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Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

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Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#361

Post by _djo_ »

dcow wrote: post #282
woah wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are the problems here? > Suppose that Small Co sells the assets of a business unit to Big Co. Do you now have a contract with Small Co. or Big Co.? Small Co. no longer has the rights to the software That's right, that's what they sold. > Big Co. may not agree to the terms of the old license. Then I guess maybe they shouldn't have bought it. > Suppose someone dies and their assets go to their heirs. Do you now ha…

So if I sell you a magic rock under the contract that so long as you are in possession of said rock I have legal authority to monitor your household to make sure you don’t misuse the rock for evil, and you die and your heir comes in possession of the rock, I now have a contract with your heir? I can go set up cameras in their house and invade their privacy just because you wanted a magic rock? That doesn't seem right…

Contract law isn't absolutist like that, and it can't bind both parties in a way that's unreasonable or contrary to certain basic rights-related laws. That's why you can't contract yourself into slavery.

What'll happen in cases like that is that it'll be litigated, interpreted, and either amended through a settlement agreement or annulled.

As others have said, the law isn't a programming language. It's a human system that, while being rigorous, strict, structured, and binding for the most part, is nonetheless capable by design of nuance and interpretation within known and constrained bounds.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#362

Post by technobabbler »

rodgerd wrote: post #115
technobabbler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond merely selling their products to Israel, the NSO Group itself is an Israeli firm, founded by ex-Israeli intelligence, and whose products are subject to Israeli national export controls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group That's a level of sponsorship way beyond simply being a customer... that's state espionage served with a side of profit. It's evil when the USA does it, it's evil when the Russians do it,…

Every Israeli citizen, except religious extremists, serves in the IDF or equivalent; if you look useful to the intelligence apparatus, that's where you'll end up. You literally cannot find an Israeli company that isn't founded, run, and staffed by people with military or intelligence links, unless you're only dealing with religious extremists.

Not sure that makes it any better.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#364

Post by montblanc »

sneak wrote: post #352
nier wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought of any military being advanced due to Microsoft’s help made me giggle. My opinion is that the best you can do is to hire people with a similar set of core values and there’s nothing wrong with everybody having their own ethical scale that they act upon accordingly.

The US military runs on Microsoft. The slides that Snowden leaked were PowerPoints.

It also runs on Intel and probably gets some supplies from Europe. It's pretty insane to boycott any company that indirectly works with the U.S military.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#365

Post by technobabbler »

montblanc wrote: post #328
einpoklum wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israeli national export controls A crash course in Israeli national export control: 1. You can sell everything except for nuclear tech (and maybe even that, I don't know). 2. If the client is not officially an enemy of Israel then do whatever you want, we don't give an f'ing f'. 3. If the client _is_ officially an enemy of Israel, then all sales must be conducted through official (secret) state channels. Independen…

Is that so much different than how the U.S operates, other than Israel is really fun to demonize? The U.S arms whoever it wants to arm, Europe as well. So selling F-15's is cool but cyber hacks isn't. Got it.

There's definitely parallels to be drawn between the Israeli and the American conservative/right-wing/militant nationalist elements. Both countries operate as global bullies, using military force to subjugate externally and propaganda and fear of replacement to subjugate internally, heavily enhanced by the use of technology.

They both have this old-guard mentality of "might makes right" hegemony, which a lot of other countries (and some portion of their populations) don't like because it's broadly incompatible with a human-rights centered worldview that favors the pipe dream of peaceful multilateral democracies. Count myself as someone who dislikes this approach.

Whether it's planes or surveillance tech or reactor malware doesn't really matter, all just ammunition for their goals.

Israel at least has a survival need; it learned the (very) hard way that it has many enemies constantly seeking to destroy it. It's an us-or-them mentality hardened by centuries of oppression and decades of war.

America... now that's much harder to find an excuse for. And arguably we've spent all our resources on attacking Muslim scapegoats while China leapfrogs us. But hey, I don't make global policy, I just comment on it on the internet.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#366

Post by technobabbler »

fortran77 wrote: post #166
technobabbler wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond merely selling their products to Israel, the NSO Group itself is an Israeli firm, founded by ex-Israeli intelligence, and whose products are subject to Israeli national export controls. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group That's a level of sponsorship way beyond simply being a customer... that's state espionage served with a side of profit. It's evil when the USA does it, it's evil when the Russians do it,…

The very wikipedia article you linked to says that the NSO Group is owned by " Novalpina Capital" They describe themselves this way: > Novalpina Capital is an independent European private equity firm that focuses on making control equity investments in middle market companies throughout the continent. Novalpina Capital has a solution-orientated, entrepreneurial approach to investing and creating value in its portfoli…

Capital may be liquid, but staff nationalities, values, ideals, and goals...not so much.

This isn't some far-flung conspiracy about dark forces puppeteering seemingly innocent companies. It's just people valuing profit over concern for human rights. It's a surveillance firm, what would you expect? What would be a benevolent use of this technology even be?

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#367

Post by technobabbler »

fortran77 wrote: post #232
Sporktacular wrote: post #106

We need to target the pos engineers and management at NSO, Finfisher, Hacking Group etc. who sell their souls for a fast buck. These pricks are likely already setting up the next corporate front for when this one collapses. Let's make the mercenary business a cripplingly expensive line of work.

"target them"? What are you proposing?

Strongly-worded emails written by mediocre AI.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#368

Post by _djo_ »

udev wrote: post #340
timeon wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah what if? What if I have lived in wonderland?

Indeed, a wonderland where it is OK for a 2 trillion dollar company to take 5 years to fix vulnerabilities that put in danger many of its users worldwide.

That assumes, wrongly, that Apple only patched the vulnerabilities used by NSO since 2016 in iOS 14.8.

In reality, Apple has been reacting to and fixing new exploits all the time, with NSO Group (and others) successfully finding new ones to replace those that got patched.

For instance, the main class of NSO-related attacks has been via the Messages app and related frameworks, which were relatively poorly designed in terms of their original security architecture. Apple has since 2016 substantially hardened those subsystems, including with a new 'BlastDoor' isolation layer specifically for Messages in iOS 14. That closed off entire classes of exploits, but is clearly not perfect.

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#369

Post by [deleted] »

sneak wrote: post #352
nier wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thought of any military being advanced due to Microsoft’s help made me giggle. My opinion is that the best you can do is to hire people with a similar set of core values and there’s nothing wrong with everybody having their own ethical scale that they act upon accordingly.

The US military runs on Microsoft. The slides that Snowden leaked were PowerPoints.

[deleted]

Re: Apple sues NSO Group to curb the abuse of state-sponsored spyware

#370

Post by einpoklum »

montblanc wrote: post #328
einpoklum wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israeli national export controls A crash course in Israeli national export control: 1. You can sell everything except for nuclear tech (and maybe even that, I don't know). 2. If the client is not officially an enemy of Israel then do whatever you want, we don't give an f'ing f'. 3. If the client _is_ officially an enemy of Israel, then all sales must be conducted through official (secret) state channels. Independen…

Is that so much different than how the U.S operates, other than Israel is really fun to demonize? The U.S arms whoever it wants to arm, Europe as well. So selling F-15's is cool but cyber hacks isn't. Got it.

The main differences from the US as I see them:

* Less effective government control of the press (although that seems to be tightening up in recent years).

* Less use of secrecy, i.e. more of the sales happen in the open.

* The US has more enemies which it actually doesn't sell to.

* No outside boss country to prevent the US from doing what it wants.

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