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UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

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Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#301

Post by yyyk »

Chris2048 wrote: post #295
yyyk wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Israel plays the anti-semitism card much too loosely to be taken seriously. This rhetoric is not any different than conservatives arguing Af-Am play the 'race card'. In both cases there's actual bigotry that some people want to sweep under the rug by a mindless counter-accusation.

> there's actual bigotry as implied by "too much" - your comment is truly rhetoric as it cheaply dismisses this claim as "mindless" and makes a poor tribal comparison - African-Americans aren't currently occupying another state.

The comparison is to the rhetoric used to ignore bigotry (see the absurd defence of Corbyn in the comments). The alleged sins of a country are irrelevant to that issue.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#302

Post by JoBrad »

DSingularity wrote: post #217
mschuster91 wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 be…

I took their meaning to be that successful disinformation includes enough truth to provide some level of plausibility. That doesn’t mean that truth is at the core of the smear, or even that it’s a “whole” truth.

Epstein had many rich and powerful friends. Epstein was a pedophile. Epstein died within an inexcusable lapse in custody. These are all truths. Combine them together into the Q narrative, and now you have a massive conspiracy that is mostly wild speculation but contains some kernels of truth.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#303

Post by fakedang »

Synaesthesia wrote: post #228
KKKKkkkk1 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If russia did that, they would be treated a lot differently than israel or eg. USA. Russia poisoned multiple British nationals with chemical and radioactive weapons on British soil and got away with it scot-free. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-51722301

There are definitely some holes in the allegations. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2021/04/pure-ten-poi...

Yeah, a random blog which references Russian state media. Got it. (y)

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#304

Post by throwaway67743 »

There is a point being totally missed in this thread and that is the UK government basically ignore all security common sense and do absolutely incomprehensible things like discuss national security over WhatsApp and Zoom, as a British citizen, in my eyes this absolutely amounts to treason as they're knowingly potentially giving away state secrets, anyone else would be instantly jailed.

UK government and any departments discussing sensitive matters (or everyone, really) should not be using a) off the shelf phones, and b) should not be using public communications networks full stop, nevermind foreign communication platforms.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#305

Post by yyyk »

Vladimof wrote: post #288
yaa_minu wrote: post #23

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.

We would need some voting system where each person can verify that their vote was properly counted, something like this: secure end-to-end verifiable e-voting system using zero knowledge based blockchain: https://eprint.iacr.org/2018/466.pdf

We should never consider any voting system that is not simple to the point of being almost-trivial. Anything even slightly more complex than necessary will lead to accusations of cheating which are enough to create massive instability - even when they are provably false. We see this even with the current election systems!

Since there's no simple way to explain 'blockchain' to non-tech people, any voting system using it is irrelevant - and will end up discarded like nearly all the other attempts invoking blockchain hype.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#306

Post by simonh »

_AdAstra_ wrote: post #277
simonh wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russia's been a pain in the arse continuously. 20 years ago they were up to their eyeballs in the Iranian nuclear programme, carpet bombing Chechnya, blowing up their own apartment blocks and blaming it on terrorists, destabilising Georgia and goodness knows what else. That's all just from memory. But they have a lot of oil and gas so we let it all slide. More fool us.

You are aware that the Israely government does similar things, right?

Most European governments look at the simultaneous invasion of Israel by three Arab states in 1948, and statements made about the aims of that invasion, and think "what would we be prepared to do to defend against such determined, implacable hostility?". They look at what Israel does to defend itself and think, yeah, pretty much we'd do that.

They look at Israel and see a democratic, technologically advanced state with a liberal economy much like their own. They look at the repressive, autocratic extraction economies in the Arab world and recoil in horror.

I'm not making any judgement on this, or whether they're right or wrong, but that's just how many Europeans see the situation.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#307

Post by cyberpunk »

yyyk wrote: post #301
Chris2048 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there's actual bigotry as implied by "too much" - your comment is truly rhetoric as it cheaply dismisses this claim as "mindless" and makes a poor tribal comparison - African-Americans aren't currently occupying another state.

