How come when we hear about this stuff it is always Israeli companies involved? Is ethics not taught in Israeli Computer Science curricula? Those who wrote this exploit are clearly "brilliant" and at least some of them are bound to be reading Hacker News. Is other countries' spyware firms just better at hiding their malware than Israel's is?
I had a former customer there _go out of business_ when the Barack Hussein Obama (mmm mmm mmm!) administration supportd an attempted putsch by (in my customer's words) "The Retarded F___ing Nazis who killed Sadat for making peace with the Jews."
Israel and the non-Brotherhood Arab countries face the burdensome situation that their most reliable "ally" is a country that depending on the politics is going to support the Brotherhood _and_ the large wannabe-hegemonic Russian satellite state trying to develop nuclear weapons. (Oh, and funded said state's reconquest of Syria in the process). Said schizophrenic state also has a massive surveillance system of its own.
My guess: they all don't look at this as a violation of civil rights or ethics, they look at this as a means for the little countries like them to get a leg up on some of the insane intelligence agencies of the large countries that are funding enemies both domestic and foreign.