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I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that. Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.
And what were GCHQ, MI6 and NCSC doing to protect our prime-minister at this time? We have a problem in democratic nations. I've written about it here [1]. Bruce Schneier has also addressed it in his own way. Our lack of any framework for civic cybersecurity is a disgrace. People in future ages will look back on our time as a wild-west. A solution can only come from a ground-up awareness through education. [1] http:/…
Average consumer cannot be responsible for security. Not because they are uneducated but becauae corporations have physicall talen away control from us.
You have no control over software running on your router supplied by the internet company, wifi printer, smart toaster, tesla or what crapware is preinstalled on your phone (often you can't even update it)
So since they took away control, they shoupd be held financially accountable
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John Mearsheimer (Chicago professor) & Stephen Walt (Harvard professor) wrote a New York Times bestseller book called the Israel Lobby which delicately discussed in careful details the influence of the Israeli lobby on US politics. Perhaps the treatment they got for the book is the reason many serious academics and intellectual steer clear of the topic. Which is unfortunate since the pernicious influence of the lobby…
And what were GCHQ, MI6 and NCSC doing to protect our prime-minister at this time? We have a problem in democratic nations. I've written about it here [1]. Bruce Schneier has also addressed it in his own way. Our lack of any framework for civic cybersecurity is a disgrace. People in future ages will look back on our time as a wild-west. A solution can only come from a ground-up awareness through education. [1] http:/…
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Demos kratos - things/doings of the people (or similar) - Old Greek. Nowadays it describes a generally agreed form of government and approach to governing. After that it gets pretty complicated - your democracy may not match mine ...
I'm going to be voting for councillors soon in Somerset, along with everyone else here who can be bothered to turn out. We are not forced to vote. We can freely discuss the vote. We have a reasonable expectation of our vote being counted correctly and can inspect the process if we wish. We can volunteer to count votes too.
That's just local government stuff. Obviously, countrywide elections are taken rather more seriously.
I'm sure your home country of India has similar processes and probably invented them in the first place.
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There's so much that's factually wrong with this comment I don't know where to start. 1. The UK does have a Bill of Rights (It's different in England and Scotland). The English one pre-dates the US Bill of rights by a century[0]. 2. It does have a constitution, but not a written constitution in the American sense[1]. 3. The Queen doesn't nominate Bishops; she rubber stamps nominations by a committee who are approved…
In [2] it says, quite straight faced, that "The Constitution of the United Kingdom or British constitution comprises the written and unwritten arrangements that establish the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as a political body. Unlike in most countries, no attempt has been made to codify such arrangements into a single document. Thus, it is known as an uncodified constitution. This enables the constitution to be easily changed as no provisions are formally entrenched.[2] However, the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom recognises that there are constitutional principles, including parliamentary sovereignty, the rule of law, democracy and upholding international law".
There is no codified constitution but there are constitutional principles. Because it is not "entrenched" it can be easily changed. How can someone even say this without an Orwellian sneer? If a North Korean said that we would laugh them out of the room.
Edit: North Korea does have a constitution. Written. Just not followed. Britain does not have a written constitution but it is followed (how?), except when it is not as in the wag that it just takes a minister's signature to violate an unwritten (but somehow codified) constitutional principle.
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> There is no constitution, bill of rights, and while there are elections in the mainland The UK is a constitutional monarchy and does have a bill of rights. > nominates huge numbers of Bishops to the British Parliament It's a bit more nuanced than that. The Queen doesn't nominate anyone to Parliament, at least not in the way you're implying. Just like she has to sign a bill into law before it has any effect, she doe…
This actually did occur in Belgium: in 1990 then-king Baudouin refused to sign abortion laws in to effect, citing his Catholic faith. The Belgian constitution allows for parliament to sign laws in to effect if the king is incapacitated so they declared him incapacitated for a day, signed the laws in to effect, after which everything continued as before (the exact legal manoeuvring is a little bit more complex, but this is essentially what it amounted to).
I would imagine something similar would happen in the UK; for reasons that elude me personally the monarchy is quite popular, so I wouldn't necessarily expect it to be stripped of all ceremonial roles.
Reading the applicable Regency Act of 1937 it has similar language that could be used to the same effort, but of course hard to be sure without it actually happening :-)
I'm surprised this isn't a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly "closely monitoring how their customers were using the software" or akin to that. Like, yeah, blame the UAE mostly for this but let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.
> let's also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. There will always be cyberweapon brokers. If not NSO, then someone else. And money talks. Why would there be any oversight? What you need is plausible deniability. I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all. Like, online, for $999 a month or something. Maybe then there will be actual ef…
There's a big difference between an underground group doing it in semi-secrecy, vs a state-sponsored company doing it publicly. With said company somehow not being sued into the ground or said country's action not being taken as an act of war in situations like this.
> I’d prefer if they started selling Pegasus to absolutely anyone at all
The high value of what they offer comes from the scarcity, which result in lower likelihood of it being patched.
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> There is no constitution, bill of rights, and while there are elections in the mainland The UK is a constitutional monarchy and does have a bill of rights. > nominates huge numbers of Bishops to the British Parliament It's a bit more nuanced than that. The Queen doesn't nominate anyone to Parliament, at least not in the way you're implying. Just like she has to sign a bill into law before it has any effect, she doe…
It all seems to be asserted resting on....on an uncodified constitution.
This is a bit of a tangent but I think reports like these strengthen the argument against electronic voting. There's basically no way of building a secure electronic voting system that can beat the security and auditability properties of old school pen and paper voting.
And what were GCHQ, MI6 and NCSC doing to protect our prime-minister at this time? We have a problem in democratic nations. I've written about it here [1]. Bruce Schneier has also addressed it in his own way. Our lack of any framework for civic cybersecurity is a disgrace. People in future ages will look back on our time as a wild-west. A solution can only come from a ground-up awareness through education. [1] http:/…
'solution can only come from a ground-up awareness through education' Average consumer cannot be responsible for security. Not because they are uneducated but becauae corporations have physicall talen away control from us. You have no control over software running on your router supplied by the internet company, wifi printer, smart toaster, tesla or what crapware is preinstalled on your phone (often you can't even up…
The solution of ground-up awareness and education I am suggesting involves making sure people understand they must take that back. The tag-line for the final chapter of my book is "Taking back tech" [1]
> You have no control over software....
Well, actually you do, but it is insufficient, and moreover others have control over it which they should not. Legislation can fix this, but legislation requires an educated user base first. Many folks don't know how they are being abused, or even that they are being abused. This is the project of a new digital literacy.
Digital literacy 1.0 was about "the amazing things computers can do" Digital literacy 2.0 is about "the dangerous things computers shouldn't do"
> So since they took away control, they should be held financially accountable
I don't think money is a factor in this. The questions revolve around fundamental rights, responsibilities, ownership and control, One cannot buy or sell such obligations.