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Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

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Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#91
post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I understand is that nobody should fear a state monopoly on violence more than the left. What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

>nobody should fear a state monopoly on violence more than the left This is your opinion only. >What I don't understand is why they don't understand that. Perhaps that's because you don't understand "the left" which is of course no more a monolithic, uniform entity than "the right". It's almost like politics is full of nuance, and issuing blanket statements like the above just simply doesn't work unless you're talkin…

[deleted]

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#92
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone and word choice in this post throws into stark relief the enormity of what you don't understand about left-leaning people.

What I understand is that nobody should fear a state monopoly on violence more than the left. What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

>What I don't understand is why they don't understand that.

Propaganda. Miseducation. Appeals to emotion. The usual totalitarian work. But don't think these tactics only work on the "left". We're all being played.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#93
On a similar note, back when cell phones were just getting started, I started parsing the ownership of the cell towers. I noticed an unusually high correlation of Israeli companies owning them (back before the phone companies themselves really started investing in them). Now think about the purpose of an imsi catcher/stingray. The Israelis seem to be on the edge of cybersecurity across the board. I know while in Iraq I got lots of training that was decidely sourced from Israel too.

All that being said, Israel is also known as being just as active if not moreso than Russia and China in their espionage against the US. I think that's also worth considering.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#94
post #22

I wonder if they can crack devices that haven't been booted. Many of the newer smartphones encrypt data and require a password on boot.

Too bad Google made the boot password the same as the screen unlock password. Since virtually everyone wants to be able to quickly unlock their phone, this makes security a Hobson's choice.

Fingerprint readers seem to solve that problem. Booting the phone requires the secure password, but after that a fingerprint will suffice until the phone is powered off or left locked for 24 hours.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#95
post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know where to start. Do you have any sources on your first claim? Or on your other claims? Also, gun control costs elections that would otherwise be won handily? With so much going on on this last election, do you think the barely discussed topic of gun control was the single most important topic to blame for an election that could otherwise have been won, and won handily ? Would you have Hillary be agai…

I don't even know where to start. But you're going to anyway, right? Do you have any sources on your first claim? I'm not your personal reference librarian, but you might start with a few of the more reader-friendly popular accounts and see where your interests take you. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is worthwhile; also Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free , and perhaps Ma Bo's Blood Red Sunset . The ide…

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been.

Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks.

My goodness, this is an absolutely absurd argument, made more absurd by the lack of realization of how absurd it is. That it keeps being harped on by gun control opponents does their argument no favors. The government will not be afraid of guns should they come after their citizenry. The police literally have tanks. The only thing guns do is make one less afraid of one's government if one fails to comprehend the absolutely beastly military power that it can bring to bear against one were it to decide to do so.

In fact, the only thing protecting one from the government deciding to crush one with a single well-placed smart bomb is… Well, it turns out it's permeating the culture with “It can't happen here”, to the point where the military itself believes that such a thing happening here would be utterly unacceptable. Only when the system itself culturally considers it verboten is there any hope of the immense military might the government possesses not being turned against its citizens. Barring that, the guns will be a fun thing for the military to play with after a sniper takes a rebel's head off.

Your assertion (in this particular comment, not the original one) is, gun rights will deter the government from attacking its citizens. To support that, citing books that show the government attacking its citizens is insufficient. Present a book that shows that a government was prevented from attacking its citizens because they were armed. Then perhaps the posited argument can be considered more than a delectable fiction to make one feel in control.

(Gun control, by the way, is tangential to the question of how absurd this particular argument is. Maybe it's a good idea, maybe it's a bad idea, but it's certainly not a bad idea because the government is afraid of folks with guns.)

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't even know where to start. But you're going to anyway, right? Do you have any sources on your first claim? I'm not your personal reference librarian, but you might start with a few of the more reader-friendly popular accounts and see where your interests take you. Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago is worthwhile; also Milton Mayer's They Thought They Were Free , and perhaps Ma Bo's Blood Red Sunset . The ide…

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been. Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks. My goodness, this is an absol…

That's one opinion. Asymmetrical warfare amounts to another opinion. The Afghan mujahedeen, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Viet Cong can tell you more about that sort of thing. So can various warfighters with more formal credentials, from Sun Tzu Wu to Paul Van Riper.

It's hard to fight a guerilla war with tanks, carriers and stealth bombers. Some of those folks will probably outlast the US government at the rate we're going.

Present a book that shows that a government was prevented from attacking its citizens because they were armed.

