US-backed Israeli company's spyware used to target European journalists • Hacker News Board

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

#351

Post by wvh » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:32 AM UTC

mvc wrote: post #332

tptacek wrote: post #131

This is my irritating reminder that there is a whole marketplace of implant/CNE products, most of which you have never heard of, produced in basically every jurisdiction in the world. It used to be NSO Group that got all the press, now it's Paragon, and I think it's all for the good that the spotlight gets shone on these companies, but do keep in mind that this is not an "Israeli" phenomenon. There are American compa…

> Wherever it is you live that you feel is morally superior to America and Israel on commercialized CNE It's not the tech (or lack of it) that makes me feel morally superior. It's the choice to use that tech to defend literal facists that I would find embarassing.

Exactly. As somebody with a past in security, I've often thought about the ethics of my actions. Where is the ethics of government?

If you think that sounds naive, I think you get my point. Those in power can not show worse ethics and morals than those they rule, at least not if you want to uphold the illusion of democracy and its values.

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

#352

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:40 AM UTC

lan321 wrote: post #305

DSingularity wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop trying to revise history. The Jews in Palestine were living happily alongside the Muslims. Problems didn’t start until the European Jews arrived to implement Zionism. The end of Ottoman Empire was decades before Zionist terrorists founded Israel (Lehi, Irgun, Haganah). These are facts. Israel was founded on theft and by ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people through non-stop atrocities and terro…

> Just admit it and then it becomes possible to find a solution that doesn’t require murdering tens of thousands of Palestinian children to ethnically cleanse Palestinians that won’t give up their right to return. Out of curiosity, what would that be? From what I've seen, you'd either have to build a wall/externally enforced border, hoping they get over it after forced peace for X years, or force migrate one of them.

I met an old Palestinian man who still works manual, hard labor. Both his sisters were killed by Israeli Air Force bombing. His family was displaced from Haifa during the nakba. Most his elder brothers were kicked out of Palestine decades ago due to their resistance. Do you know what he spent most of his time in discussion complaining about? How his best friend hurt him years ago and caused him lots of frustrating harm. His best friend was an Israeli. They worked together for many years. He is fully fluent in Hebrew. He had so much to say about his old friend that I think what he hated the most was losing his friend.

People move on if you let them.

Stop killing Palestinians. Stop the settler terrorism. Share Jerusalem and stop antagonizing its people. Admit that your Likud party are a bunch of Fascist, genocidal, maniacs and prosecute them. Give Palestinians the right to return.

Let some time pass and many Palestinians will befriend Israelis and vice versa. And when a Palestinian militant group tries to resist with violence again don’t start murdering civilians. Just treat with them. With time the Palestinians will demand that the violent resistance stops. People just want to live.

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

#353

Post by rainonmoon » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:42 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #131

This is my irritating reminder that there is a whole marketplace of implant/CNE products, most of which you have never heard of, produced in basically every jurisdiction in the world. It used to be NSO Group that got all the press, now it's Paragon, and I think it's all for the good that the spotlight gets shone on these companies, but do keep in mind that this is not an "Israeli" phenomenon. There are American compa…

[flagged]

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

#354

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:43 AM UTC

yyyk wrote: post #282

DSingularity wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop trying to revise history. The Jews in Palestine were living happily alongside the Muslims. Problems didn’t start until the European Jews arrived to implement Zionism. The end of Ottoman Empire was decades before Zionist terrorists founded Israel (Lehi, Irgun, Haganah). These are facts. Israel was founded on theft and by ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people through non-stop atrocities and terro…

>The Jews in Palestine were living happily alongside the Muslims. Sure. Just one example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safed_massacre Must be an accident the most Right-wing Israeli voting block is composed exactly of the Jews who were living with Muslims. >Einstein... refused to be associated with the Zionist project. Well, not exactly: https://www.britannica.com/story/the-time-albert-einstein-wa... >Just admit it…

You stop lying. He did not support the establishment of a Jewish state to rule by violence and terrorism over a majority that is non-Jewish.

Read his own words:

https://www.shapell.org/manuscript/einstein-zionist-views-in...

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

#355

Post by croes » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:43 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #325

croes wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple math. What happens more often terror attacks which aren't easy to plan and do or journalists and activists do something the people in power don't like. And how often are tools that were promised to be used only to combat serious crimes such as terrorism and child abuse used for the worst of all crimes: Copyright piracy

It's not simple math, because you're ignoring my point - that you don't actually know how often the tools are used in ways you find morally correct, because those don't get publicized. I'm not saying I have a clue what the answer is - I'm certainly very skeptical of invasive technologies. But I think pretending there's no upside to them is wrong. Like most technologies there are pros and cons. Probably the system in…

>But I think pretending there's no upside to them is wrong.

I'm not pretending that, I say the cons outweigh the pros because there are more use cases for misuse than use.

