Mastodawn

NEW: UK Visa Portal, a website that lets people apply for a UK visa, spilled thousands of applicants' passports, selfies, and location data online.

The data exposure is now fixed, but not before the company sent attorneys and a public relations firm our way — which is very weird!

My updated story: https://techcrunch.com/2026/05/27/uk-visa-portal-spilled-thousands-of-applicants-passports-and-selfies-online-and-hasnt-fixed-the-leak/

UK Visa Portal exposed thousands of applicants’ passports and selfies — then called the lawyers on us | TechCrunch

The third-party website exposed passports, selfies, and the location data of applicants who submitted their documents as part of the U.K. visa application process. Instead of fixing the issue, the website sent attorneys.

TechCrunch

The Keystone Collective May 22

America Needs Europe More Than It Admits

The US is currently building its largest offshore wind farm, 176 turbines, 2.6 gigawatts, enough to power 660,000 homes off the coast of Virginia. The Trump administration tried to stop it twice. Courts blocked them both times.

What's less discussed is who's actually building it.

Right now, five European vessels are assembling off Virginia Beach. A Dutch cable layer is actively installing cables 27 miles offshore. Two Italian-operated Prysmian ships are staged at Norfolk loading equipment. A Belgian Jan De Nul vessel is working the Rhode Island corridor. A Dutch N-Sea support ship is alongside them at the dock.

Netherlands. Italy. Belgium. Luxembourg. Malta.
Not a single US-flagged cable installation vessel in sight, because none exists capable of doing this work.

We tracks these vessels in real time. We watched them arrive. We're watching them work. The data doesn't lie.

The European cable fleet is the living proof that US energy infrastructure depends on European industrial capability that no executive order can instantly replace.

The dependency conversation runs both ways. Europe needs American security guarantees. America needs European ships to keep its lights on.

#politics #geopolitics #energy #maritime #osint

The Keystone Collective May 19

Everyone's writing about Iran charging for internet cables.

The actual story: Alcatel just stopped fixing them.

Iran's fee demands are legally unenforceable and affect less than 1% of global bandwidth, but ASN pausing Gulf repairs while Red Sea cables remain degraded from Houthi damage? That's a real gap with no easy fix.

Two chokepoints, one repair fleet.

#geopolitics #osint #subseacables #iran #hormuz #maritimesecurity #criticalinfrastructure

How realistic is threat of Iran charging to use internet cables under strait of Hormuz?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/18/iran-threat-internet-cables-strait-hormuz

How realistic is threat of Iran charging to use internet cables under strait of Hormuz?

Plan floated in Iranian media to extract revenues from US tech firms would rely on intimidation and is legally dubious

The Guardian

The Keystone Collective May 19

RE: https://mastodon.social/@arstechnica/116600915545062449

Iran's legal strategy is to sign UNCLOS, don't ratify it, cite Article 79 anyway, demand $15bn.

Somewhere a first-year law student is having a crisis. The audacity is genuinely impressive.

#geopolitics #iran #bigtech #technology #secutity

The Keystone Collective May 18

Turkey deployed a missile boat to stop a cable ship wiring Greek Islands to the Internet claiming its paperwork was wrong. We have PostgreSQL and Python scripts (#humblebrag).

The paperwork was not wrong. We pulled the paperwork. It's 76.96km long.

#osint #geopolitics #nato #maritimesecurity #submarinecables
https://www.keystone-collective.org/greece-is-building-its-own-internet-turkey-would-like-a-word/

Greece Is Building Its Own Internet. Turkey Would Like a Word.

A NATO ally's warships have now challenged civilian cable ships working in Greek waters three times in eighteen months. Each incident, taken alone, could be a misunderstanding. Together, they look like a policy. There is a concept in international relations called the fait accompli, the established fact, the thing that

The Keystone Collective

The Keystone Collective May 18

Cable Retriever (GB) confirmed on dynamic positioning hold off Tamsui, Taiwan, 8h+ on station as of 5:34 UTC today.

Coordinating with Ile d'Aix (FR), reported on station since May 9, per open sources.

Both repairing the Taiwan-Matsu No.3 cable, damaged in April by a Chinese salvage barge.

This is what the infrastructure war looks like.

Of course, one can safely assume there is nothing strategically noteworthy about repeated disruptions to critical communications infrastructure in one of the world’s most contested theatres. Merely an unfortunate sequence of maritime coincidences.

#OSINT #Taiwan #China #Geopolitics #MaritimeSecurity #SubmarineCables #CriticalInfrastructure #GrayZone #IndoPacific #InternetInfrastructure #Security

The Keystone Collective May 14

GitHub’s verification quizzes were written by some Muppet.

The Keystone Collective May 14

China's been cutting Taiwan's cables for 18 months.

France just sent a state-owned repair ship to fix them and staged it in Taiwanese waters in advance.

The ILE D'AIX has been on station 96 hours. Someone's keeping score.

#geopolitics #osint #security #maritime #technology #ship #taiwan
https://www.keystone-collective.org/western-cable-repair-vessel-on-station-off-taiwan-for-fourth-consecutive-day/

Western Cable Repair Vessel on Station off Taiwan for Fourth Consecutive Day

Western Cable Repair Vessel on Station off Taiwan for Fourth Consecutive Day (OSINT Intelligence)

The Keystone Collective

The Keystone Collective May 10

Reggie the Raccoon can't tell when you're flirting with him. Give him your network traffic and he'll find the fraud, the pattern, and probably a geopolitical incident buried in the logs.

A love letter to neurodivergent brains, dressed as a therapy session.

#psychology #adhd #autism #neurodivergent #neuroscience #it #society
https://www.keystone-collective.org/reggie-the-raccoon-a-users-manual/

Reggie the Raccoon: A User's Manual

Or What Happens When a Brain Optimised for Threat Detection Has to Make Small Talk The therapist's name was Dr. Pamela Osei, and she had, in fourteen years of clinical practice, treated executives with god complexes, founders who had mistaken their net worth for their self-worth, and one memorable hedge

The Keystone Collective

The Keystone Collective May 8

When was the last time Windows Search found something before you gave up and searched manually?

It is basically a loading animation with confidence issues at this point.