NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies • Hacker News Board

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#141

Post by colordrops » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:26 PM UTC

dependenttypes wrote: post #130

jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

I presume that most people will disagree with this but I believe that it is related to Jewish people on average being generally smarter than a non-jewish person. Consider for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates > "Nobel Prizes[note 1] have been awarded to over 900 individuals,[1] of whom at least 20% were Jews, although the Jewish population comprises less than 0.2% of the world's po…

Its a dangerous path - saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber. That sort of dialogue is completely taboo at least in the US.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#142

Post by _ptgt » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:29 PM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #16

Which is hilarious and hypocritical, since the government keeps talking about making end-to-end encryption apps illegal to distribute without backdoors. Now they're using an encryption app with a backdoor,* and they're upset about it? I thought this is what they wanted! *I know, I know, this probably wasn't done with a backdoor -- it's just funnier to lie in this context.

“The government” is not a homogeneous entity.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#143

Post by dependenttypes » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:31 PM UTC

colordrops wrote: post #141

dependenttypes wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I presume that most people will disagree with this but I believe that it is related to Jewish people on average being generally smarter than a non-jewish person. Consider for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates > "Nobel Prizes[note 1] have been awarded to over 900 individuals,[1] of whom at least 20% were Jews, although the Jewish population comprises less than 0.2% of the world's po…

Its a dangerous path - saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber. That sort of dialogue is completely taboo at least in the US.

Taboos are a way to hinder progress and science. I will not fall into that trap.

I could be wrong ofc, but I was under the impression that it is widely accepted in the scientific community that intelligence is at least partially affected by genes.

> saying that one race is smarter directly implies that another race is dumber

Note: I said on average.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#144

Post by mmanfrin » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:41 PM UTC

markus_zhang wrote: post #101

Israel has some companies who are really good at this. I recall a story about the Saudis purchasing service from some Israeli companies to spy on other's cellphones.

That was literally NSO. They were the company that gave the Saudi's access to Jamal Khashoggi's phone.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#145

Post by elorant » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:42 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

I guess it's part of their mentality. Just take a look at how many Jewish people have won the Nobel prize. Sure, most of them weren't even Israelis, but it seems that intellectual prowess is part of their heritage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Jewish_Nobel_laureates

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#146

Post by filoleg » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:44 PM UTC

beokop wrote: post #128

jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

There’s only about 10 million people in Sweden and we’ve produced Saab, Ericsson, Volvo, IKEA, H&M, Spotify, Skype, MySQL to name a few. I don’t think it’s that uncommon.

Well, Sweden is indeed one of the known tech powerhouses. But this just seems to prove the parent point, as there are many places in the world with similar population/quality of life/etc., but none of them come even close to Sweden/Israel/Bay Area in terms of tech.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#147

Post by keyme » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:45 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

Throughout history, Jews had to outsmart and outperform their peers in order to survive.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#148

Post by cardiffspaceman » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:53 PM UTC

blotter_paper wrote: post #27

cloudyo wrote: post #5

Sometimes you just feel like using Signal instead

I mean, Signal is open source and not owned by Facebook, so I'm not sure why anybody uses WhatsApp instead.

Not only are there network effects, but as you go through various cities in Latin America you will notice on the billboards that mobile service providers advertise "free" WhatsApp. As a result of the success of those ads, your contacts in that region will prefer WhatsApp to other media.

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#149

Post by x220 » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 8:54 PM UTC

RaiseProfits wrote: post #82

feelthepress wrote: post #64

Earlier this month the DOJ asked Facebook to "halt end-to-end encryption" by adding a backdoor to all of Facebook's apps. Perhaps this is a reason. https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/03/doj-facebook-end-to-end-...

Why would facebook comply?

Facebook is already given the NSA instant access to all their significant user data. Do you think they're doing that for free?

Re: NSO hacked WhatsApp to spy on top government officials at U.S. allies

#150

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 31, 2019, 9:02 PM UTC

jonplackett wrote: post #104

What are Israel doing to get so good at this and chip design and weapons making and everything else they seem to be really good at? There’s only about 8 million people in the whole country. There are plenty of cities with more people than that. How come they punch so far above their weight?

I don’t think there’s anything particularly special about Israel, and that what’s really happening is that you don’t hear about the other firms in other countries, many of which are either more competent or have better tradecraft.