A few years prior to the outbreak of the war with Russia, a number of Ukrainians began downloading an app onto their phones, hoping to earn a little money. The app, called Premise Data, was a global gig-working platform not all that different from TaskRabbit or Handy.
Founded in 2012, Premise had been originally designed as a way for organizations to collect good-quality data on the prices of consumer goods in the developing world. The app, based in San Francisco, had a globally distributed workforce of hundreds of thousands of freelance contributors, all using their smartphones to collect data — usually examining the price of food or other goods, answering surveys and taking photographs.
Premise’s website touted its work with international development organizations like USAID or the Gates Foundation, and corporate clients like Bloomberg and Google. However, everything was not as it seemed. Premise did have corporate and nongovernmental organizations as clients, but in recent years, it had pivoted toward taking on more work from the intelligence and defense agencies of the U.S. government.