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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

#181

Post by aziaziazi »

breppp wrote: post #125
bee_rider wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it was for no good reason, would that update your “nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government?” I do think western governments are generally better, but spying on journalists is bad.

not yet, although I am curious why this specific technology is linked to so many scandals involving journalists. Is it simply because that journalists are interested in stories about journalists and that what makes the news, or a power corrupts scenario. I believe that similarly to phone tapping, this is a technology that in the wrong hands is dangerous, but it can be very effective against some threats that might ma…

> journalists are interested in stories about journalists

> it has no implication on most of the population

Journalistic content is still one of my main source of information that most of the population use to get informed, so my bet is many people do feel implicated somehow.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#182

Post by DSingularity »

woodruffw wrote: post #111
DSingularity wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An incredible self awareness for you to write “There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia”. I wonder how Iran or Zambia feel about the west? The overthrow of their democracy. The colonial exploitations. Are those legit grievances in your eyes? Or are you a “take up the white mans burden” kind of person?

I don't think you have to believe Western countries are morally blameless to think that Iran's use of spyware would probably have materially worse effects for whoever they spy on. It's clear to me at least that the West can both be blamed for the effects of colonialism and that the victims of colonialism can do plenty of bad things on their own.

Nobody is disputing that at all. That’s just a byproduct of zero-sum games and at least the fact that victims of abuse tend to grow into abusers themselves.

The problem is the blanket statement which effectively becomes “the ordained group of humans can have these tools while the others we judge as less-than and prohibit”. The more they talk the more they reveal about their views which are either outright racist or extremely disingenuous when it comes to obvious historical contexts.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#183

Post by thomassmith65 »

wesselbindt wrote: post #129
thomassmith65 wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least there's a figleaf. The 20th Century could have been the German Century, or the Soviet Century. For all America's sins, most people did well living in the American Century.

Not the Kurds though. Or the Mayans. Or the Chileans. Or Cuba. Iran got screwed pretty hard. And Iraq too for that matter. Afghanistan. East Timor, and Indonesia too. Oof and the Palestinians really got the short end of the stick. Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos. But yeah I concede your point, the small minority of people living in the Imperial core did pretty ok.

Yes, they'd be much better off under Nazism. /s

The actual people who live in those countries don't blame Americans for their troubles to the extent that Americans blame Americans.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#184

Post by DSingularity »

ipaddr wrote: post #151
edanm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're claiming that Iran's government is somehow morally equivalent to Italy's, you're massively wrong. It's not about "the white mans burden", whatever that means. It's about Iran's government not being democratically elected, being massively unpopular with its own populace that can't do anything about it cause it's not a democracy, enforcing religious laws on people that often don't want them, not respecting mi…

You realize that US removed the democratically elected government in 1953 in CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Then the US government kept the Shah in power. He repressed the population and led to the 1979 revolution. Who's the one evil again? Those countries in the middle east that US considers an ally are not democratically elected either and they enforce reli…

Unfortunately I don’t think he is capable of what you are asking him to do. Remember that the majority of the Israeli population think Israel hasnt gone far enough in Gaza. Yes that’s after starvation and murdering over 30k women and children. On top of that most Israelis see no problem with the Nakba which is the origin of the problem as it displaced the majority of Palestinians turning them into scattered refugees who were robbed of their land and property.

Such mindsets would never allow for achieving peace with neighbors through any strategy that isn’t built around dominance through violence.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#185

Post by ty6853 »

DSingularity wrote: post #184
ipaddr wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You realize that US removed the democratically elected government in 1953 in CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Then the US government kept the Shah in power. He repressed the population and led to the 1979 revolution. Who's the one evil again? Those countries in the middle east that US considers an ally are not democratically elected either and they enforce reli…

Unfortunately I don’t think he is capable of what you are asking him to do. Remember that the majority of the Israeli population think Israel hasnt gone far enough in Gaza. Yes that’s after starvation and murdering over 30k women and children. On top of that most Israelis see no problem with the Nakba which is the origin of the problem as it displaced the majority of Palestinians turning them into scattered refugees…

Killing them all off would achieve peace, though, since their other neighbors (or at least the ones that could prolong a violent war) seem to have no problem with it. It might be the most peaceful solution, though by no means am I implying I agree with it.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#186

Post by gtsop »

_vere wrote: post #128

Stuff like this will just keep happening unless a major jurisdiction goes after these digital mercinaries. The fact that we ignore all laws for no reason other than "our agencies really like spying on people" is laughable. Literally crime as a service, sanctioned by most governments. Should not be surprising that such criminal organizations use their tools to spy on people who don't deserve it.

