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Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

calcalistech.com

261–270 of 370 posts

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

#261
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Egypt occupying the Gaza strip, and controlling what enters the strip over water or air? Are they allowing one nationality to cross the border and not another (not that there are too many people of Jewish decent left in the Gaza strip)? And, how is the fact that for every Palestinian terrorist Israel killed 10 civilians Palestine's fault? Also, Israel didn't "give Gaza control to the Palestinians" in 2005, they on…

> and controlling what enters the strip ... Unironically Yes!!!! Egypt do! Happy you see how mind boggling it is that there are others who deny access to the Gaza strip. (Again, because of their gov - Hamas) > x10 Palestine's fault? Who said that? It was during a war. It is because Israel has stronger weapons. A war that shouldn't ever started. Why did Hamas start it? You are really dodging the question here... > Als…

> Unironically Yes!!!! Egypt do! Happy you see how mind boggling it is that there are others who deny access to the Gaza strip. (Again, because of their gov - Hamas)

No, Egypt has closed its own border with Gaza, but it is not enforcing a naval or airspace blockade, which Israel is.

> Who said that? It was during a war. It is because Israel has stronger weapons. A war that shouldn't ever started. Why did Hamas start it? You are really dodging the question here...

Israel occupied Egyptian/Jordanian territories. Hamas is a resistance movement of the people living in these territories under Israeli military occupation. The war was between Israel and Egypt, and it has long since ended. Hamas didn't start anything - they were being oppressed by Israel occupation forces and they fought back.

Saying Hamas started a war is like saying that, should Ukrainian citizens of Crimea started attacking Russia, they are "starting a war" against Russia. People who live under military occupation have a right to defend themselves from their occupiers. The occupiers need only leave if they want this resistance to stop.

> They gave them military control and government control. So you are wrong, read Wikipedia again. Otherwise how do they get rockets if the are so limited? Looks like they could get anything but choses to get terror related assets... which again. Is their fault.

Palestine is still under embargo. That resistance fighters need weapons as well as other supplies is normal. The fact that the embargo is not perfect doesn't prove that it doesn't exist. And rockets aren't the only goods being smuggled past the embargo - there is also medicine, food, construction materials etc.

But make no mistake - had there not been an armed resistance movement defending the rights of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation, the current limited independence would never have been reached.

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

#262
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ability exists, what's to stop them from using it? Good manners? And what's the incentive for someone to tell us, if they are? Become another Snowden or Assange or Manning? Not a very compelling outcome...

The adversarial judicial system is supposed to restrict that by having the defendant's lawyers challenge the evidence and how it was obtained. The prosecution and police can't simply use inappropriate evidence. In some cases it's possible (and worth the effort) to do 'parallel construction' by getting a warrant for some other evidence confirming the same thing, but it's not something that can be done at scale without…

How would you defend in front of FISA court?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Foreign_Intellig...

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

#263
post #156

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

> Who decides what is antisemetic? The Majority. > Some arbiter Nope. The Majority. > if that's all it takes to silence it Nope. anti-semetic is kinda big deal. We all should treat it as such and run from it like fire.

Shocking comment!

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

#264
post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of people voice their concerns, including a lot of Israelis, but what can you do? Israel is a democracy and the majority votes for far right militaristic candidates and parties. Whether or not you hear about these concerns in public discourse in your country's media depends on your current foreign policy.

You're statement is incorrect. In the last elections that were held in March 2021 the results were as follows: Likud - Center right - 24% Yesh Atid - Center Left 14% Shas - Religious - 7% Kahol Lavan - Center left - 6% Yamina - Center right - 6% (They've made a coalition with the Arab parties and formed a government eventually, and the leader became the prime minister) Avoda - Social left -6% Yahadot Tora - Religious…

I don't know if I'd consider Yesh Atid or Kahol Lavan to be center left. Nor would I necessarily describe Yamina as cetner right, though that's a bit more fair.

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

#265

People used to quip that Prussia is an army with a country rather than the other way around, it seems like if you add the modern intelligence sector that describes Israel. With all the concerns about 'Military-civil fusion ' as it's called in China or Russia I always found it funny that Israel might as well be the country that has merged both spheres most successfully but nobody really seems to care at all.

