[HN Gopher] Israel police uses NSO's Pegasus to spy on citizens ___________________________________________________________________ Israel police uses NSO's Pegasus to spy on citizens Author : idoco Score : 231 points Date : 2022-01-18 08:15 UTC (14 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.calcalistech.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.calcalistech.com) | Barrin92 wrote: | People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather | than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern | intelligence sector that describes Israel. With all the concerns | about 'Military-civil fusion ' as it's called in China or Russia | I always found it funny that Israel might as well be the country | that has merged both spheres most successfully but nobody really | seems to care at all. | jonny_eh wrote: | Did you mean "Prussia was an army with a country" or "Russia is | an army with a country"? | Seattle3503 wrote: | Prussia. There was a period of time in history when Prussia | was known for its very militaristic culture. | [deleted] | jonny_eh wrote: | Got it. I was confused because I didn't catch that they | were talking about the past. | samstave wrote: | The venn diag of israel seems to be: | | Military -- Government -- Corporate/tech -- Religions <-- All | encapsulated under the intel umbrella. | | All seem to be seamlessly aligned within Israel.. | | -- | | I mean this is basically what all governments strive for, just | that Israel has turned it into an art+science. | | The amount of amazing technical innovation that comes from | israel is quite stunning. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | Nah, you need to modify the diagram to take Religions out. | The religious establishment considers the military, corporate | sector, and non-parliamentary government agencies to be | captive to "the seculars", which they basically consider to | be evil and devoted to destroying religion. We seculars, in | contrast, think we mostly just don't want to give the | religious big heaps of free money. | mateo1 wrote: | A lot of people voice their concerns, including a lot of | Israelis, but what can you do? Israel is a democracy and the | majority votes for far right militaristic candidates and | parties. Whether or not you hear about these concerns in public | discourse in your country's media depends on your current | foreign policy. | terr-dav wrote: | It's a democracy of the first-class citizens only. Don't | forget it's an apartheid state! | snird wrote: | This is a lie, and you have an agenda. | | The "United Arab List" is part of the current government | (!) not of the parliament, but the government itself that | is formed. Representing many Arabs. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Arab_List | | Anyone who repeats the lie of "apartheid" is either | malinformed, or has some antisemitic agenda to pro | bobbylarrybobby wrote: | Even if someone were unfairly anti-Israel, why would that | imply they're also antisemitic? | snird wrote: | voz_ wrote: | This is not grounded in reality. Arab citizens can vote and | participate, and there are Arab parties in Israeli | government. If you want to see an apartheid, go look at any | other country in the middle east. Let's see how Jewish | representation looks there...? | kome wrote: | you forgot about palestine. | gambiting wrote: | If I can quote someone else for putting it much better | than I would: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_ | afr... | | "Israel is the nation state of Jews alone" Netanyahu | responds to TV star saying Arabs are equal citizens | (2019): | | source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium- | israel-is-the-n... | tsimionescu wrote: | Many countries in the Middle East are islamic | theocracies, so they limit religious freedom by their | very constitution. However, even in Iran, a person of | Jewish heritage who converts to Islam should not have any | (official legal) barriers to entry in political life. In | a country ruled by a church, that seems relatively | reasonable. | yonixw wrote: | Yep, like that disgusting incident on 2005 where they gave | up their land... and their control... they are the worst. | Who else is at fault to what happened in Gaza? The | apartheid of curse. Disgusting! | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli_disengagement_from_Ga | z... | ak39 wrote: | Have they given up West Bank yet? | gambiting wrote: | Here's a massive list of crimes that Israel is quilty of, | with sources, for your perusal: | | https://www.reddit.com/r/list_palestine/comments/l43xgk/m | ega... | yonixw wrote: | You do know this is a Conflict? Never denied both parties | are fighting. Here is of course the counter list [1]. But | while I'm just against the commenter one-siding of the | situation. You are trying to make it a one-side crime | again... which again... very wrong. Here is a quote just | to show how not one sided it is: | | [1] "... A February 2008 suicide bombing that killed one | Israeli woman in Dimona was supported by 77% and opposed | by 19%" | | [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_political_v | iolence... | tsimionescu wrote: | How many people have been killed by Palestinians in | Israel since, say, 2011 (the last ten years?) How many | has Israel killed in Palestine in the same time frame? | | I will not even go into the difference between lone | gunmen and state-sanctioned killings. Let's accept that | any Palestinian killing an Isareli should be treated the | same as an officer of the Israeli military or police, | acting in their official capacity, killing a Palestinian. | Even so, which way has the balance turned in the last | 10-20 years? | yonixw wrote: | According to the UN (since 1/1/10): [1] x18 in favor of | Israelis... 220-vs-4032. Most of the Palestinians (3000) | were killed in Gaza. Which bring me back to my original | point. Israel gave Gaza control to the Palestinians in | 2005 only to wake up the next year to find Hamas taking | control and later starting to shoot rockets at Israeli | civilians. All the power and support they gain only | mounted to terror. | | I will acknowledge Israel is stronger. But I also | acknowledge what happens in Gaza is 85% due to the Hamas | terroristic organization being terroristic. How the hell | does that even imply Israel as an apartheid. Who knows. | | Is the fact the Egypt also closes the border with Gaza, | Make them also an apartheid state? I guess the problem | here is not Israel. | | [1] https://www.ochaopt.org/data/casualties | markdown wrote: | LOL, you write about one Israeli dying? Is that a joke? | Palestinians get slaughtered on a monthly basis, by | snipers and indiscriminate bombing. | | Some random terrorist killing one Israeli (by sacrificing | his own life) can't be compared to Israeli government | snipers doing the bidding of the Israeli people (it's a | democracy after all). | yonixw wrote: | 1) You didn't open the link... now did you? | | 2) "sacrificing his own life" what a poetic gesture ... | never thought of a terrorist bomb suiciding as such a | beautiful act. | mysterEFrank wrote: | This blames Israel for 9/11, what a joke. | terr-dav wrote: | Does it? | | >(32) 5 Israelis working for an Israeli Company "Urban | Moving" were arrested on 9/11 after being seen | "documenting" (their own words during an Israeli | interview) and celebrating the attack on the WTC. Owner | of the company, Dominik Suter, fled to Israel after the | incident. His name appeared on the May 2002 FBI Suspect | List, along with the 9/11 hijackers and other suspected | extremists. Israel has yet to extradiate him (2001): | alphakilo wrote: | All Israelis have equal rights, why do you say Israel an | apartheid state? | terr-dav wrote: | All people residing in Israel do not have equal rights. | Why do you think they have equal rights? | ciphol wrote: | That's true in every country. Citizens and noncitizens | have unequal rights. | terr-dav wrote: | Haha, what a huge oversight on my part, of course | citizens and non-citizens have different rights. | | One of the legal principles of Israel is: | | > The right to exercise national self-determination in | the State of Israel is unique to the Jewish people. [0] | | There's also a legal path from citizenship to legal- | residency, which I would surmise is used almost | exclusively on non-Jewish citizens, as well as the | blanket permission for all Jewish people (and no one | else) to become citizens of Israel. | | [0]https://www.timesofisrael.com/final-text-of-jewish- | nation-st... | odiroot wrote: | [Citation needed] | | That's a very bold claim. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | Maybe if they let us call it left-wing to have literally any | politics other than unilateral surrender to the people still | at war with us (even as we achieve normalization with more | and more countries!), we'd vote more left-wing. | saiya-jin wrote: | Its a bit easier for Israel - if you are an outsider (99.9% | of mankind) and dare criticize it anyhow, you are quickly | marked either a) antisemitic or b) supporting islamic | terrorism, or some mix of those. Nobody wants to touch that | with 10 foot pole in woke era. | wolverine876 wrote: | > Its a bit easier for Israel - if you are an outsider | (99.9% of mankind) and dare criticize it anyhow, you are | quickly marked either a) antisemitic or b) supporting | islamic terrorism, or some mix of those. Nobody wants to | touch that with 10 foot pole in woke era. | | I don't know about that connection with 'wokeness'. | Progressives are frequently tagged as anti-semitic for | criticizing Israel. | p1necone wrote: | Don't blame this on "wokeness", being pro Israel at least | in the USA is a right wing thing, at least from my | perspective as an outsider. | wolverine876 wrote: | > being pro Israel at least in the USA is a right wing | thing, at least from my perspective as an outsider. | | There are a few things going on: Jewish Americans vote | overwhelmingly for Democrats, there is a powerful (and | loud) conservative pro-Israel lobby, and hardline | conservative Christians overwhelmingly support Israel - | likely Israel's most powerful American constituency. | rowathay wrote: | US citizen here, and you are correct. The farther left | you go, the more anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic sentiment | you'll find. | p1necone wrote: | No, that's not what I meant at all. Being opposed to | Israel and the impact they have on their neighbours !