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Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

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331–340 of 370 posts

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

#331
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea what your map is supposed to show. Yes, Egypt has one land border with Gaza, and is often closing it, helping to maintain the blockade. But on all other routes - sea, air and other land borders, it is Israel that maintains the blockade. Egypt is not stopping any sea vessels from reaching Gaza - it is the Israeli navy that is doing so, since it controls the entire coast of Gaza. Even if a ship were to m…

lol dude it is LITERALLY the first sentence here: "The blockade of the Gaza Strip is the ongoing land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel and Egypt in 2007" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip What is even the point? Can't you just admit you are wrong and Hamas has a HUGE NEGATIVE effect on Gaza? And peace process in general?

Yes, that's the first sentence. Reading more of the article, here is the "Naval Blockade" section:

> The Israeli Navy enforces a maritime blockade of the Port of Gaza and the coastline.

and the "Control of Gazan airspace" section:

> The Oslo Accords interim peace agreements expressly give Israel security control over Gazan airspace and coastal waters.

Also, Egypt being complicit in depriving Gaza of resources (to a MUCH lesser extent than Israel, to be fair) does in no way prove that Hamas is the problem, or has a "HUGE NEGATIVE" effect on Gaza. I will let the people of Gaza who keep electing Hamas in free elections (despite brutal Israeli reprisals for their wrong vote) decide how bad Hamas is for them.

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

#332
post #15

Can we stop pretending like Pegasus is not virtually everywhere?If it's not Pegasus is another tool, worse or better, foreign or domestic, from NSA,CIA,etc.Who exactly cares which entity does it as long as it's happening and laws & principles are being broken? Vault7 was the first leak de facto proving these things existed, why the f#ck are we still surprised now, almost 5 years later, that these things are being use…

It's nice to see the rare comment I can relate to. I hardly know anyone IRL who sees the horrorshow for what it is. Snowden was 9 years ago and for that we now get "privacy advocates sounding the alarm". The surveillance complex waited for the waters to clear and doubled down, with spy devices dripping off of every pole, 12 cameras staring down at every city intersection, blank-faced electronic boxes pointed down at the phone, car, watch, and whatever ridiculous consumer gadget du jour takes us one step closer to Total Information Awareness. How much hype has 5G gotten, and for what? So you can download movies fast. So you can plug into the metaverse and pay even less mind to your surroundings. There will come a time in the near future when privacy is effectively outlawed. Radio signals watching you move about your home. Facial recognition fridge (to keep kids out of that chocolate!). Smart technology keeping us safe. Drone swarms patrolling the neighborhood. The anxiety and paranoia will drive people even further into their clutches, into the virtual world where the surveillance is baked in from the ground up, and not affixed to existing physical infrastructure. Still we act like our words can foment change. Woke children change their facebook profile pic in "support". Nobody's listening but to hyperbole and disinformation, as if that's a new concept. Since the dawn of civilization there has been a war on information. The only difference is that each of us now holds our own dazzling propaganda machine in the palm of our hand. Cheers friend.

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

#333
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…

That simply is not true. In most "Terrorism" cases there is always major restrictions on defence lawyers both accessing and challenging prosecution evidence. From the bullshit of Gitmo to Secret Trials in most Liberal Democracies, in the field of "National Security" lies are the norm.

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

#334
post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RE the apartheid point, this isn't western liberals, it is Israeli human rights organisations: https://www.btselem.org/apartheid

B’Tselem has a history of being unreliable and has an anti-Israel agenda. https://jcpa.org/article/btselem-less-reliability-credibilit... https://www.jpost.com/opinion/btselems-lies-468488 I didn't want to get into this like I said, but imo if the left focused more on scolding Palestine and less on Israel we'd be better off.

Do you have any international sources on this? I'm a little sceptical of the partisan angle of those posts and note they're essentially from a rival Israeli political outlook. I'm open to the idea that B'Tselem are unreliable, but highly politicised criticisms like those aren't really persuasive.

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

#336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They removed-removed them. As violently murdered many. You don't have to trust Wikipedia it was covered by many news site at the time. Even aljazheera.

Hamas won by a landslide an election in the entire occupied territories. Fatah didn't like the result, and took up arms against their new leadership. The Hamas government succeeded in retaining control in Gaza, but failed in the West Bank. In essence, there was a successful coup in the West Bank. Fatah is not the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Does Aljazeera disagree with this account? All the c…

That's not what happened.

