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Lighthouse Reports, Amsterdam Centrum (2025)

16/06/2025

How Google, Amazon, Meta and thousands of other companies leave customers vulnerable over one-time codes to save time and money

Across the world, phone networks carry billions of passwords and login codes on a daily basis. Tech companies need to keep their subscribers logged in to their apps and accounts with maximum efficiency, wherever they might be. So these security codes need to get from Silicon Valley to everywhere, as quickly (and as cheaply) as possible. For most people they are a necessary annoyance, until they are breached with damaging consequences.

Companies, including banks and Big Tech, don’t send login codes to their customers directly. This would be costly and inefficient. Instead they rely on a sprawling and opaque network of contractors and subcontractors, each of which promises to shave off a part of the sending cost in return for market share. This is what the industry calls “lowest cost routing”. The catch is that any of these middleman companies can see everything transmitted. The codes that come saying “Do not share with anyone” might in fact already have been shared with more or less anyone.

How Google, Amazon, Meta and thousands of other companies leave customers vulnerable over one-time codes to save time and money

05/12/2024

Lighthouse Reports and partners revealed a year ago that Afghan commandos who served closely with the British, in units known as the Triples, had been left behind in Afghanistan, resulting in dozens being tortured and in some cases murdered by the Taliban. Following this, the UK government admitted it had made a mistake and pledged to review around 2,000 rejected cases under its Afghan relocation scheme of applicants with credible evidence of links to specialist units.

But nine months on, Lighthouse Reports, The Independent and Etilaat Roz have found that many former Triples are still waiting to hear from the UK government, and that military recruiters have meanwhile been circling with offers to fight for Russia in Ukraine or for Iranian-backed forces in the Middle East.

The recruitment effort is taking place in Iran, where many former Triples are now living after fleeing the Taliban. Some said they were approached for recruitment initially by contacts within the former Afghan army or security forces over the phone; others said Afghan people smugglers approached them in person. One former army doctor said he got as far as meeting Russians from the embassy in Iranian capital Tehran face-to-face about the recruitment.

Separately, we obtained evidence that Ryan Routh, the man charged with Donald Trump’s attempted assassination, had tried to encourage former Triples to fight for Ukraine against Russia days before he was charged with attempting to assassinate the now president-elect.

While all former Triples we spoke to have turned down the offers as they hold out hope of relocation to the UK, desperation is growing as the Iranian government cranks up pressure on Afghan refugees in the country. Mass deportations and new restrictions have left ex-commandos in fear of being sent back to Afghanistan and into the arms of Taliban, causing them to reconsider offers they had previously rejected.

Afghan special forces personnel in Iran left vulnerable to recruitment in Ukraine War after Britain abandons them

19/11/2024

Satellite imagery analysis reveals that the Kabul Municipality cleared over 1.5 million square metres of land in the Afghan capital between 15 August 2021 and 15 August 2024, leaving thousands of families homeless.

The authorities say they are combating land grabbing, returning displaced communities to their homes and investing in infrastructure projects.

However interviews with residents, humanitarian organisations and urban planning experts reveal a darker side of the development efforts: homes bulldozed with children still inside and vulnerable communities paying the price.

Partners at the Centre for Information Resilience’s Afghan Witness project found a third of the total area of land demolished impacted informal settlements. Typically home to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and displaced Afghans returning from neighbouring countries, these settlements house some of Afghanistan’s poorest communities.

Outside of informal settlements, the investigation found large-scale residential demolitions appeared to be impacting areas that are predominantly home to ethnic minorities. For example, Police District 13, a predominantly Hazara district, lost the largest area of residential homes to demolitions since 2021 compared to other police districts in Kabul.

Mapping the Taliban’s demolitions: the darker side of their development drive

31/10/2024

In this episode of , Beatriz Ramalho da Silva and Tessa Pang talk to investigative reporters Tomas Statius and Elena DeBre. We cover:
- How to cultivate sources
- Three techniques on getting sources to talk
- Tips for new reporters

We talk about all this in the context of two of our latest investigations – the False Promises of Biometrics, that relied solely on source-based evidence to uncover a string of failed mega-deals that benefited DRC elites & left ordinary people with no proof of ID. And Poison PR, which exposed a US government funded campaign from a PR company to profile and target people trying to sound the alarm about the harms of pesticides and GMOs.

Essential skills and techniques on building sources and getting them to open up.

22/10/2024

“Trump comes back in January, I’ll be on his heels … and I will run the biggest deportation force this country has ever seen. They ain’t seen s**t yet. Wait until 2025.”

Tom Homan, the architect of Trump’s family separation policy and his former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), is slated to return under a second Trump administration.

We investigated Homan’s dark money and charity organisations that are spreading propaganda about the US-Mexico border – and profiting from border disinformation.