== | being antisemitic. | | It's my understanding that pro-Israeli sentiment on the | right is somewhat rooted in antisemitism in the first | place. They _love_ the idea of Jews having their own | country away from everyone else. | | Besides, the whole Q conspiracy wing currently taking | over the American right is blatantly antisemitic. | arminiusreturns wrote: | Maybe in the people, but AIPAC is the most feared lobby | group across both sides of the isle for politicians. | Russiagate is a joke compared to how much influence they | have on our foreign policy, and its a travesty that their | activities and heavy-handed influence is spoken of so | quietly if at all. | | Signed, Iraq war vet (it was more for Israels interests | than ours!) | yyyk wrote: | >Signed, Iraq war vet (it was more for Israels interests | than ours!) | | That would be odd way of serving the Israeli interest, as | the actual Israeli government opposed the Iraq war and | thought it would be bad for Israel: | | https://forward.com/opinion/9839/sharon-warned-bush/ | woodruffw wrote: | Please do not conflate opposition to the Israeli state | with anti-Jewishness. There are millions of diaspora Jews | living in the US who do not accept that conflation and | are not fans of Israel. | yyyk wrote: | Note how nobody in the comments has mentioned a) or b) | _except_ those 'critical' of Israel, and how 'nobody wants | to touch that' accurately describes how every thread about | NSO has the same Israel-Arab conflict comments. | | Furthermore, if we look at these past related threads, we | can almost always find some person with the same opinions | crying victim before anything has been said. | | This absurd victimhood - one that places some imaginary | nonexistent hurt to some outsider before _either_ side 's | actual hurt - describes very effectively the mentality and | connection to reality of those 'critical' voices. | woodruffw wrote: | It's a bad situation: we don't currently have a good litmus | test for good-faith criticisms of Israel (of which there | are an overwhelming number) versus treatments of Israel as | coextensive with and the mouthpiece of the Jewish diaspora | (which it certainly isn't). The former is righteous | criticism; the latter is gussied up antisemitism. | | Edit: and, to be absolutely clear, it is in Israel's | continued interest for us to _not_ have a good litmus test | for the two. I believe that most international messaging | and the intentional obfuscation of Israeli foreign policy | behind Jewish identity demonstrates that keeping the two | murky is a continued policy goal of Israel 's leadership. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | IMHO, it's hard to come up with a litmus test because | both sides of the debate kinda like the standard motte- | and-bailey structure of "criticisms of Israel". In fact, | not only are the arguments often motte-and-baileys, | there's often a _super-bailey_ , a bailey for the bailey | that basically invokes some kind of "I win either way" | gotcha. For example: | | Motte: Israel's use of Palestinian "guest workers" who | have no opportunity to participate in either a robust | Palestinian economy or a neighboring Arab economy, even | when those workers receive the Israeli minimum wage or | higher, does fit into an analogy to the treatment of | black South Africans under apartheid as captive cheap | labor. If Israel wants to avoid being subjected to this | analogy, it should simply stop exploiting Palestinian | labor this way. | | Bailey: Israel is an apartheid state, and _not_ | exploiting Palestinian labor would just be _covering it | up_. The only way for Israel to stop being an apartheid | state is to stop being Jewish-Israeli: dissolve itself | into a single state of Palestine ruled by its natural | Arab majority. | | Super-bailey: Israel is so apartheid, white-supremacist, | and settler-colonial that _not_ exploiting Palestinian | labor, were it possible or even implemented at some point | in existing history, would only make it _more racist_ | (see: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/10/kibbutz-labor- | zionism-ber...). Israel owes these jobs to the | Palestinians, as a precursor to the genocide reparations | it will pay when it dissolves itself into a single state | of Palestine ruled by its natural Arab majority. | | So yeah. The people who could _just_ lay down the motte | as a serious moral charge _don 't want to_. They want the | bailey, or preferably the super-bailey. Likewise, the | people who could just _admit to_ the motte and _fix the | problem_ are assured that, were they to actually do so, | the goalposts would only be moved to the bailey. Then the | bailey will be moved to the super-bailey. | woodruffw wrote: | Who could have guessed that one of the world's oldest | ethnoreligious territorial debates could be so pernicious | ;)? | | I agree with your analysis: it's very easy to play the | trump card at the onset and rest safely knowing that your | position is insurmountable. Argumentatively, it's the | equivalent of two opposing armies refusing to leave their | respective high grounds to get down to the dirty business | of war (or peace, in this case). | | I am not an Israeli and I have never been to Israel, so | I'll spare the world from another opinion on how to solve | the problem. It is only my perspective, as a diaspora | Jew, that many of Israel's actions _qua sovereign state_ | are not defensible on the basic plane of human rights. | WaxProlix wrote: | I think there's a bit of distance between that motte and | the initial ("standard") bailey. It isn't just the status | of 'guest worker's but also the ongoing asymmetric | violence, theft & active bulldozing of homes, | harassment/hacking of activists' phones, military | checkpoints & other core indicators of an occupied land, | etc. | | I heard someone point out that Israel can't help but kill | children in Palestine because the median age there is 20. | Like what do you even say to something like that? The | conversation is just totally hosed at this point. | | I think you're right though in a lot of ways - critics of | Israel tend to fall into a trap of over-exaggeration | which does their arguments no favors in some highly | educated circles. Subtlety doesn't spread fervor though, | and I don't think it's ever toppled regimes. | ars wrote: | Reminds me of when the IDF was criticized for not raping | Palestinians: | https://whyevolutionistrue.com/2017/02/17/israeli-army- | veter... | maratc wrote: | > dare criticize it anyhow, you are quickly marked either | a) antisemitic | | I don't think this is a good representation of anti-anti- | Israel debate. | | The opposite of antisemitism is equality, where there is no | "special" treatment of either Jews or Israel. Anyone can | criticize Israel for its policies, provided they also | criticize other states that have similar policies and not | "single out" Israel as such. If only Israel is criticized | for certain policies and other states aren't, this brings | up the question of inequality. This may be perceived a sort | of thinly-veiled antisemitism. | efdee wrote: | But isn't that just a roundabout way of describing | whataboutism? | yonixw wrote: | Whataboutism has its limits. When the far left, | specifically Tankies, and left communities online, are | literally being China apologists while calling Israel a | genocide-apartheid-colonial country... you kind of know | the logic fallacies are the other way around. | p1necone wrote: | That's just 'What about China', with a sprinkling of | assuming that the entire left is one homogeneous group. | (They're not, and most of the left makes fun of tankies | too.) | yonixw wrote: | No, Because you can simply answer "China bad too, so back | to you..". If you can't say it, welp, we got you, It's | not the Israel government\policies you hate... | tsimionescu wrote: | Can you point any fingers? I have not heard any of the | positions you mention from any leftist place I frequent - | not from Jacobin, not from leftist YouTube, not from any | member of "the squad" or any other leftist member of | Congress. Who exactly are you accusing of being anti- | Israel but pro-China? | jacobolus wrote: | It's pretty absurd to declare that "tankies" (presumably | meaning "Western European communist party members who | explicitly supported the Soviet subjugation of Eastern | Europe") is co-extensive with "the far left", when most | of the left considered Soviet foreign policy abhorrent. | | Beyond that, here in the USA, I don't know anyone who I | would consider both a "China apologist" and a "leftist" | ("far" or otherwise) - China has not been anything | remotely resembling socialist for at least a generation, | and the China apologists I know all vote GOP (or would if | they could vote). | | Unless by "apologist" you just mean "has a low | expectation that China's political system is going to | collapse or radically democratize in the near future, and | thinks that some level of economic and diplomatic | engagement is necessary despite China's human rights | record". | p1necone wrote: | In modern parlance 'Tankie' is generally used to refer to | people on the left who support authoritarian governments. | (see second paragraph in definition section: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tankie#Definition) | | So yeah basically the intersection of "left wing" and | "thinks the Chinese government is great" (which as you | point out is not a particularly large group of people, at | least in the USA). | vkou