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Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.
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Some of the removals are likely due to a legitimate concern of private individuals unknowingly having their phone numbers or other personal information posted to the contracting sites and asking for that to be removed. But instead of just deleting or altering that data, the site is removing the listings in their entirety, meaning that the government is ultimately being less transparent around technologies it is purchasing."Transparency of federal spending ensures that taxpayer dollars are spent wisely. While there are timing delays and completeness problems with federal spending data, the public deserves to see what the federal government is buying and for how much, and Congress should be enhancing spending transparency laws so that we have a more complete picture," Scott Amey, general counsel at watchdog group the Project on Government Oversight, told Motherboard in an email.Coinbase told Motherboard that a party acting on the company's behalf did reach out to Tech Inquiry, a site that mirrors the FPDS data, about exposed personal information. Jack Poulson who runs Tech Inquiry showed Motherboard emails related to this request. Coinbase said it did not know if it asked FPDS for a removal as well."Our client, Coinbase, has discovered an incorrect phone number being displayed on the following URL," an email from cybersecurity firm RiskIQ to Poulson reads.The FBI and the General Services Administration (GSA) which maintains the FPDS declined to comment.Subscribe to our new cybersecurity podcast, CYBER.Do you know about any other hacking tools the U.S. government is buying? We’d love to hear from you. Using a non-work phone or computer, you can contact Joseph Cox securely on Signal on +44 20 8133 5190, Wickr on josephcox, OTR chat on jfcox@jabber.ccc.de, or email joseph.cox@vice.com.