Terrorist are rare, child abuse not so much but the arrests are still rare, so either they don't use them in that cases or they don't work.

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

#356

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:44 AM UTC

yard2010 wrote: post #346

DSingularity wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop trying to revise history. The Jews in Palestine were living happily alongside the Muslims. Problems didn’t start until the European Jews arrived to implement Zionism. The end of Ottoman Empire was decades before Zionist terrorists founded Israel (Lehi, Irgun, Haganah). These are facts. Israel was founded on theft and by ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people through non-stop atrocities and terro…

Enough with this anti-semite shit posting. If you really care about anyone, be a part of the solution, not a part of the problem.

Anti-Semite shit posting? Respond if you can.

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

#357

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:47 AM UTC

whodidntante wrote: post #327

DSingularity wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop trying to revise history. The Jews in Palestine were living happily alongside the Muslims. Problems didn’t start until the European Jews arrived to implement Zionism. The end of Ottoman Empire was decades before Zionist terrorists founded Israel (Lehi, Irgun, Haganah). These are facts. Israel was founded on theft and by ethnically cleansing Palestine of its indigenous people through non-stop atrocities and terro…

No revision of history here. The Jews were living "happily" alongside the Muslims in the same way Native Americans have been living "happily" alongside the Europeans for the past 150 years. What choice do they have ? Fact: non-muslims lived as Dhimmi, meaning they paid a special tax to keep their "protected" status, which meant they would not be killed or enslaved. They could not bear witness against a Muslim, they c…

It is possible to live in peace.

Fact: millions of Palestinians displaced by the haganah, Irgun, and the lehi terrorists now live in refugee camps while the Israelis live on their lands and in their houses.

Everything else you wrote is just a bunch of propaganda to distract from the central issue. If you have a problem with the Turks take it up with them. The Palestinians however have a problem with you because you came from Europe and stole their land and killed their people. Address that and don’t ramble about what some non-Palestinians did hundreds of years ago.

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

#358

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:51 AM UTC

edanm wrote: post #286

DSingularity wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Israel has not achieved peaceful with its neighbors. Israel has achieved peace with the dictatorship governments that rule over their neighbors. The people of Jordan and Egypt resent the Israelis because of what the Israelis do to the Palestinians on a daily basis. You know settle their lands, destroy their houses, uproot their trees, murder their children, starve their civilians, etc etc.

So there is literally nothing you can credit Israel for? It hasn't even achieved peace in your eyes - despite signing at-the-time historic peace agreements that ended decades-long wars with its neighbors - because that's just with "the government" and not with the people. As if this is a standard applied to any other situation anywhere else in the world. If Israel ever signs a peace deal with Palestinians, but the Pa…

I think at this point we have reached Israel needs to stand down and take a long view of things.

Is this working? Israel stole the land. Israel got away with the murder of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians. Israel has the upper hand but its policy of violent repression and aggressive expansion has created for itself millions of enemies. Will this stand the test of time? Logic says no. So abandon this course while you still have time.

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

#359

Post by DSingularity » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 10:53 AM UTC

yard2010 wrote: post #347

DSingularity wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve only seen these kinds of mental gymnastics from Zionists who are forced into this non-coherent blabber to distract from their inhumanity. You must destroy peace for nearly a century to have peace? But then we haven’t had peace for a hundred years genius. Keep pretending like your murder of children is the way towards peace. The rest of the world will just look at it with disgust.

This is far from what zionism is about, this is a deranged take of some psycho on the internet.

I know that’s true in theory. But in reality this has become the mainstream interpretation to the point where we see the same take from Israeli government ministers. It’s certainly become mainstream in Israeli right-wing circles and the right-wing has ruled Israel for ever basically.

How will things change?

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

#360

Post by lo_zamoyski » Fri, Jun 13, 2025, 11:00 AM UTC

wvh wrote: post #351

mvc wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wherever it is you live that you feel is morally superior to America and Israel on commercialized CNE It's not the tech (or lack of it) that makes me feel morally superior. It's the choice to use that tech to defend literal facists that I would find embarassing.

Exactly. As somebody with a past in security, I've often thought about the ethics of my actions. Where is the ethics of government? If you think that sounds naive, I think you get my point. Those in power can not show worse ethics and morals than those they rule, at least not if you want to uphold the illusion of democracy and its values.

It's not a question of illusion. Classical political philosophy makes it clear that leaders must be virtuous to be good leaders, and that the consequences of having leaders without virtue are bad. No system can counteract vice; people, after all, run the system. Probably the most famous example of how the state degenerates as virtue weakens is given in Plato's Republic, but this is seen consistently.

The American founders also emphasized the requirement that, for the American republic to function, it must have a virtuous people. The democratic process means that citizens now participate in the political process and thus shoulder some of the responsibility for how well a country is governed. The virtue of citizens becomes even more important.