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Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

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Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#241

Post by enkid »

bigiain wrote: post #235
staticassertion wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm only aware of one case where the US government, without warrant, actively hacked its own citizens using a 0day, which was when the FBI exploited a 0day to compromise users of TOR who, as I recall, were looking to access CSAM. Even when going after a bunch of pedophiles I think there was a good bit of controversy there. I think there may actually have been a warrant for some part of the access, idk. I'm not saying…

> I'm only aware of one case where the US government, without warrant, actively hacked its own citizens using a 0day It’s perhaps a bit broader than your definition there, but illegal exploitation and subsequent whitewashing of personal data by law enforcement is common enough that is has a name. Parallel construction. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction Another point. For me, being caught zero time…

This Wikipedia article is awful. It says it can be used to hide illegal evidence collection, but then only gives examples of it being used to hide sources and methods. I don't think there is a problem hiding a source if there is sufficient evidence from other sources and the first source is not illegal.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#242

Post by yhd8i3q7686i »

IAmEveryone wrote: post #119
Terry_Roll wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And anyone who thinks their own country isnt doing the same is deluded! The Security Services has to protect a country which means getting involved in everything, organised crime as well as business, and then when they feel things need to change direction, the security services have the tools aka blackmail information to make that change happen... in most cases!

Yeah, no, this is bullshit. People don’t just have agencies (Mossad, CIA), they also have agency as in: the power to change reality. And the vast majority of democratic countries are run by people who have a decent appreciation of the rule of law , which is what stands between your actual freedom and your gloomy fantasies. Then, there’s also a group of countries that simply cannot afford / don’t have the people to do…

I'm sorry, but I don't believe that any, much less the vast majority of democratic countries are run by people who have a decent appreciation of the rule of law.

There are certainly plenty of states that cannot afford these programs, or that may choose to spend their resources in other ways, but the big powers are more than willing to assist when their interests align. I think the case of Denmark shows that it's very difficult to anticipate when interests will align, because we sometimes don't even know the identities of the people whose interests matter.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#243

Post by DSingularity »

gambiting wrote: post #52
voz_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not grounded in reality. Arab citizens can vote and participate, and there are Arab parties in Israeli government. If you want to see an apartheid, go look at any other country in the middle east. Let's see how Jewish representation looks there...?

If I can quote someone else for putting it much better than I would: https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/ndik83/south_afr... "Israel is the nation state of Jews alone" Netanyahu responds to TV star saying Arabs are equal citizens (2019): source: https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-israel-is-the-n...

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck then it’s Apartheid?

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#244

Post by matheusmoreira »

friendlydog wrote: post #115

Israel is its own nation and it isn't America's business what it does to its own citizens. However, their tools are used on American without warrants. It would be in our interests as citizens to flag all employees of NSO as spies and try them.

It's humanity's business. No human being should be subjected to this mass surveillance.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#245

Post by yonixw »

cmurf wrote: post #159
yonixw wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are a poet... Now back to reality. They waited to suicide bomb themselves near the maximum available innocent bystanders, to kill as much people. while their leaders hide in their mansions. They are the scum of the earth. And thankfully, Israel stopped them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Lehi_operations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Irgun_operations Terrorist or freedom fighter depends on which side you're on.

[1] "...The group [Lehi] referred to its members as terrorists and admitted to having carried out terrorist attacks."

[2] "... The Irgun has been viewed as a terrorist organization ... , In particular, the Irgun was described as a terrorist organization by ... the 1946 Zionist Congress and the Jewish Agency"

Seems like everyone agreed they are terrorists... But, even then:

[2] " However, Bruce Hoffman and Max Abrahms [claims] ... the Irgun went to considerable lengths to avoid harming civilians, such as issuing pre-attack warnings;"

So turns out it very easy to separate terrorist from freedom fighter. Just see if civilians are one of their targets. Multiple suicide bombing in public buses in the past and Rockets on civilians [3] in the present tells us all the story we need about the org that sent them. (See the "Motives" section in [3])

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lehi_(militant_group)

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irgun

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestinian_rocket_attacks_on_...

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#246

Post by tsimionescu »

eli_gottlieb wrote: post #207
FridayoLeary wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's like saying after d-day, the killing and destruction has become more one sided against the Axis Powers. Nobody takes that as a serious argument that the Allies shouldn't have done it (and please, no Nazi comparisons).

I mostly just don't like the rather extreme metaphysical claims involved in simply denying that there exists a state of war. If there is no war, what were the Oslo Accords for? To formalize terms of a post-war occupation? But then when was the war? Who surrendered? To talk of a "peace process", or even of an entrenchment of the Occupation, you need to acknowledge the existence of a second party to the conflict, who i…

> If there is no war, what were the Oslo Accords for? To formalize terms of a post-war occupation? But then when was the war? Who surrendered?

I explained my perspective on this: after the six-day war, Israel conquered the lands currently forming today's Palestinian territories and occupied them. As with any occupying force anywhere in the world, the occupied people started resisting this occupation.

The Oslo accords happened between the occupying force, Israel; and (representatives of) the resistance movement - represented by the PLO at the time, mostly. The accords marked the beginning of the modern Palestinian state (the "official" beginning was Yasser Arafat's 1988 declaration of independence, but that couldn't even happen in Palestine). They were maybe closer to the Good Friday deal in Ireland than to any kind of inter-state peace treaty.