The comparison is to the rhetoric used to ignore bigotry (see the absurd defence of Corbyn in the comments). The alleged sins of a country are irrelevant to that issue.

Please show me where Corbyn said anything against Jewish people for being jewish? He, like me, is strongly against the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the war crimes it commits against its peoples in exercise of that.

Saying so does not make you a bigot or an anti semite. Israel and it's defenders hide behind these kind of statements and they're nonsense. Labour if elected would not have given Israel such an easy ride and they throw a lot of money around -- thus, Corbyn is an anti-semite and labour has 'issues' around Jews, and surprise surprise; the tories got in and are happy to sell them lots of nice missiles and intelligence.

It's bullshit. They just have ethics. I Would feel the exact same way if it was Christians or Hindus or whatever in charge of Israel and behaving like this; where is the defence then? Criticise us and you're anti-christian? Doesn't have the same ring to it does it?

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#308

Post by pydry »

arlort wrote: post #293
pydry wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only time vote buying was historically a problem was when it was decriminalized or legal and done out in the open. The instant it was criminalized it evaporated completely. Doing it on a scale that is large enough enough that it becomes meaningful quickly becomes impossible even if the police only do a few half hearted sting operations. Im not particularly in favor of electronic voting but i wish this particular…

From Wikipedia: > The 2010 and 2012 surveys for the Americas Barometer showed that 15% of surveyed voters in Latin America had been offered something of value in exchange for voting a particular way > 16% of voters [in Africa] were offered money or other goods in exchange for voting a particular way in the most recent election And yeah, in developed countries and stable democracies it probably wouldn't be an issue, b…

Brazil was a clear example of where it started out legal (until 1999!). After it was made illegal it declined a lot in spite of really inconsistent enforcement.

Where it happened it was perfectly obvious who was doing it, but the cops wouldnt touch them. It was a crime committed out in the open.

A similar pattern played out in America in the 1800s where it was widespread, made illegal, started out not particularly well enforced and then it gradually became extinct.

Everywhere it's been a problem it's basically been officially tolerated. The crime quickly becomes impossible to commit if it isnt.

This is in stark contrast to many other crimes (e.g. drugs) where even strict enforcement doesnt do much.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#309

Post by A4ET8a8uTh0 »

throwaway67743 wrote: post #304

There is a point being totally missed in this thread and that is the UK government basically ignore all security common sense and do absolutely incomprehensible things like discuss national security over WhatsApp and Zoom, as a British citizen, in my eyes this absolutely amounts to treason as they're knowingly potentially giving away state secrets, anyone else would be instantly jailed. UK government and any departme…

I used to think that is an issue with old non-technical generation and therefore it is argument for new blood. But.. new blood is about as careless about sharing all sorts of information online as old blood. I don't know if there is a solution to this. I am starting to wonder if it is one of those 'best not to think about it' things.

Re: UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus

#310

Post by raxxorraxor »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #282
raxxorraxor wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They even tried it back in the day and with the modern surveillance we probably would not have heard from him at all. Just the right bribe to deflect the issues and it will never become a large issue in the first place. It doesn't even have to be malicious, there are people working in these agencies that are trained to follow orders. They believe intrinsically that what they do is necessary for security. No appeal wi…

'They believe intrinsically that what they do is necessary for security.' That's thr rub isn't it - if you startva security agency thst does terrible things, it will hire people that can somehow justify and rationalise those terrible things Very few people in KGB or whatever thought that they did anything wrong

You have a similar problem with police. If you day to day see instances of crime and you have a lot of contact with criminals, you develop preconceptions towards people. You view gets skewed and you start to see crime everywhere. The same happens to security agencies that deal day to day with the spy game. This is why external observers are necessary. Not primarily to punish people stepping over lines, but to provide support and reasonable boundaries and context. People with a strong sense of duty are especially vulnerable to develop a wrong perspective.

Then there is the other dimension where corporations just help the worst dictators for profit or provide surveillance capability against the population. Almost all major names in tech are guilty here to certain degrees. Some more than others, but there are no morals in business. Especially not with investment mechanisms like ESG or similar constructs to provide wellness to rich investors, but that is another topic.

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