Our new investigation in partnership Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, the The Texas Observer, Palabra and Puente News Collaborative exposes how these groups may be skirting federal tax law while laying the groundwork for challenges to the election results in November.

Ahead of the US election, the architect of Trump’s family separation policy – slated to return to office if Trump is re-elected – is using border disinformation to lay the groundwork for challenging the election results.

11/10/2024

The EU has funnelled hundreds of millions of euros into a shadowy deportation system operating just outside its borders in Turkey, with Syrian and Afghan refugees detained, abused and even killed as a result.

We found that Syrian and Afghan men, women, and children are being locked in EU-funded removal centres where they face torture and abuse, and then forcibly deported to sometimes deadly conditions – as the EU watches on.

Over the last decade, millions of refugees fleeing persecution from Taliban rule and the ongoing Syrian civil war have sought refuge in Turkey. The EU deems it unsafe to deport Syrians and Afghans back to their home countries, yet makes Turkey a buffer zone to stop them reaching Europe – in return for billions of euros.

In recent years, with the Turkish economy nosediving and anti-refugee sentiment rising, Turkey has stepped up efforts to deport migrants. Hundreds of thousands of Syrians and Afghans have been returned from Turkey. This has been made possible by a vast infrastructure of arrest, detention and expulsion – one of the largest migration detention systems in the world – built and funded by the EU.

An investigation by Lighthouse Reports, in collaboration with El País, DER SPIEGEL, POLITICO, روزنامه اطلاعات روز, SIRAJ - سراج, NRC, L'Espresso and Le Monde, provides an unprecedented look inside this deportation system and how the EU knowingly helped create and sustain it.

The EU has funnelled hundreds of millions of euros into a shadowy deportation system operating just outside its borders in Turkey. Syrian and Afghan refugees have been detained, abused and even killed as a result

30/09/2024

🎙️ New episode of Backlight is out! This month, we discuss mental health in journalism with Bashar Deeb & Juliana Ruhfus from The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma.

We cover coping with traumatic content, protecting sources' wellbeing, and why it's crucial to slow down.

Tips on how to cope with traumatic content and manage stress

09/08/2024

In the Democratic Republic of Congo, long plagued by violence, hunger and unemployment, the absence of a civil registry makes proving who you are into an ordeal.

Citizens have to find workarounds in the struggle to access services, open bank accounts or receive money from relatives abroad. Successive Congolese governments have promised to solve the identity crisis and presented increasingly expensive biometric ID schemes as the solution.

For all the promises, no actual ID system has emerged. When we investigated, what we found instead was a series of complex contracts used to conceal shell companies, secret negotiations and hidden payments.

A glitzy shopping mall is all that materialised from one failed scheme involving Belgian company Semlex. Analysing thousands of pages of unpublished and confidential documents, we found that Semlex boss Albert Karaziwan had approached then DRC president Joseph Kabila in 2014, offering a free citizen’s ID to be subsidised by income from sales of expensive passports, also to be produced by Semlex. After the passport sales began, however, sources told us how money was diverted away from the ID project and into the construction of the Hypnose shopping complex – seen as a safe way for Kabila to store his money.

A second round of ID procurement by new president Felix Tshisekedi resulted in a blockbuster contract valued at $1.2 billion for French vendor Idemia and its local partners. But as civil servants raised the alarm about financial irregularities and the risk of an “enormous scam”, and with the World Bank refusing to fund the project, production of IDs ground to a halt with only Tshisekedi himself and a few hundred VIPs having received them.

An investigation suggests that money intended to create ID cards was leveraged via shell companies to benefit a handful of the country’s elite

01/07/2024

The 2024 EU elections offered a fresh reminder of the rise of the far right and the mainstreaming of wild conspiracy theories. Beyond anti-immigration platforms, much of what unites seemingly fragmented and often contradictory groups in this coming political force is the allure of conspiracy theories.

In search of answers, Lighthouse has been closely analysing the spread of QAnon in Europe, the inculcation of an entirely US-based conspiracy theory about a Satanic plot into local and national political discourse on an entirely different continent. From furious protests in Oxford, England, against the apparently harmless idea of 15-minute cities to a child being kidnapped from social services in Eastern France, QAnon has not only jumped the Atlantic, it has moved offline and into the real world.

Focusing on the intersection of climate conspiracy theories and QAnon, Lighthouse analysed more than 100 million posts on channels associated with Q on Telegram in order to identify the recipe for virality. We found that radical theories spread due to the deft deployment of conventional marketing techniques: exploiting lulls in social media conversation to introduce new topics, boosting traffic by tapping into influencer networks and diversifying revenue streams.

Other tricks are unique to the world of QAnon: sprinkling in keywords that reference traditional QAnon lore to improve the chances that the new theory is ingested into the QAnon metanarrative.

