Reuters sinks to new low and doesn't even bother Googling for its "exclusive" on Wozniak's Privateer buying Orbital Insight

All-Source Intelligence exclusively reported Privateer's planned merger of Orbital Insight more than six months ago.

The second slide of Orbital Insight’s presentation to SATIF on September 7, 2023, which lays out the company’s four major ongoing government contracts and suggests that the “Harmonious Rook” contract monitoring GPS interference is likely to be folded into the company’s Broad Ordering Agreement (BOA) through the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA).

More than six months ago, this publication broke news of Steve Wozniak’s space monitoring startup Privateer entering an agreement to acquire the failing space surveillance company Orbital Insight. In addition to publishing audio recordings from an entire Orbital investor meeting discussing the company’s secret dependence upon a surveillance contract with Indonesia’s State Intelligence Agency — codenamed “Project Alpha” — former Orbital CEO Kevin O’Brien threatened a lawsuit in an attempt to prevent the publication.

As of today, Orbital’s homepage confirms the acquisition, which this publication dedicated numerous articles to.

Since the exposure of Project Alpha and Orbital’s collapse from a $200 million valuation down to just $20 million, Mr. O’Brien has jumped ship to the blockchain surveillance company Chainalysis, while former Chief Technology Officer Matt Falk — who largely ran Project Alpha — moved to Zeitview, which was formerly known as DroneBase. The merger was intermediated by Aero X Ventures, which led Privateer’s Series A fundraising round.

According to a former employee of Orbital with direct knowledge, Project Alpha involved the active surveillance of West Papuans, through largescale wiretapping of cellphone locations in partnership with Singapore’s Grandrich Corporation. But you will not learn such details from Orbital’s press release, which was laundered as an exclusive through Reuters. In fact, Privateer literally advertised the Reuters article as part of its press release.

A sure sign of objective journalism, and definitely not blatantly rebranded corporate public relations.

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