wrote: | > Beyond that, here in the USA, I don't know anyone who I | would consider both a "China apologist" | | Depending on who you're talking to, the bar to become a | "China apologist" is not very high. | p1necone wrote: | Israel gets singled out because it's a (very) close US | ally and therefore _should_ be under more criticism than | the average country. | james-redwood wrote: | I fail to see how Bennett is far right in any sense of the | word. Conservative yes, but the far right is inhabited by nut | jobs like Smotrich and Ben Gvir. Whether you define support | for an active military as militaristic versus actually taking | aggressive military action is also another issue - they | cannot be militaristic if you accept the second definition. | wolverine876 wrote: | Isn't Bennett's big issue, for most of his political | career, seizing the West Bank? He and his political party | have been routinely described as far right. | | We could define 'far' relatively, and say there are people | further right, but I think the word stops being meaningful | at that point. | tsimionescu wrote: | There are few countries on Earth that have (a) directly | officially threatened military action against another | state, or (b) routinely bomb another state they are not | officially at war with, the way Israel has. How are they | not "taking aggressive military action"? | eli_gottlieb wrote: | > (b) routinely bomb another state they are not | officially at war with | | In what sense are we not officially at war with | Palestine? Nobody ever signed an armistice, ceasefire, or | peace deal to end the War of 1948. Nobody even wants to. | The official policies of both the PLO and Hamas remain | "struggle until victory". There are internal political | reasons for this that any knowledgeable person can | describe, but as far as anyone who lacks inside influence | is concerned, that's their policy and they're sticking to | it. | tsimionescu wrote: | > In what sense are we not officially at war with | Palestine? | | In the literal sense. The territories that form Palestine | and the West Bank today were part of Egypt and Jordan | before the six-day war. Israel occupied these territories | during the war, then signed peace treaties with the | countries it defeated. The three Arab countries | (including Syria) attempted to recapture their | territories again in 1973, but failed, and peace treaties | were again signed between all four countries involved. | | In the meantime, people living in the territories | occupied by the Israeli military forces continued their | fight for freedom, as all occupied people do. They made | some strides in this direction with the Oslo accords, | where they gained official recognition as a separate | country under their own authority. | | While open hostility existed on both sides since the | beginning, there has never been an official war | declaration between the PLO and Israel. Both have been | routinely attacking and killing civilians and destroying | infrastructure in each other's country forma long time - | though Israel now has a vast upper hand and the killing | and destruction has become more and more one sided | against the people of Palestine. | underdeserver wrote: | I think you are grossly overestimating the interconnectedness | of it all. Yes the defense sector is large. NSO employs what, | 300 people? The Israeli tech sector as a whole employs about a | million, including tens of thousands working for Microsoft, | Nvidia, Intel, Google, Apple, Amazon, IBM, Oracle, Facebook, | Dropbox among others. | | The cloak and dagger people are a drop in the bucket. | myth_drannon wrote: | Yes, like Rafael and Elbit are x100 bigger and are more high- | tech but all eyes are on bottom of the barrel 0 day exploits | company. | ogogmad wrote: | Can Israelis take the matter to court? | compsciphd wrote: | https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-693834 | shmatt wrote: | Once the method exists. i'd just assume its everywhere | | We know about Pegasus/NSO and its a fun subject to follow, but in | all honesty, every engineer privy to the 0-day bank that powers | it could build one of their own, or sell it to another group, and | no one would know | samstave wrote: | Imagine some group that duplicates Pegasus/NSO -- compromises | it but sells it AS Pegasus/NSO to unsuspecting, less-savvy | nation-states and effectively uses /IT/ to infiltrate/backdoor | the intelligence/LEO ops of said customer state... | | Or is that what Pegasus/NSO basically already provide, as a | feature? | beckman466 wrote: | > Or is that what Pegasus/NSO basically already provide, as a | feature? | | considering shell are mainly used for deeply corrupt ends, | this isn't a far stretch. similarly, things that _seem_ like | duopolies today might well be revealed to be monopolies _in | reality_ if actual ownership records became public. i imagine | the false public perception of a market that has fair | competition is very valuable as it maintains the illusion of | choice. similarly, regarding spying by USA; i imagine Crypto | AG was /isn't the only CIA front. | arminiusreturns wrote: | Anyone interested in this should lookup the PROMIS scandal, | which involved Ghislane Maxwell's father Robert Maxwell. | samstave wrote: | And dont forget to look into the Maxwell Twins - the | sisters of Ghislane --> They made initial DB software for | the intel community for "tracking financial fraud" and | other tracking... | | They sold this to .gov and supposedly it was in use in the | early '00s - and it provided ostensibly access to tracking | financial and human trafficking data.. | | Think of it as a precurser to palantir and such - and there | was a bunch of shady shit around this. | | Here is just one sketchy story about it: | | https://oye.news/news/world-news/epstein-the-maxwell- | sisters... | | but apparently they made counter-terrorism software and | that this software was in use in the US intel comm and that | it was also compromised... | | Regardless of the truth of how it was used - the fact that | the most notorious human trafficking/blackmailing operation | yet exposed was directly related to providing counter- | terrorism software to the USG is.... interesting. | | Google the maxwell twins. | encryptluks2 wrote: | This should surprise no one since the spyware was developed by | Israeli intelligence agencies. | stefan_ wrote: | Domestic police working with intelligence services is called | secret police, e.g. the _Gestapo_. | rougka wrote: | lol, you really went straight to the hyperbole | myth_drannon wrote: | It was not, no matter how the company tries to market itself to | foreign clients. Israeli intel has more important work to do | than develop software to spy on journalists and others persons | of interest for big ego dictators. | encryptluks2 wrote: | Like killing Palestinian children and spying and infiltrating | other nations governments? | | Mossad has a history of contracting out private services as | well. Psy-Group was just one of many for example. | myth_drannon wrote: | Yes, thats Mossad's day to day ops - using Palestinian | children's blood in matzos for Passover. | beepbooptheory wrote: | Really curious what, even on their terms, is the more | important work. | myth_drannon wrote: | Stuxnet and the likes. | samstave wrote: | If we learned nothing from STUXNET/DUQU.... Israel has | literally the most advanced capabilities in this area that we | are aware of... | | I mean - do you recall, as a part of the Snowden leaks, there | was a small amount of information that came out that there was | some channel/mechanism by which israel was effectively given a | firehose of data from the collective five-eyes... | | I don't quite recall the details, but it was a revelation | because via that firehose they were getting more data than was | thought to be 'allowed'/previously known... | selimthegrim wrote: | It wasn't just on Palestinian-Americans? | samstave wrote: | AFAIR: It was _supposed_ to be limited to some sort of | agreed hose... but it was revealed that they were getting | the full blast... | jrochkind1 wrote: | So it would be like domestic law enforcement (the FBI? state | patrol?) using NSA-developed spyware, secretly, without court | orders, against US citizens, including protestors. | | Whether this should surprise you I guess depends on your | worldview; whether it should alarm or disturb you, especially | if you are an Israeli or in Israel, I guess depends on your | view of individual rights and the police. | wswope wrote: | > So it would be like domestic law enforcement (the FBI? | state patrol?) using NSA-developed spyware, secretly, without | court orders, against US citizens, including protestors. | | In the US, we already have police using Stingray interceptors | without warrants (and in a similar vein but less problematic, | sweeping dragnet warrants issued to cell providers), which | are _slightly_ less invasive, but relatively comparable in | terms of abuse potential. | | https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy- | technology/surveillance-... | cheeze wrote: | Yes, it's like this. But in general, Mossad and Isreali | intelligence have done whatever they wanted with no | repercussions for a long time now. This is, IMO, nothing new. | eli_gottlieb wrote: | I certainly don't like it, but I'm not surprised by it. I | sort of have to file it under people voting for the Leopards | Eating Faces Party getting terribly shocked and appalled when | the leopard eats their face. | | Like yeah, you jerks all said it was "smolani masriach boged" | (stinking traitor lefty) to not vote for transparently sleazy | political parties and their STRONG LEADER. Well, I stuck with | my stinking lefty treason and now your guy is facing jail | time and _my_ party are in charge of the Health Ministry | tackling vaccine distribution. _So there._ | suifbwish wrote: | Faraday pockets | myth_drannon wrote: | It's more like police using Palantir or Clearview AI | ummonk wrote: | It's nothing like