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U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

reuters.com

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Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#241

Post by BrianOnHN »

fmajid wrote: post #156
walrus01 wrote: post #11

I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant", as they have done with foreign citizen wahabbist jihadis and US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki. Given the extent and depth of US-Israeli cooperation and ties, the precedeing theoretical is probably going to remain in the realm of theoretical.

That's pretty much what they did with NSO, which is getting the Huawei treatment: https://www.theregister.com/2021/11/03/us_sanctions_spyware/ reportedly, this has created havoc on NSO, since for instance none of the cloud providers can sell services to them to host their zero-days, among other logistics headaches. Their recently hired CEO resigned.

What's the consequence for destabilizing governments worldwide? Logistics headaches? Got it.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#242

Post by jjeaff »

linschn wrote: post #193
dqpb wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 3) have almost zero regulation; What would shadow government regulation look like?

Maybe stop funding them, for a start? Congressional oversight used to be a thing. Snowden showed the NSA lied to congress. No heads rolled.

I can believe there are shadow organizations that lack oversight. In fact, it seems likely.

But that these shadow organizations are maintaining power by surveiling and blackmailing congress people is a whole other ballgame and seems highly unlikely to me.

For one, it's likely that not every Congressperson has some deep dark secret that makes them blackmail-able. And pissing off the only group of people that could cut your funding and expose your shadow organization as well as bring oversight is not the group that you want to be pissing off.

I think game theory would indicate that your only chance of maintaining a shadow organization in the US gov for any length of time is going to be secrecy and maybe some heavily funded lobbying.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#243

Post by Eelongate »

turminal wrote: post #191
gameswithgo wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember that this group's tools have been used to murder journalists, which they are unapologetic about.

Dead journalists can't close them down, but the US government can.

I think that remains to be seen.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#244

Post by JumpCrisscross »

Eelongate wrote: post #243
turminal wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Dead journalists can't close them down, but the US government can.

I think that remains to be seen.

> that remains to be seen

Oh man, for purely comical purposes I would love to see NSO actually believe that.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#245

Post by galimaufry »

lostlogin wrote: post #157
walrus01 wrote: post #11

I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant", as they have done with foreign citizen wahabbist jihadis and US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki. Given the extent and depth of US-Israeli cooperation and ties, the precedeing theoretical is probably going to remain in the realm of theoretical.

> I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant" It’s particularly interesting to watch as the company is based in a country that is a very close ally.

Ignorant question: is Israel literally an ally of the US? I know they are not in NATO or 5 Eyes, and I don't think they have some other close agreement, like US and Japan.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#246

Post by afterburner »

walrus01 wrote: post #11

I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant", as they have done with foreign citizen wahabbist jihadis and US citizens such as Anwar Al-Awlaki. Given the extent and depth of US-Israeli cooperation and ties, the precedeing theoretical is probably going to remain in the realm of theoretical.

Just declare them a terrorist organization.

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#247

Post by Minor49er »

keewee7 wrote: post #225
KennyBlanken wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implying that Israeli spying on the US is some fringe "shadow government" sub-group of the Israeli government is strange given a long, long history of high profile Israeli spying incidents against the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer…

The USS Liberty incident happened 52 years ago. >because they didn't like that we were watching them That is the American conspiracy theorist interpretation of the incident that (understandably) also gained traction among a few of the survivors. The Israelis disagree. It was most likely a case of mistaken identity. Just like friendly fire incidents. Friendly fire incidents happen all the time, including between US fo…

The survivors said that the pilots were waving at them before they carried out the attack

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#248

Post by Eelongate »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #244
Eelongate wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that remains to be seen.

> that remains to be seen Oh man, for purely comical purposes I would love to see NSO actually believe that.

In principle, America could drop Hellfire R9X sword missiles through the cars of every NSO employee. In practice, would American politicians have the nerve to go to war with NSO, when NSO probably infected all their phones years ago? How much dirt do they have on American politicians?

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#249

Post by Lammy »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #207
markus_zhang wrote: post #150

This is a typical "shadow government" symptom. You have forces working within the government that 1) have their own agendas; 2) have connection to international communities, usually military-intelligence ones; 3) have almost zero regulation; 4) even many high ranking government officials don't know about them because they are brotherhood-like closed circles. This reminds me of Operation Gladio or Propaganda Due but d…

Implying that Israeli spying on the US is some fringe "shadow government" sub-group of the Israeli government is strange given a long, long history of high profile Israeli spying incidents against the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Pollard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ben-Ami_Kadish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Parsons_(rocket_engineer…

Why would the tail wag the dog? America benefits so much from all the R&D (in e.g. encryption) that can't happen on US soil. They are not our enemy in any way :)

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

https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2001/09/20/the-truth-about-...

Re: U.S. State Department phones hacked with Israeli company spyware

#250

Post by DaveExeter »

galimaufry wrote: post #245
lostlogin wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm waiting for the day that the US declares a foreign corporation as an "enemy combatant" It’s particularly interesting to watch as the company is based in a country that is a very close ally.

Ignorant question: is Israel literally an ally of the US? I know they are not in NATO or 5 Eyes, and I don't think they have some other close agreement, like US and Japan.

Israel is a client state of the USA. They are America's enforcers in the Middle East.
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