going to remotely scrap this. Basically, yeah. So that's news to you is what you're saying.

[Jason Kebler]

Dude, I had no idea that was possible actually via Android. Is it possible on iOS? And so I'm sorry, this is like a kind of a dumb version of it, but for a while like Flappy Bird was pulled from the app store on iOS for example, because the creator took it down. But if you already had it installed, then you already had it installed and it was. There were people like selling iOS devices with Flappy Bird installed on it for like a lot of money during a very dumb period of like the 2017s, 2018s.

[Joseph Cox]

I don't know.

[Jason Kebler]

It's like it's. Well, it's like it's like TikTok is getting banned in the US potentially and there has been some theorizing like oh well maybe, maybe it will just continue to work on phones that have it installed on already. This also came up with Fortnite on iOS where you could continue playing Fortnite on iOS during the like Apple versus Epic Games beef lawsuit over like app Store royalty fees for a while until the app got updated so much that it was like okay, this is no longer operable. So the thought would be with something like TikTok that maybe it will continue working until the app gets so updated that like whatever version you have installed on your phone won't work anymore. And I don't know if Apple has this capability either, but I've never. I didn't know that they could remotely uninstall. They meaning any phone manufacturer, operating system manufacturer could uninstall a piece of software from your phone.

[Joseph Cox]

Yeah, it's interesting and I would like to know more about it. So if anybody does know more about it, do ask me. But you know, I don't. Could you be legally compelled to do that? I don't know. I haven't seen a case like that. It would be more. Does Google or the third party manufacturer or the person, sorry, the company providing services like Apple or whatever, do they see that as malware and do they want to remove it? I guess it's the usual bar for it, but it's interesting. Yeah and I would like to know more for sure. All right, we'll leave that there. If you are listening to the free version of the podcast, I'll now play it out. But if you are a paying 404 media subscriber, we're going to talk about how someone made a pretty interesting project to show the surveillance cameras all around New York City. I think Sam tried it out and sort of their protest when they got a lot of issues about it. You can subscribe and gain access to that content@404 media code. As a reminder, 404 Media is journalist founded and supported by subscribers. If you wish to subscribe to 404 Media and directly support our work, please go to 404 Media co. You'll get unlimited access to our articles and an ad free version of this podcast. You'll also get to listen to the subscribers only section where we talk about a bonus story each week. This podcast is made in partnership with Kaleidoscope Disco. Another way to support us is by leaving a five star rating and review for the podcast if you want to. That stuff really does help us out. This has been 404 Media. We will see you again soon.

[Emmanuel Mayberg]

Question.