I'm not responding here to get into an hopeless post-truth argument and I'm not going to reply any further.

The reason I'm posting is to ask the readers to go search themselves and be very very skeptic about what they read hear. There are quite a few news stories and videos from that period.

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

#337
post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

B’Tselem has a history of being unreliable and has an anti-Israel agenda. https://jcpa.org/article/btselem-less-reliability-credibilit... https://www.jpost.com/opinion/btselems-lies-468488 I didn't want to get into this like I said, but imo if the left focused more on scolding Palestine and less on Israel we'd be better off.

Do you have any international sources on this? I'm a little sceptical of the partisan angle of those posts and note they're essentially from a rival Israeli political outlook. I'm open to the idea that B'Tselem are unreliable, but highly politicised criticisms like those aren't really persuasive.

> Do you have any international sources on this?

Sources on what? What did you disagree with?

> I'm open to the idea that B'Tselem are unreliable

You linked an article from organization B'Tselem claiming Israel is an Apartheid state.

I dont like the "angle of their post" to use your words.

> note they're essentially from a rival Israeli political outlook

Yes, my that's my point. B'Tselem is a political organization, simply linking to their political rant is not helpful. Unless you want to debate out what you found so convincing that B'Tselem said that PROVES Israel is an "apartheid" state this conversation is going nowhere. I cannot prove a negative. You are insuating Israel is an apartheid state, it's a bold claim with no facts. You have to have concrete reasoning to assert so, I don't have to scrum up some "international sourced" articles to shoot down propaganda from B'Tselem.

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

#338
post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Of the roughly dozen questions, I'll try and hit a few points directly to sum up where I believe we ought to be, based on my relatively narrow understanding of US political sciences - please note that many answers to your questions will vary by country and their own democratic maturity. While I don't agree that there was an implication of the end justifying any type of means, it seems we have already taken a utilitar…

I think we're basically in agreement: neither of us thinks we should be naive about these agencies, as they definitely aren't. Intelligence/security agencies have a purpose, but shouldn't become zealots. And they should be trusted, but verified as the KGB used to say.

> Stay involved in local / state / federal politics.

Not an option for me - I'm geographically challenged. One thing to be envious of with the American system is you guys can affect a great deal, from judge and sheriff appointments to the president. Your post is a good reminder not to take it for granted.

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

#339
post #328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol dude it is LITERALLY the first sentence here: "The blockade of the Gaza Strip is the ongoing land, air, and sea blockade of the Gaza Strip imposed by Israel and Egypt in 2007" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blockade_of_the_Gaza_Strip What is even the point? Can't you just admit you are wrong and Hamas has a HUGE NEGATIVE effect on Gaza? And peace process in general?

Yes, that's the first sentence. Reading more of the article, here is the "Naval Blockade" section: > The Israeli Navy enforces a maritime blockade of the Port of Gaza and the coastline. and the "Control of Gazan airspace" section: > The Oslo Accords interim peace agreements expressly give Israel security control over Gazan airspace and coastal waters. Also, Egypt being complicit in depriving Gaza of resources (to a M…

> Also, Egypt being complicit in depriving Gaza of resources (to a MUCH lesser extent than Israel, to be fair) does in no way prove that Hamas is the problem,

Yeah it does... Oh, how much it does...

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

#340
post #144

It's interesting to me why spying on citizens is like this foundational goal of all modern nation states. I get why a state might want to do this but its not clear to me why it seems to be the only stable path for modern democracies.

Governments enjoy having power and control over their subjects. The only reason they didn't do this before is the technology didn't exist in previous centuries. The use of spies was more or less limited to high value targets in times of war. It's not like they could have assigned a spy to every citizen in the country.

Things are different now. Espionage is now automatic and large scale, there's no longer any practical limit on the number of people they can spy on. This is alluring to all kinds of people, from the well-intentioned to the malicious. To them, total surveillance is simply an efficient way to accomplish some goal such as catching some heinous criminal or figuring out what your political opposition is planning. They generally couldn't care less that global surveillance destroys freedom and enables apalling abuses of power at unprecedented scales.

The truth is they would very much enjoy the ability to manage "their" citizens the same way we manage running processes in our computers: total visibility at all times into everything they're doing and the ability to kill them if they become problematic. Traditional police investigations are too hard and time consuming, they want the ability to push a button to reveal the entire life of a suspect.

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