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2 direct mentions across 2 briefings, with 2 linked developments.
Latest linked intelligence
Telegram founder Pavel Durov, facing French criminal charges concerning illegal user activity, agreed to cooperate with authorities and announced that valid legal requests could obtain rule violators’ IP addresses and phone numbers.
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Telegram founder Pavel Durov, facing French criminal charges concerning illegal user activity, agreed to cooperate with authorities and announced that valid legal requests could obtain rule violators’ IP addresses and phone numbers.
Open source reportGeography
Marker precision is disclosed on selection. Country and regional centroids show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
Pavel Durov dossier
2 mapped developments across 1 map positions. Centroid markers show geographic scope, not an exact incident site.
France
French authorities charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with crimes connected to illegal activity by platform users, released him on €5 million bail and prohibited him from leaving France.
Approximate map position: country centroid. The extracted place did not have provider-resolved coordinates.
Chronology
Off Leash update 25 Sept Middle East •As the dust settled on Israel's strikes in southern and eastern Lebanon, the Lebanese health ministry counted at least 558 dead and 1,645 injured - including 50 women, 94 children, and some first responders. Israel said it was only targeting Hezbollah and accused Hezbollah of using civilians as human shields. •Israel then followed up with an airstrike on southern Beirut that killed a Hezbollah commander involved in the group's rocket attacks. •Then Hezbollah lobbed a ballistic missile at Tel Aviv that Iron Dome intercepted. •Some Israeli hawks want to take advantage of a weakened Hezbollah in disarray and invade southern Lebanon now, while cooler heads - like defense minister Gallant - prefer to give Hezbollah a chance to back down and avoid escalation. •The WSJ warned that a ground invasion "could turn into a quagmire, much like the war in Gaza." Despite Israeli airstrikes, Hezbollah still has a dangerous arsenal of rockets, drones, and antitank missiles; and it continues to smuggle more in. It has also had ample time to fortify a tunnel network of the sort that has bogged Israeli ground troops down in Gaza. •Thousands of people fled the southern and eastern Lebanon in anticipation of further escalation. Ukraine •Ukraine's Pres. Zelensky told the UN Security Council "Russia must be forced into peace" and said he had formed a new "victory plan" that he planned to present to Pres. Biden imminently. •Zelensky also claimed to have evidence showing that Russia is planning to attack Ukraine's three nuclear plants. Venezuela •An Argentine federal court responded to Venezuela's arrest warrant for Argentina's Pres. Milei by ordering the arrest of Pres. Maduro and his top henchman, Diosdado Cabello, for committing crimes against humanity against dissidents. China •China carried out a successful test of an intercontinental ballistic missile, and - unusually - announced it publicly. •The wording of the defense ministry's announcement was nothing special - it said the missile "fell into expected sea areas" and was merely part of a "routine arrangement in our annual training plan" - but the fact that there was an announcement at all suggests an emboldened missile program (it usually conducts tests quietly deep inside its territory and doesn't comment on their outcomes). •Separately, China announced new stimulus measures and interest rate cuts to boost consumer spending and property investment. The central bank had aimed for 5% GDP growth this year, but that now looks ambitious. Afghanistan •Speaking at an event on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, actress Meryl Streep poetically pointed out: "Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park... A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public." •A Taliban spokesman responded that his fellow officials in fact "highly respected" women and would "never compare them to cats." Libya •A delegation of assistant and deputy U.S. officials visited Libya to show support for Government of National Unity Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah and his eastern rival, Khalifa Haftar, as the two sides try agree on a resolution to their dispute over the central bank's leadership (and management of oil revenues). •Telegram founder Pavel Durov - who faces French criminal charges for complicity in illegal activity by users of the platform - changed his stance and agreed to cooperate with authorities. •He announced in a new Telegram post that the platform has updated its terms and privacy policy to explicitly disclose that "the IP addresses and phone numbers of those who violate our rules can be disclosed to relevant authorities in response to valid legal requests"
Open source reportOff Leash update 29 Aug Venezuela •One of Venezuela's top election officials, Juan Carlos Delpino, directly discredited Pres. Maduro's account of the vote for the first time this week. •Delpino - who is one of two opposition-aligned members of the five-person National Electoral Council (CNE) responsible for organizing elections and certifying their results - told the NYT that his council "had not received any evidence" that Maduro won a majority of the vote, and lamented that the CNE had "failed the country." He spoke from hiding, fearing for his safety. •His fear is reasonable: Maduro's security forces continue to arrest Venezuelans who dare support the opposition. Perkins Rocha - opposition leader Marina Corina Machado's lawyer and close confidante - was among those arrested this week. •With Diosdado Cabello now appointed Minister for the Interior, Justice, and Peace; we can expect the crackdown to worsen: Cabello has previously said that Machado and opposition president-elect Edmundo Gonzalez should be "behind bars." Israel •Hamas said the 10 Palestinians Israel killed in its West Bank operations Tuesday and Wednesday were among its members. •There's a polio outbreak in Gaza, and the UN hopes to innoculate 640,000 Palestinian children with vaccines to stop the spread of the virus - starting this weekend. •Israel reportedly authorized temporary and localized humanitarian pauses in the fighting in Gaza to facilitate vaccinations, but evacuations, displacement, and ongoing fighting will certainly complicate the process. Yemen •Iran says its Houthi proxies in Yemen have agreed to a truce to let rescuers assess the Sounion oil tanker its missiles damaged and set alight. However, the Houthis say they only agreed to allow a tugboat to come tow the ailing - and possibly leaking - Sounion away. Either way, we'll soon learn how big of an environmental risk the damaged tanker is. Ukraine •Ukraine used F-16s to shoot down incoming Russian cruise missiles on Monday, marking the first aerial kills by the new (to Ukraine) jets. •Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Norway have pledged a total of 85 F-16s for Ukraine; because only a few of them have arrived so far, Ukraine is only using the few it has against targets like these cruise missiles that can't shoot back. •Separately, Ukrainian drones targeted the Zenit oil depot deep inside Russia's Kirov region, causing two fires. It's the first time Ukraine has struck Kirov, which is 700 miles (1,125 km) inside Russia. Russia •In response to new U.S. sanctions against Russia, Russia permanently banned 92 U.S. citizens - including journalists, lawyers, professors, and business executives - from entering the country. •Among those banned were 14 WSJ employees, including WSJ editor in chief Emma Tucker. Given the 16 months their colleague Evan Gershkovich spent in Russian jail before he was finally released in a swap last month, I doubt anyone from the WSJ was eager to visit Russia anytime soon anyway. Other News •French authorities charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with a slew of crimes related to illegal activity others committed on his platform. He was released on bail of €5 million ($5.5 million) and barred from leaving the country. Free speech advocates and tech companies are preturbed that the creator of an online forum can be held liable for crimes others use it to commit.
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