It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
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US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
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Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#12It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
Headlines are written by the publisher not the author. They’re written to maximize readership. The fact that spying happened in italy by italians is mostly only interesting to italians. The fact that the US backs an israeli company that sells spying tools is interesting to many more people. You can see the selling clicks, but because they’re not twisting the truth or saying something misleading - in this case I mostl…
However, the fact that companies sell offensive cyber warfare software to governments is not new, and that specific company isn't either.
There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia. And fighting terror or crime using software is valid. The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists, and what I'd like to know from this article was what was their motivation
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#13It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
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the current regime has shown hostility to keeping europe peaceful, what do you want?
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#14It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
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https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communist_mass_killings
Ensuring peace by violently crushing social democratic organizing and unions is like ensuring a fun time by beating anyone who complains.
It’s not an anti-US bias to hold the US accountable for their actions. Funding a for-profit spyware company that’ll sell to anyone, including italian fascists, is bad. The US should be held accountable for that.
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#15It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
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I mean, in a broad sense this is true. But do you really think Sam Altman wouldn’t be in the news if he wasn’t Jewish? What about SBF? Or go back further, do you think people know about Einstein or Karl Marx only because they were Jewish?
Like it or not, Jews have been involved at a high level in a lot of pivotal developments in the west.
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#16Oh look Apple devices were hacked again. Security through obscurity isnt really working out. Their big cash apparently isnt enough.
I have sensitive data on my phone that I must carry around, and there is no way I'd ever keep it on an iphone. 'Pegasus' was the moment corporations and governments should have banned iphones for their terrible security.
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#17There is now a rich history in outsourcing activities that would otherwise be illegal to other countries where it is legal. For example, the CIA's extreme rendition [1], knowingly sending prisoners to countries to be tortured and/or executed. This is how such countries make themselves useful to American empire.
Likewise, restrictions on the NSA spying on American citizens, for example, are bypassed by outsourcing that spying to, say, other Five Eyes countries.
Israel's role in this hacking phones of politicians, dissidents and now journalists on the behalf of the US and its allies, including Saudi Arabia [2].
The Israeli company NSO Group was sued by WhatsApp for their use of Pegasus [3], something Israel tried to intervene to block [4].
I honestly don't know how people work on things like Pegasus knowing it's being used to target and kill journalists and politicians.
[1]: https://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/rendition701/upda...
[2]: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/17/world/middleeast/israel-s...
[3]: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c77n76kzmz4o
[4]: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/07/israels-attem...
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Headlines are written by the publisher not the author. They’re written to maximize readership. The fact that spying happened in italy by italians is mostly only interesting to italians. The fact that the US backs an israeli company that sells spying tools is interesting to many more people. You can see the selling clicks, but because they’re not twisting the truth or saying something misleading - in this case I mostl…
However, the fact that companies sell offensive cyber warfare software to governments is not new, and that specific company isn't either. There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia. And fighting terror or crime using software is valid. The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists, and what I'd lik…
Their motivation is they are fascists. Like not in an “anything I don’t like is fascism” kinda way - literal fascists.
If you’d like to know more about them, an article in the AP isn’t the right place to find more. But it is a good way to let people know what the US is funding in the world.
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#19It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country But I guess news sites needs them clicks
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Regardless, it seems to be helpful to others to point out what one finds worthy of discussion; that is actually the point of the comments, after all.
Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists
#20> Ciro Pellegrino, who heads the Naples newsroom of an investigative news outlet called Fanpage.it, received a notice on April 29 that his iPhone had been targeted. Last year, Fanpage secretly infiltrated the youth wing of Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party and filmed some of them making fascist and racist remarks.
It's never a good look going after journalists, but this seems especially petty.