A motorsports journalist was reportedly tracked over his critical coverage of a Formula One team. According to report from Mother Jones, British company KCS Group used a surveillance tool to track F1 journalist Joe Saward “in order to learn if someone was paying him for his critical coverage of Team Lotus.”
The surveillance tool is called Altamides, an acronym for “Advanced Location Tracking and Deception System.” First Wap, a company founded over 20 years ago in Indonesia, created the proprietary system.
“KCS also deployed Altamides for private clients in other instances: to surveil Italian venture capitalist Alessandro Benedetti on behalf of Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris during legal wrangling over a telecom deal, and to track Formula 1 journalist Joe Saward in order to learn if someone was paying him for his critical coverage of Team Lotus,” the report read. “Sawiris did not reply to multiple requests for comment.”
Promotional materials for Altamides described it as “a unified platform to covertly locate the whereabouts of single or multiple suspects in real-time, to detect movement patterns, and to detect whether suspects are in close vicinity with each other.”
“Altamides leaves no trace on the phones it targets, unlike spyware such as Pegasus,” the report read. “Nor does it require a target to click on a malicious link or show any of the telltale signs [such as overheating or a short battery life] of remote monitoring.”
Saward currently publishes F1 content at flatoutpublishing.com. Dany Bahar, a former Lotus team executive, said that he had “no knowledge about any surveillance tracking software and such practices nor would I approve such means.”
Team Lotus competed in F1 in 2010 and 2011 with Jarno Trulli and Heikki Kovalainen as full-time drivers. Team owner Tony Fernandes renamed the team to Caterham F1 in 2012 as a result of a legal dispute with Group Lotus. Caterham folded in 2015.