Thursday☕️

Earth Intelligence

28 Mar 2024 — 5 min read

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CENTCOM Activity
Facebook Court Documents
Visa & Mastercard Merchant Fees

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CENTCOM Activity:

On March 25, U.S. Central Command carried out a humanitarian mission over Northern Gaza, delivering vital assistance to civilians caught in the midst of conflict. At 12:10 p.m. local time, two C-17’s dispersed over 46,000 meals ready to eat (MREs) to those in need. In a separate event on March 27, in the early hours between 2:00 and 2:20 a.m. Sanaa time, the United States Central Command neutralized a threat over the Red Sea.
Four unmanned aerial systems (UAS), launched by the Houthi group targeting a U.S. warship, were intercepted and destroyed in self-defense actions. Fortunately, no U.S. or coalition vessels were harmed in this operation. These decisive measures underscore the commitment of the U.S. to maintaining safe passage in international waters, safeguarding both merchant and naval vessels from imminent threats.

Facebook Court Documents:

In 2016, Facebook (Now META) initiated Project Ghostbusters, a clandestine effort aimed at decrypting and analyzing communications between users of Snapchat and its servers. The project's goal was to gather user behavior insights to bolster Facebook's competitive edge against Snapchat. This venture, was unveiled through court documents made public amid a class action lawsuit against Meta, Facebook's overseeing entity.
These documents shed light on Meta's broader strategy to decrypt encrypted app traffic from rivals like Snapchat, Amazon, and YouTube to analyze user interactions. Internal documents, including emails from Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, revealed the company's pursuit of innovative methods to gain analytics on competitors, especially Snapchat, given its encrypted traffic and rapid growth. The challenge of accessing useful data led Facebook to leverage Onavo, a VPN-like service it acquired in 2013, known for its capability to intercept and decrypt internet traffic.
This approach, described as a man-in-the-middle attack, allowed Facebook to bypass encryption barriers and directly observe user activities within these apps. However, the controversy surrounding Onavo's use, particularly the ethical concerns raised by paying teenagers to use the service for data collection, prompted Facebook to shut down the service in 2019. The specific technical solution developed by the Onavo team involved deploying kits on iOS and Android devices capable of intercepting specific subdomains' traffic, thus revealing encrypted app activities.
This technique provided detailed in-app usage metrics, initially for Snapchat and later extended to include data from Amazon and YouTube users. This man-in-the-middle strategy not only demonstrates Facebook's determined efforts to understand and potentially outpace its competitors but also highlights the complex ethical and privacy considerations that come with such technological interventions.

Visa & Mastercard Merchant Fees:

In a significant legal resolution, Visa and Mastercard, the giants behind credit card payment processing infrastructure, have agreed to reduce and limit the fees charged to businesses for each credit card transaction, known as swipe fees. This agreement comes as a response to an antitrust lawsuit filed by merchants, concluding on Tuesday with a decision that promises substantial financial relief for businesses.
Merchants have calculated that this adjustment in swipe fees could result in savings of approximately $30 billion over the forthcoming five years. Additionally, a novel provision from this settlement allows merchants the flexibility to adjust charges for customers depending on the swipe fee associated with the customer's specific credit card.

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