This is ignoring some minor details, like that Israel had to fight some real frigging wars over its bare existence, and is still facing a regional power that calls for its extinction. Looks like Israel isn't getting too much love, at least not here at HN. I maintain that we in Israel are still a very normal, western type society, if you take all these rather extreme circumstances into consideration (and, in addition,…

>I maintain that we in Israel are still a very normal, western type society,

Wow that's an insane opinion.

You're operating a city size ghetto and illegally annexing a part of another country.

I guess in Israel that's normal!

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

#266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't suggesting any value judgement in my post, I'm not really anti-China or anti-Russia either or anything. But I think the notion that Israel is a Western country is largely owed due to geopolitical alliance, not culture or how its state operates. I think what does away with that illusion quickly is the fact that Israel has no civil marriage. In Israel, a Jew cannot marry a Muslim, or a Christian. In the US you…

Yes and no, with the marriages. Marriages in foreign jurisdictions are recognized, so people just take the hop to Cyprus and marry there, if they need to. This is just a technicality, in practical terms. We are not a state that is governed by clergy, there is a free press and independent courts, there is a competitive political process, therefore your assertion that we are not a 'secular western state' isn't true eit…

It's funny how we define "secular" by monogamous, pair marriage, which is a religious construct. By that metric, Israel is roughly as secular as Iran and USA.

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

#267
post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If the ability exists, what's to stop them from using it? Good manners? And what's the incentive for someone to tell us, if they are? Become another Snowden or Assange or Manning? Not a very compelling outcome...

The adversarial judicial system is supposed to restrict that by having the defendant's lawyers challenge the evidence and how it was obtained. The prosecution and police can't simply use inappropriate evidence. In some cases it's possible (and worth the effort) to do 'parallel construction' by getting a warrant for some other evidence confirming the same thing, but it's not something that can be done at scale without…

Blackmail by definition isn't used in court.

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

#268

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!

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…

"Using an 0day" is carrying a lot of weight there. The Snowden leaks revealed active hacking of American private citizens and companies, e.g. tapping Google's dark fiber lines, intentionally inserting cryptographic vulnerabilities into the Linux kernel, social engineering to end up with control of security standards bodies, etc.

In my opinion, it doesn't matter whether the country used an 0day or not when it's willing to actively, warrantlessly wiretap its citizens en masse. And the fact that the NSA is at this point known to have spent enormous money and effort to insert NSA-designed vulnerabilities into commonly-used cryptographic systems means it's pretty hard to believe it didn't use them — and if that's not an "0day," what is?

Source: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/05/nsa-gchq-encry...

A key quote, among many:

"Independent security experts have long suspected that the NSA has been introducing weaknesses into security standards, a fact confirmed for the first time by another secret document. It shows the agency worked covertly to get its own version of a draft security standard issued by the US National Institute of Standards and Technology approved for worldwide use in 2006.

"Eventually, NSA became the sole editor," the document states."

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

#269

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…

> And the vast majority of democratic countries are run by people who have a decent appreciation of the rule of law

Remarkable claims need remarkable evidence. Where is this democratic country that is run by people who appreciate rule of law?

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

#270
post #67

"In other cases, NSO’s spyware was installed in the phone of citizens to try to find and collect data and information that isn’t necessarily connected to an investigation or suspicions but simply for investigators to use this data later on as a means of pressure on people being interrogated." aka Blackmail

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!

> The Security Services has to protect a country

Implied is the statement that the end justifies the means. But how do you weigh the proportionality of measures taken? Do you adopt a utilitarian point of view, looking at, say, deaths prevented? Is anything game, or should agencies be expected to uphold a code of conduct, bill of rights or exclude entire categories of information? How do you assess what is or isn't a threat to a country and thereby something it needs to be protected from? What is a country - the president, the party, the government, its citizenry, businesses?

Second, with the popularity of invoking "national security" as an authority argument, how can these agencies ever be accountable? Who watches the watchmen? Are we to trust agencies reporting on the number of e.g. terrorist incidents prevented, especially if the information sources are opaque and there's an obvious conflict of interest?

Third, given the existence of programs like MK Ultra and Cointelpro, is it really safe to say agencies won't try to overreach? With examples like the Stargate program ("Men Who Stare At Goats"), should we have faith they know what they're doing?

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