{"id":264391,"date":"2025-11-05T23:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/264391\/"},"modified":"2025-11-05T23:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T23:59:10","slug":"motorsports-journalist-reportedly-tracked-by-surveillance-company-spying-tech-over-critical-coverage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/264391\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorsports journalist reportedly tracked by surveillance company, spying tech over critical coverage"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A motorsports journalist was reportedly tracked over his critical coverage of a Formula One team. According to report from <a href=\"https:\/\/www.motherjones.com\/politics\/2025\/10\/firstwap-altamides-phone-tracking-surveillance-secrets-assad-erik-prince-jared-leto-anne-wojcicki\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Mother Jones<\/a>, British company KCS Group used a surveillance tool to track F1 journalist Joe Saward \u201cin order to learn if someone was paying him for his critical coverage of Team Lotus.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The surveillance tool is called Altamides, an acronym for \u201cAdvanced Location Tracking and Deception System.\u201d First Wap, a company founded over 20 years ago in Indonesia, created the proprietary system.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cKCS also deployed Altamides for private clients in other instances: to surveil Italian venture capitalist Alessandro Benedetti on behalf of Egyptian billionaire Naguib Sawiris during\u00a0legal wrangling\u00a0over a telecom deal, and to track Formula 1 journalist\u00a0Joe Saward\u00a0in order to learn if someone was paying him for his critical coverage of Team Lotus,\u201d the report read. \u201cSawiris did not reply to multiple requests for comment.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Promotional materials for Altamides described it as \u201ca 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.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAltamides leaves no trace on the phones it targets, unlike spyware such as Pegasus,\u201d the report read. \u201cNor 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.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>Saward currently publishes F1 content at <a href=\"https:\/\/www.flatoutpublishing.com\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">flatoutpublishing.com<\/a>. Dany Bahar, a former Lotus team executive, said that he had \u201cno knowledge about any surveillance tracking software and such practices nor would I approve such means.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A motorsports journalist was reportedly tracked over his critical coverage of a Formula One team. According to report&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":264392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-264391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=264391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/264391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/264392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=264391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=264391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=264391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}