This is like claiming that the Y2K bug would have been no big deal if we hadn't spent millions of dollars preventing it from popping up, or that polio would have gone away on its own if Jonas Salk had slacked off. It's a bit of an unfair demand.

Well, it turns out it's permeating the culture with “It can't happen here”, to the point where the military itself believes that such a thing happening here would be utterly unacceptable

Before digging into Mayer and Solzhenitsyn, try some Zimbardo and Milgram. Their work was flawed but also very revealing. (Spoiler: if someone refuses to commit an atrocity for you, all you have to do is ask the next guy in line.)

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#97
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You highlight a kind of social disconnect among a segment of the population that are kind of eternal liberal optimist loyalists that have no problem trusting their parent, the government with any and all sorts of individual rights. It is precisely why some people simply cannot look through or past the notion that the government could somehow not be a benevolent parent that only has our best interest in mind and are t…

Liberal segment of the population checking in; that's a complete strawman - we're in favour of gun control because we don't trust our fellow citizens to be responsible with them, NOT because we trust the government. Regarding state vs federal control; I think you'll be surprised how many liberals are happy with individual states de-criminalizing marihuana and such, there's actually a lot of agreement with libertarian…

> Many of us are concerned about abuses of state power to roll back progress on abortion, teaching evolution, secularism etc.

The problem is that you can't pick and choose. If you want limited federal government you have to protest just as loudly against Common Core (federal involvement in education), gun control, environmental action, etc. And the same applies with regards to executive overreach - re: border control and immigration policy.

I think you may be surprised to realize that many conservatives (obviously it depends who we're talking about) will gladly ally with you to prevent both of these, but unfortunately no one on the left was willing to do anything as long as they held the reins of power. I only hope that now that Republicans are in charge, conservatives will not get too giddy with power (and I think there is hope).

Limited government and constitutionalism are the only way to ensure an even balance, and prevent the other 51% (give or take) of the country from forcing their views down your throat.

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been. Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks. My goodness, this is an absol…

That's one opinion. Asymmetrical warfare amounts to another opinion. The Afghan mujahedeen, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Viet Cong can tell you more about that sort of thing. So can various warfighters with more formal credentials, from Sun Tzu Wu to Paul Van Riper. It's hard to fight a guerilla war with tanks, carriers and stealth bombers. Some of those folks will probably outlast the US government at the ra…

I find the asymmetrical warfare argument…weird. Afghanistan as a nation has been in a state of massive system failure for decades. Is that really the hope guns offer? “If the government goes ballistic, our guns will ensure we end up like Afghanistan”?

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All told, you'd have to cite about 100,000,000 civilian gun deaths to catch up with the records set by modern governments who weren't as afraid of their citizens and subjects as they should have been. Yep, the thing that's going to scare the United States government out of killing its citizens is them armed with arsenals of M-16's against their… F-22s, B-52s, carrier groups, and tanks. My goodness, this is an absol…

That's one opinion. Asymmetrical warfare amounts to another opinion. The Afghan mujahedeen, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIS, and the Viet Cong can tell you more about that sort of thing. So can various warfighters with more formal credentials, from Sun Tzu Wu to Paul Van Riper. It's hard to fight a guerilla war with tanks, carriers and stealth bombers. Some of those folks will probably outlast the US government at the ra…

If the US government decided to attack its own citizens on American land, I'd expect they wouldn't be too worried about waging a humane war. So perhaps the more educational recent example here is Aleppo. The rebels haven't lost... But the cost is most definitely not heaviest on the Syrian government.

As for the Y2K/polio analogy... I'm not really following, to be honest. You make an extraordinary assertion ("guns prevent governments from waging war on their people") that's arguably provably false (Colombia should be example enough that an armed and organized force is hardly sufficient to prevent the government's continued attack---at best it ensures a split nation and years of warfare and strife). You present readings that show governments have waged war on an unarmed citizenry as proof that they won't wage war on an armed citizenry, but that's not proof---it's just not disproof. You can say that it's impossible to prove it (because it's a negative), but then all you can do is disprove it (which I'd say the world has already done).

Re: Israeli firm can steal phone data in seconds

#100
post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually Cellebrite themselves have been victim of some kind of hack last month and had a load of their internal documents leaked online. So no, if any, this firm is _not_ the right hands.

The only "right hands" for a 0-day exploit is the device manufacturer.

And even then, only some manufacturers.
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