Ignore all laws?? EU has officially recognized the utility of these criminal agencies. Of course under the all-time-classic umbrella of "legitimate use for law enforcement" which in common means "go ahead and use it freely, if you get caught we'll give you a slap on the wrist"

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#187

Post by DSingularity »

breppp wrote: post #109
DSingularity wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An incredible self awareness for you to write “There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia”. I wonder how Iran or Zambia feel about the west? The overthrow of their democracy. The colonial exploitations. Are those legit grievances in your eyes? Or are you a “take up the white mans burden” kind of person?

I don't know how Iran feels about the west, but I for one am not keen about them hanging homosexuals on cranes, cutting hands of thieves, raping protestors in prison or taking random european tourist number 300 hostage in order to make finland cave-in on something. You might think the above is morally equivalent with whatever the state of Italy is doing, but I believe some governments and some cultures are better tha…

Who said that? How is this style of discussion even productive?

We can all go back and forth about which nations abuse their people the most. You can point to LGBT and someone can point to American prisoner counts. Why does it matter? Stay on topic?

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#188

Post by dragonwriter »

edanm wrote: post #178
dragonwriter wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Israel is attacking a semi-state that invaded and slaughtered its people. Israel has been conducting a campaign of (and even has openly described it in terms very closely paralleling the definition of) genocide against the Palestinian people throughout Palestine since decades before its for for-show semi-diseengagement from Gaza (heck, even for decades before it fostered the creation of Hamas while it occupied Gaza…

So Israel has been conducting genocide against Palestinians for decades? That's simply preposterous. There's zero reason to think so, and many, many reasons to think it's not true. > since decades before its for for-show semi-diseengagement from Gaza So when Israel does do what Palestinians supposedly want - completely remove all its citizens from the territory and hand it over to Palestinians to control - then it's…

> So when Israel does do what Palestinians supposedly want - completely remove all its citizens from the territory and hand it over to Palestinians to control

They didn't actually do that; they continued to assert a set of layered security exclusion zones within Gaza where Gazans were forbidden to enter except under limited conditions, and continued to shoot unarmed civilians across the border within and beyond those zones, whether or not they were complying with the unilaterally-asserted terms.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#189

Post by yoavm »

croes wrote: post #41
yoavm wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that "No Jews No News" hints that Altman is in the news only because he's Jewish. It means that people care about _bad things_ more when they're done by Jews. The fact that Einstein is Einstein and Marx is Marx is only relevant if you're claiming that the reason people like blaming Jews is due to jealously of their relative success.

I don‘t think that is special about jews. Just look at the news after a knife attack or a shooting or assault with a car or rape. The religion and the nationality (of the parents or grandparents) is important to know how it stays relevant in the news. People like it when bad things are done by people who have a characteristic that distinguishes them from themselves. We prefer to think bad things are mostly done by st…

The idea as I understand it (and I'm not expressing personal agreement with it) is that similar things can be done by non-Jews and they will not be newsworthy. For example, Assad murdered around 500k Syrians and yet Google searching for "Genocide Syria" yields 1/4 of the results "Genocide Israel" gives, even though the number of deaths in Gaza is 1/10. Similar story for "Famine Yemen" vs "Famine Gaza". Or the fact that the UN has condemned Israel more times than the rest of the world combined. No Jews No News means that bad things are happening everywhere all the time, but they have higher likelihood of reaching the news if the one to blame is Jewish. In other words it's not about how you phrase the story, it's about which stories are told more than others.

Re: US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists

#190

Post by edanm »

ipaddr wrote: post #151
edanm wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're claiming that Iran's government is somehow morally equivalent to Italy's, you're massively wrong. It's not about "the white mans burden", whatever that means. It's about Iran's government not being democratically elected, being massively unpopular with its own populace that can't do anything about it cause it's not a democracy, enforcing religious laws on people that often don't want them, not respecting mi…

You realize that US removed the democratically elected government in 1953 in CIA-led coup that overthrew the democratically elected Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh. Then the US government kept the Shah in power. He repressed the population and led to the 1979 revolution. Who's the one evil again? Those countries in the middle east that US considers an ally are not democratically elected either and they enforce reli…

I don't know why you think anything you said contradicts anything I said. I didn't say that allies of the US were morally superior.

> Turn off the tv and learn about the history of topics you want to shoot your mouth off in public about before you make a fool of yourself.

This kind of personal attack is beneath the level HN aspires to.

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