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UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

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Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#211

Post by Veen »

dijit wrote: post #193
mschuster91 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

That's not really how smear campaigns work. Using a very extreme example: if I got 4 people to call you a pedophile, then people will believe it until you submit proof that you're not. The problem is that it's impossible to prove the absence of something, so you're forced to push back on me: "Where's your proof that I'm a pedophile", where I can reply with anecdotes or other useless information. The point is not to "…

> it's impossible to prove the absence of something

True, but in this case it was quite easy to prove the presence of anti-semitism in the Labour party, especially in the far left membership.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#212

Post by raxxorraxor »

CamelRocketFish wrote: post #183
csmpltn wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "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." The UK itself is one of the largest weapon exporters in the world, exporting to many countries in the Middle East with dubious human rights track records. The UK government can't possibly know what happens with every single pistol…

The difference is NSO control the Pegasus servers. They know who is using their tools and who is being targeted. This isn’t the same as untraced weapons.

The realities in that industry is that this information is provider-client privilege if you still want to sell tools.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#213

Post by foxhill »

Veen wrote: post #211
dijit wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really how smear campaigns work. Using a very extreme example: if I got 4 people to call you a pedophile, then people will believe it until you submit proof that you're not. The problem is that it's impossible to prove the absence of something, so you're forced to push back on me: "Where's your proof that I'm a pedophile", where I can reply with anecdotes or other useless information. The point is not to "…

> it's impossible to prove the absence of something True, but in this case it was quite easy to prove the presence of anti-semitism in the Labour party, especially in the far left membership.

for what it’s worth, i’m yet to find an individual that was able to concretely identify a single anti-semitic action or statement both in the run up to, and after the november 2019 election.

edit: probably worth mentioning, i read the report of the external investigation (all ~300 pages of it) on antisemitism in the labour party. to call it thin on the ground is somewhat of an understatement.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#214

Post by sgjohnson »

KarlKemp wrote: post #129
sgjohnson wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

These products, just like any offensive weapon, aren't quite as useful for defensive purposes, or when used by someone who doesn't do this stuff 24/7. The justification that "somebody else would have done it" is morally bankrupt, of course, as shown in Nuremberg or the Eichmann trial. It's also just not true: by definition, the alternative would be worse in some way, or it would have been the first choice from the be…

Ah yes, because export controls have stopped bad actors in the past.

If we can't stop Iran and North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, thinking that we can stop sale of software is, mildly speaking, delusional.

I also fail to see the relevance to Nuremberg trials, because this is a simple matter of supply and demand. There definitely is demand.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#215

Post by Veen »

petre wrote: post #148
coliveira wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about Russia, but China doesn't let people from other nationalities to occupy positions of power especially in foreign policy, in which they're completely right. This is the main weakness of the USA and UK. They will let foreign born people to raise to power and dictate self servicing policies, many times in detriment to their own population. For example, take Henry Kissinger: a german born person, he sp…

The UK is quite xenophobic as it is. No need for extra laws to prohibit foreigners to ascend to positions of power. Your peers will take care of that. I'm quite surprised that an UK born citizen of Pakistani heritage is currently the mayor of London. Maybe Labour is less xenophobic that the others.

There are so many people in this thread talking nonsense about the UK. The current Tory (right wing) Cabinet (the executive) includes Rishi Sunak as Chancellor, Priti Patel as Home Secretary, Savid Jaavid as Secretary of State for Health, Kwasi Kwartang as Secretary of State for Business, Alok Sharma as COP26 President, Nadim Zahawi as Secretary of State for Education, and Suella Braverman as Attorney General — all of Pakistani, Indian, or African ancestry.

It is quite likely the next PM will be of Pakistani or Indian ancestry (unless it’s a Labour PM; they have a poor record of promoting minorities to the top of Government) It's simply not true that the UK is xenophobic.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#216

Post by gpt5 »

cyberpunk wrote: post #202
mschuster91 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously. The issues I have with Israel are because of the actions of its government and absolutely nothing to do with the majority religion there. If you criticise Israel, you're an anti-semite. We're all scared of being called such, so we let them do whatever the fuck they want. Fuck Israel; but not because of their religion.

> Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously

They use it in very specific circumstances that relate to criticizing the idea of Israel being a Jewish state. I can understand that people may innocently criticize this, due to missing the historical context of why Israel was created, but I agree that this form of criticism against Israel should be condemned.

P.S. There are very specific actions by the Israeli government that I do condemn. Notably, not stopping settlement expansion in the West Bank. However most comments against Israel are far more gangue and sensationalist.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#217

Post by DSingularity »

mschuster91 wrote: post #186
nivenkos wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/news/israeli-diplomat-sough... The current government is a huge ally of Israel.

Quoted post unavailable.

What a weak argument — but let’s humor this idiocy. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you are saying that smear campaigns are built exclusively on “solid truth”?

So you think it is impossible for anyone to organize a smear campaign based on lies and/or misrepresentation?

Seems naive to me.

I wonder, are you just trying to add to the “labor is anti-Semitic” smears that Zionists push online? You know the smears they push because they have no answer to the criticism that zionist Israelis are (a) stealing other peoples lands through settlements (b) supporting racist Apartheid laws and (c) supporting a criminal state which regularly oppresses and violates the universally-acknowledged rights of the native population.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#218

Post by rat9988 »

rapind wrote: post #197
vlovich123 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Open source doesn’t actually matter here. A closed source electronic system should work just as well. Why? The way it should work is the machine should just print out a scantron AND a human legible copy (probably with a bar code linking the two). The person submits both by hand. You get early results by counting the scantron. Before certification, there is a statistically significant manual counting of the human legi…

Back in 2004, “Official federal voting system standards require audit logs to record all normal and abnormal events that occur on the system.” And yet at that time Diebold had a system that did NOT do that deployed all across the US. Someone was deleting votes, and it wasn’t being logged. Here’s lawmakers saying “should” do something, and an opaque reality where that didn’t happen. It was also running windows… This i…

> It was also running windows…

Nothing wrong with this choice. The rest of your point still stands though.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#219

Post by raxxorraxor »

nonrandomstring wrote: post #12

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:/…

I do think secret services did more damage than good with their forward surveillance of citizens, which basically was wild west surveillance initiated by states. The lost trust cannot be repaid for decades, maybe even centuries. It basically voided the significance of huge parts of constitutions of many countries that explicitly forbid such actions. This is beyond political realities of realpolitik where the justification was an alleged immediate threat of terrorism.

And that is an overall problem. The fears decide the action. So improving security is becoming dangerous, because parents or teachers just putting their children into a cage of complete surveillance is the most probable outcome. Because the ambition is to get more control. But that doesn't provide much security at all and creates even far greater threats than the "wild west" free open net ever posed in the past.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#220

Post by Veen »

hugh-avherald wrote: post #135
haltingproblem wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped reading around: "Protestants may have arms for their defence suitable to their conditions and as allowed by law;" and something about (only) Ireland repealed it in [1]. 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 politica…

> Britain does not have a written constitution but it is followed (how?), Pretty much the same as in the US/Australia/etc where written constitutions exist: the courts strike down unconstitutional laws or acts.

They are the final court of appeal, but they can't strike down primary legislation because Parliament is sovereign. They can strike down secondary legislation and legislation that may be contrary to the Human Rights Act (with the agreement of parliament in many cases). They can make life difficult for the Government, but Parliament can always make new laws. I think the UK system is more democratic because it does not give the judiciary primacy over elected representatives.
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