that. Neither of those hack into people's | phones. | | Edit: I guess you're pointing out that the spyware was | developed by a private company rather than the Israeli | equivalent of the NSA, which is true. | xbar wrote: | Is it? I do not know anything about Israeli | "Federal/State/County/Municipal" law enforcement | jurisdictions to agree or disagree. | excuses_ wrote: | In Poland there was a sort of similar story. Politicians from the | opposition, lawyers, "difficult" prosecutors have been spied. A | few days ago a special commission started investigation but it | consists only from opposition politicians. The ruling far-right | party pretends this topic does not exist. It's a farce. | teluride5 wrote: | [deleted] | dang wrote: | Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. Last | thing we need here. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | teluride5 wrote: | Sure, though can you explain how pointing out hypocrisy is | nationalistic? Nobody is saying either country is better or | worse. | JumpCrisscross wrote: | The "here" matters, here. If it's America or Europe, then yes, | Poland is part of NATO and the EU. Its decisions impact its | partners. And if it's invaded, coalition blood will be spilled. | Mutual defence means a common interest in being worth fighting | for. Add to that Warsaw's belligerence on multiple political | fronts, and the criticism is unsurprising. | | More pointedly, this is current news. How are you already | judging reactions? | golemiprague wrote: | chews wrote: | "In other cases, NSO's spyware was installed in the phone of | citizens to try to find and collect data and information that | isn't necessarily connected to an investigation or suspicions but | simply for investigators to use this data later on as a means of | pressure on people being interrogated." | | aka Blackmail | Terry_Roll wrote: | And anyone who thinks their own country isnt doing the same is | deluded! The Security Services has to protect a country which | means getting involved in everything, organised crime as well | as business, and then when they feel things need to change | direction, the security services have the tools aka blackmail | information to make that change happen... in most cases! | sebow wrote: | Can we stop pretending like Pegasus is not virtually | everywhere?If it's not Pegasus is another tool, worse or better, | foreign or domestic, from NSA,CIA,etc.Who exactly cares which | entity does it as long as it's happening and laws & principles | are being broken? | | Vault7 was the first leak de facto proving these things existed, | why the f#ck are we still surprised now, almost 5 years later, | that these things are being used and there is a market here | opened for politicians,private individuals, governments, etc.? | | Awareness is good, but who(or better said: what institutions, | what parties, etc) are you seeing advocating for more privacy, | security, transparency in software and hardware, etc? | | I will go one step further here beyond the simple "more privacy, | security,etc." rhetoric, which i'm sure every HN user has heard | to the point of ears bleeding, and I hate to say this but one | cannot fully understand something until either s/he makes it, he | hacks it(for the purpose of at least understanding) or becomes | subject to the tool's effects.Far too many times people use | something without even reading the TOS, let alone understanding | the mechanisms behind the technology.At this point i have little | sympathy for people who do not take the time and putting in the | work of understanding a technology >for their own benefit<. | | Because nobody who is at least semi-literate in this field was | born with the knowledge, and while arguably it's our duty to | point less knowledgeable people to inform themselves, we cannot | tire ourselves to death by promoting (or allowing others who | promote) this "usable-first, hussle-free, happy jolly" tech | ecosystem and then also act surprised when the masses don't have | a f*cking clue what's going on, because effectively we trained | humans to become dumb monkeys with a smartphone, arguably worse. | throwaw10293847 wrote: | Comment from duplicate submission: | | Some of the companies in the field, in contrast to NSO, do have | ethics committees to filter out obviously bad clients. Once when | guidelines were described to engineers a question was asked: | Would Israel itself pass the ethics committee check? | | The answer was "No. But..." | Sahbak wrote: | You can argue about it's effectiveness, but NSO does have an | ethics committee. | james-redwood wrote: | Could you source that anecdote? | detcader wrote: | The Israeli government and former government ministers also fund | propaganda orgs on American soil, CAMERA and Hasbara Fellowships | to name two. You could even say that every US election has been | compromised by well-funded, successful foreign propaganda | operations since at least 1982! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-01-18 23:00 UTC)