So again, any regular war ended a loooong time ago (basically after the six-day war, but that was re-attempted in the 1973 Yom Kippur war); it ended with Israel de facto ruling all of the territory of modern Israel + all of the Palestinian territories. However, there are two aspects that prevented the fighting stopping there: (1) Israel wants to be a Jewish state, so they did not want to officially incorporate the Palestinian territories, since especially in 1967 they would have meant that the vast majority of Israel's population would have been Arabic; and (2) the people in the occupied territories started a bloody resistance movement against the occupation - fueled by historic religious hatred and concerns, but also by item (1) - the knowledge that they would not be allowed to be full citizens of Israel, even if they wanted to.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#247

Post by rtpg »

tehwebguy wrote: post #184
IAmEveryone wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, no, this is bullshit. People don’t just have agencies (Mossad, CIA), they also have agency as in: the power to change reality. And the vast majority of democratic countries are run by people who have a decent appreciation of the rule of law , which is what stands between your actual freedom and your gloomy fantasies. Then, there’s also a group of countries that simply cannot afford / don’t have the people to do…

I mean the NSA literally admitted in 2013[0] that the NSA had employees doing stuff like this just for personal reasons. The only real difference is where the data was gathered from and I'm not even sure it's worth differentiating: > At least a dozen U.S. National Security Agency employees have been caught using secret government surveillance tools to spy on the emails or phone calls of their current or former spouse…

I feel like the distinction between "employees at the NSA using tools to look up stuff for personal issues" and things like "the FBI actively looking up dirt on civil rights leaders to try and blackmail them" like with MLK is extremely important!

One is a case of employees abusing a system for personal gain. Another is establishing a system of abuse in service of the security service. Absolutely night and day in terms of the implications, even if in both you have people with access to private information.

The NSA employees weren't trying to advance the goals of the State by stalking their exes.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#248

Post by tsimionescu »

yonixw wrote: post #128
p1necone wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know who either but I suspect they're currently standing in a corn field with straw poking out from the ends of their sleeves ;).

Found an example pretty quick.. Please go to [1] + [2] searches, while not a big channel on YouTube, ~200K subscribers in politics is kind of big for alternative-media with the top videos getting ~500K views. And now, please note that every video on China is something like "China is actually doing more for Climate-Change", or "Is China to Blame For Covid-19?" all suggesting China has so many good parts that we missed…

There is some bias in their choice of covering Israel's crimes much more often than China's, but I don't see the China apologism. They have a more nuanced view on China's global warming actions than you often see, but that view is quite realistic. I have also found one article [0] covering China's appalling treatment of Uighurs - that is little coverage, but it at least proves that they are not entirely covering China's crimes. They also mention Mao's atrocities in another article [1], though more in passing.

When you say "China apologism" I expect to see people praising China's "wonderful socialist state", talk about how free and happy the Chinese are, defend China's treatment of Uighurs (or deny it's happening) etc. Explaining that China, while being the top country by GHG total emissions, is not even in top 10 by per capita emissions is not China apologism - it is simply stating an uncomfortable fact.

[0] https://novaramedia.com/2020/08/05/neither-washington-nor-be...

[1] https://novaramedia.com/2017/11/24/in-search-of-the-chinese-...

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#249

Post by dang »

teluride5 wrote: post #50
dang wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Please don't take HN threads into nationalistic flamewar. Last thing we need here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Sure, though can you explain how pointing out hypocrisy is nationalistic? Nobody is saying either country is better or worse.

People almost always make such points as part of an agenda against of the sides. If you insist you didn't mean it way, ok, I believe you (though that would be highly unusual)—in that case, though, your comment would have needed to come with enough information to make that clear. Otherwise the default interpretation kicks in anyway.

Re: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

#250

Post by pydry »

slg wrote: post #162
ForgotMyPwOops wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who decides what is antisemitic? It seems to me that based on your logic all speech can be prevented assuming some arbiter declares it antisemitic Boycotting can hardly be considered protected speech if that's all it takes to silence it

It depends on the motives and not the actions. "Boycott Israel because of their treatment of Palestinians." A perfectly acceptable political statement. "Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews." An obviously anti-Semitic statement. The problem is that people who believe the latter will often say the former. This causes opponents of the latter to doubt the authenticity of people who say the former. Some…

>Boycott Israel because they are a bunch of greedy Jews.

There's no evidence of any BDS leaders saying this.

On the other hand, there's a bundle of evidence of vehement racism in the highest levels of the Israeli government (calls for "racial purity", collective punishment against arabs, "all arabs grow up to be terrorists", etc).

The fact that apartheid south africa was closely allied with israel, shared a nuclear project and was taken down by a BDS movement is, of course, not a coincidence.

The veneer of anti-racism has seemingly been co-opted to support a white european colonialist project behind an apartheid state that purports to represent a race (again, like apartheid South Africa).

>it should be clear that a boycott can clearly have both appropriate and inappropriate motivations.

It should be clear that evidence-wise, being anti boycott most likely indicates at the very least stark naiveté and perhaps darker, more racist motives.

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