What's Happening With Appin: The Censorship of Threat Intelligence

The panel examined Appin, an Indian hacker-for-hire firm that grew out of an educational startup and sold espionage services to private investigators, corporations and others, including lawyers. A Reuters investigative reporter drew on thousands of documents, including pitch materials, to trace the company's history, its spin-off subsidiaries and its links to cases in several countries.

After the November 2023 article, a New Delhi court ordered Reuters to remove it, and lawyers tied to Appin then pressed other outlets to take down their own coverage. The requests reached the New Yorker, the Internet Archive, several podcasts and a security research firm, and many recipients complied. The speakers argued that fear and the cost of fighting legal threats push organizations toward compliance, while MuckRock refused to take its story down.

Distributed Denial of Secrets responded with its Greenhouse Project, mirroring the removed reporting and its source documents so others could cross-reference them. EFF described helping defend targeted outlets. The speakers warned that using a foreign order to suppress threat research endangers free speech and the defenders who rely on public reporting. They noted that continued coverage and the Streisand effect helped keep the story alive while the litigation was still ongoing.