The role of alternative media is to provide raw materials to fuel the conversation on Telegram channels. While traditional media often treats the alt media topics as fringe they also provide valuable oxygen and attention. The long-term success of a local conspiracy theory hinges on it breaking out of domestic QAnon conversations to attain international fame, which in turn fuels local advancement.

Analysis of 100mn conspiracy posts on social media reveals the key ingredients of virality by tracing the mainstream emergence of a climate denial theory

05/06/2024

Some of the world’s poorest countries have been investing heavily in digital ID systems which it is claimed will deliver democratic and development dividends. Africa has been at the forefront of this push supported by the World Bank, UN agencies and the international community. Some of Africa’s most fragile states have been encouraged to spend billions of dollars on biometric systems from national IDs to voting systems.

While Africa has become a lucrative market for multinational tech vendors, the promised benefits of trustworthy election results and a revolutionising of the way that states deliver vital services is far harder to discern.

At the 2024 ID4Africa trade fair in South Africa, the promises kept coming: economic growth, empowering individuals, reducing government spending, enabling trust and being a key tool in solving humanitarian crises.

The conference sponsors include a who’s who of companies that have benefited from contracts meant to confer legitimacy on electoral processes and unlock the potential of Africa’s demographic advantage over other ageing continents.

A legal identity is among the UN’s sustainable development goals, where it is defined as a fundamental human right. The drive to meet this goal has seen near-bankrupt states prioritise the capture and storage of biometric data from iris scans and fingerprints to facial images.

We set out to investigate what has become of the blockbuster deals struck in sub-Saharan Africa. What has actually been delivered? Who has benefited? How have they been financed? And how have people on the ground in those countries been affected?

Three-country investigation shows digital IDs in Africa failing to deliver promised democratic and development boost, while making fortunes for tech vendors

23/05/2024

Farmers' protests across Europe seized headlines and hijacked the political agenda. But once the action moved from the streets to the negotiating table, who spoke for them? We profiled power brokers claiming to represent farmers.

Our findings reveal that a small circle of individuals, far removed from the average farmer, dominate the conversation. They own significantly more land, hold influential positions in Big Ag, and even have stakes in media outlets catering to farmers.

With the EU elections coming and farming topping the agenda for many candidates, we looked at 4 of Europe’s agricultural powerhouses: France, Germany, Poland and Italy. Stories will be published over the next week.

In France, we partnered with Splann - Lanceur d'enquêtes to examine leaders of the FNSEA – the dominant union in French farming. They hold positions spanning from public health to environmental policy and agricultural press, which, our interviews suggest, stifles democratic representation.

Thanks to the team who worked on this Thin Lei Win, Marianne Kerfriden, Elena DeBre, Julie Lallouët-Geffroy, Tessa Pang and Emmanuel Freudenthal. Stay tuned for more stories coming out over the next week.

Angry farmers seized the political agenda across Europe but how many of their actual demands reached the negotiating table? We profile the power brokers who turned protests to their advantage

22/05/2024

Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of Black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU.

Funds for these desert dumps have been paid under the guise of “migration management” with the EU claiming that the money doesn't support human rights abuses against sub-Saharan African communities in North Africa. Brussels claims publicly that it closely monitors how this money is spent. But the reality is different.

In a year-long investigation with the Washington Post, ENASS, DER SPIEGEL, El País, IrpiMedia, ARD Mediathek & Das Erste, inkyfada and Le Monde, we reveal that Europe knowingly funds, and in some instances is directly involved in systematic racial profiling detention and expulsion of Black communities across at least three North African countries.

Our findings show that in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, refugees and migrant workers, some of whom were on their way towards Europe, as well as people who had legal status and established livelihoods in these countries, are apprehended based on the colour of their skin, loaded onto buses and driven to the middle of nowhere, often arid desert areas.

There, they are left without any assistance, water or food, leaving them at risk of kidnapping, extortion, torture, sexual violence, and, in the worst instances, death. Others are taken to border areas where they are reportedly sold by the authorities to human traffickers and gangs who torture them for ransom.

This investigation amounts to the most comprehensive attempt yet to document European knowledge and involvement with anti-migrant, racially motivated operations in North Africa. It exposes how not only has this system of mass displacement and abuse been known about in Brussels for years, but that it is run thanks to money, vehicles, equipment, intelligence and security forces provided by the EU and European countries.

Europe supports, finances and is directly involved in clandestine operations in North African countries to dump tens of thousands of Black people in the desert or remote areas each year to prevent them from coming to the EU

Lighthouse Reports

16/06/2025

05/12/2024

19/11/2024

31/10/2024

22/10/2024

11/10/2024

30/09/2024

09/08/2024

01/07/2024

05/06/2024

23/05/2024

22/05/2024

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