Were you like immediately pulled in and interested or sort of how did that play out?

We were actually at a conference together we'd never met before and Purity pulls me aside and starts telling me about this algorithm.

You know, it's using what your roof is made out of.

It's using like whether you share a toilet to predict your income.

And I was like, that sounds so out there.

I was like, okay, there's obviously someone in front of me who's really, really smart, but this sounds, I've never heard of a system that works that way.

But it piques my interest and Purity starts sending me some links and some documents.

So any final words on how we got here with the Kenyan government being this excited about these technologies?

here."He plugs the number into a web service that can identify names, email addresses, and social media accounts.

And when I do that, I get the name Gianluigi Nuzzi, and I put that name into Google, and I see that Gianluigi Nuzzi is an Italian journalist.

And not just any Italian journalist, he's quite a famous Italian journalist, and he's quite famous for his investigations into the Vatican, uh, corruption at the Vatican.

And when I saw that, I kind of realized that I think I, I think I stumbled across something, something really important here.

The company said there had been misunderstandings at the conference in Prague, and that their executives only spoke about what was, quote, "technically feasible." Firstwap also told us they don't sell to corporate clients, only governments.

governments.When you get to the end of one of these big investigations, there's always this question of, what does it all mean? And I think that for me, it kind of redefines who uses these tools.

It redefines who can get targeted by them.

And that image to me of them laughing about breaking sanctions is just something that really sticks with me.

Now, what is that, and why, if it's antiquated, is it still around? It's a good

question.

So SS7 or Signaling System 7 is an antiquated telecom protocol back from a time when each country basically had one phone operator.

And it's sort of stuck around because many countries continue to use SS7 domestically.

And therefore, when people are sort of You're on your phone, you're roaming abroad in certain countries, your phone needs to be able to communicate with the telecom network wherever you're visiting.

And so there's a sort of need to have a backward compatibility with these older telephone standards, which are notoriously insecure.

And what Joseph Fuchs and FirstWAP understood, perhaps earlier than anyone else, is that this old telecom protocol can be exploited in order to reveal the movements of any phone number in the world, and not just reveal the movements or track locations, but also intercept SMS messages and intercept phone calls.

Gabriel, tell us about Albert and Abdu.

He plugs the number into a web service that can identify names, email addresses, and social media accounts.

And when I do that, I get the name Gianluigi Nuzzi, and I put that name into Google, and I see that Gianluigi Nuzzi is an Italian journalist, and not just any Italian journalist, he's quite a famous Italian journalist.

And he's quite famous for his investigations into the Vatican, uh, corruption at the Vatican.

And when I saw that, I kind of realized that I think I, I think I stumbled across something, something really important here.

The company said there had been misunderstandings at the conference in Prague, and that their executives only spoke about what was, quote, "technically feasible." Firstwapp also told us they don't sell to corporate clients, only governments.

When you get to the end of one of these big investigations, there's always this question of, you know, what does it all mean? And I think that for me, it kind of redefines who uses these tools.

It redefines who can get targeted by them.

And that image to me, of them laughing about breaking sanctions is just something that really sticks with me, and I guess I find it kind of haunting in a way.