These companies are just the tip of the iceberg, the names that skirted legal grey areas and either eventually fell on the wrong side of the law (such as it is) and into the scope of the authorities, or whose illicit spying activities were discovered. On top of this, my research has found that Cellebrite has active contracts with a host of US federal agencies, from the Navy, to the DEA, the Coast Guard, to the Fish and Wildlife Service. Among the services offered by Cobwebs (sold to a company called PenLink in 2023 but retaining the CobWebs team) is an AI-powered service enabling facial and image recognition across social media and the deep web, and a feature called WebLoc that enables the tracking of mobile phone movements in a specific area selected by the user.
Author: Editor
Published at: 2025-08-03 22:00:00
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