Maybe not "spy" but ex-security official at least. Not sure how thinly that's splitting hairs though.
Also as an unrelated nit: Ramat Hasharon isn't a "plush suburb", it's where people without enough money to buy an apartment in Tel Aviv go live (Tel Aviv being "valley" expensive)
Also people who live there identify it as a “plush suburb” themselves.
https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%A8%D7%9E%D7%AA%20%D7%94%D...
https://www.madlan.co.il/local/%D7%AA%D7%9C%20%D7%90%D7%91%D...
But even if your estimate is correct and the difference in prices is “categorical”, the author of the piece could simply have had in mind the streets with private houses, which mostly cost north of 1.5-2 million USD. This is rather plush, I guess.
Now, that book has been denounced by some but large parts of it seem plausible.
I'm not saying I agree with that line of attack; it just feels like an own-goal.
NSO is a private company who is US owned and at odds with the Israeli government often.
As an Israeli I’m pretty confident Israel would not send spies in order to do things related to NSO’s private business.
If anything - these are US spies and not Israeli ones. It just doesn’t make sense for Israel to do this.
Not that Israel doesn’t do shabby spywork or it’s ethically above this - just not for NSO.
But is stuffed full of ex-officers from Israel's military. Don't you find it odd? Why they seem to keep coming, while at the same time switching back and forth in between army and "civilian" career?
That's a rather dumb cover.
I also don't get why this is being downvoted... this is a legitimate question. And actually:
I do, and I think it's abuse that private companies have been stealing the army's IP to develop their own infrastructure and sell it for a profit.
While the army mass-producing good software engineers is a boon for the economy it has also spawned a bunch of companies that use army-related IP.
That's even _more_ for a reason for this not being an Israeli spy though. It doesn't make sense for the government to do this.
Does it enrich the selected few? Yes it does. But enriches the country as a whole as well.
That's not how anybody's career can work. And nobody in his sane mind will accept severe demotion on rejoining the service, nor will choose a very different branch of service.
A diplomatic security corps officer, will not be making a good sailor. Those things are just screaming "a good pretext to station uniformed spy abroad" - these two for example, are pretty much the only two ways Israel can put a man in uniform into another country legally.
What is the source for this?
> What is the source for this?
NSO Group Technologies founders are Unit 8200 alumni (Niv Carmi, Omri Lavie, Shalev Hulio). While the "revolving door" between NSO and 8200 is pretty well understood and undisputed in many security circles, I don't have any other public reference. But I'd like to point something: confusing 8200 veterans and common veterans is extremely naive. I don't think anything going on inside NSO is unknown to the government/intelligence (even if they're supposedly separate entities).
I gave a tip in the previous HN discussion (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19006477), and now a broader pattern has been publicly exposed. How many other "phishing expeditions" can you discover by going to look for websites that follow the same pattern (Namecheap, Wix, etc)?
Christiana Markou -> www.eneinvestments.com , Alaa Mahajna -> www.lyndonpartners.com , Masri Mazen -> www.apoiconsulting.com , John Scott-Railton -> www.cpw-consulting.com
Following the crumbs would give more reasons to think that distinguishing whether these are orchestrated by NSO or Israel is pointless.
[0] Of which there are tens of thousands, since 8200 is one of the biggest units in the IDF (maybe the biggest). And if you count veterans of 8200 spin-offs then you're at some 10s of % of Israelis working in software.
probably because of this:
> comes across as kind of fake news.
I have lots of Israeli cousins and see their Facebook posts. I think maybe there's not widespread awareness over there how far apart we are on this.
Was it just me, or was it difficult to follow this article without already having a lot of background info on the principals? What ever happened to putting "who, what, where, why, when" in the first paragraph?
1. As a vendor of security sensitive products, any NSO deal would be approved by Israel's MOD.
2. They naturally employ loads of secret service "graduates" because it's good for business.
Consequently, calling an apparently clumsy NSO employee "an Israeli spy" comes across as kind of fake news. Not to say there aren't Israeli spies in NY, I just don't think he's one of them.