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Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

washingtonpost.com

131–140 of 172 posts

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#131

Does Israel have an entire start-up sector dedicated to spyware or something? I feel like I'm reading about these all the time?

Yes, and major VCs, Big Tech companies, self diagnosed contrarians and the establishment OSINT crowd see nothing wrong with it or see it as a legitimate endeavour.

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "doesn't seem to give a damn when criminal enterprises operating in their borders victimize people in other countries."

None of these seem to be criminal enterprises… also you think adware is unique to Israel and Russia?

The cellphone hacking companies, like these in Israel are immoral, separate from them apparently being legal there.

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> what does it mean to not “allow” a law? Voting against any politicians who contribute to its passing, even if they're from your preferred political party.

Little evidence for this strategy's efficacy. Single-issue voting doesn't carry a lot of weight and in many cases other candidates would be equally supportive of the policy. As I often point out, surveillance is bad but so is child abuse and complaining about surveillance without acknowledging that is a good way to get ignored.

Single-issue voting has been effective for gun rights activists. But the problem is that while there is a lot of concentrated commitment among firearm owners to resisting gun laws, fewer people are as motivated on the front of surveillance; if you ask people, they might say they're against it, but it's not a priority issue. Whereas for firearms, a majority of Americans actually are in favour of more restrictions, but for those who are against them, it's a much higher priority for them. It's a classic example of the behaviour of collective action in public choice theory.

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#135
post #40

I know it's not a foolproof solution but perhaps there should be a greater focus on ethics in Computer Science curricula? The Israeli developers who wrote this software may not even have been exposed to the moral and ethical questions writing such software ought to raise. Perhaps there should be trade associations for developers that calls out software companies that writes immoral software? With great power comes gr…

Has an ethics class ever stopped someone from accepting a 6 figure salary?

Well, a colleague of mine got a job offer from Google a few years ago. I was with them when they replied the recruitment email with literally nothing else than "no" :D

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It might hard to accept this, but "public health" is now a part of the surveillance justification tool kit too. When it's impossible to argue against measures taken in defense of public health without seeming selfish, why wouldn't it be?

Can you provid examples of this? De we have examples of public health being leveraged for anything other than public health?

Singapore COVID-19 contact-tracing data accessible to police

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-singap...

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#137
post #67

For politicians in democracies citizens are potential voters, foreigners don't matter. It's still arguably better than dictatorships, where your citizens don't matter either, as long as you have a good police system. We act surprised when we notice such things but we shouldn't be, it is a mistake to apply the same standards that we, as the lucky citizens of "free countries" enjoy, to any other system of power. From a…

> in democracies citizens are potential voters, foreigners don't matter Not long ago, what determined whether you "mattered" or not was your religion and belief. We now replaced it with a state issued piece of paper and convinced ourselves that this is progress.

I’m not following. Are you saying citizenship replaced religion and it functions in the same way as religion did for empires and kingdoms of yesteryear?

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Vote for approval voting, ranked choice, or even instant runoff at every level of government so that voting against an incumbent at least has a viable candidate.

I worry that making voting more complicated and giving people more candidates to vote for might actually backfire. We already see this in American primary elections where the incumbent runs against a half dozen or more “nobodies” and seems to win on name recognition and vote splitting alone.

Primaries are also winner-take-all which is why incumbents have such an advantage. Alaska got rid of party primaries and so it'll be interesting to see how the next primary goes, which will be between the top four candidates voted for in the primary.

Arguably 4 is too low a number to represent the varied interests of any state, and the first round will likely leave people unsatisfied until candidates can start researching the actual values preferences of their electorate and offer e.g. the top 4 ways to order the most important issues and alignments. I think there will be a strong force to abandon divisive hot-button issues that sound good on TV but are actually lower on most people's preference ordering.

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#139
post #95
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nso group is based in israel. suing them for activities directed by the israeli state is not likely to be effective. it would be like trying to sue a ransomware group in russia, or a phone company in america.

In this case it's not directed by the Israeli state; the Israeli state just doesn't really care, and doesn't want to interfere with the post-army job prospects of intelligence personnel.

> The Israeli minister of defence closely regulates NSO, granting individual export licences before its surveillance technology can be sold to a new country.

Re: Private Israeli spyware used to hack cellphones of journalists, activists

#140

It would be really nice if I could own my phone to the point where I could install an outgoing firewall or harden the os to my abilities instead of blind trust into the diligent but not infallible vendor.

https://grapheneos.org/

Related: https://twitter.com/grassfedbitcoin/status/14168360691237847...
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