Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any website

Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by furyg3 on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @02:30AM (#23624756)

That ‘only’ difference is a very big one, and they are completely aware that their software will be misused and are happy to make a profit with it.

To say, ‘we will only sell our software to countries who promise not to use it to violate human rights, and if we catch them doing it, we will suspend it’ is just hand waving. The software is designed to be undetected. That’s the whole point.

A actual policy would be that ‘we do not sell our software to countries who have a bad human rights track record, as defined by <independent group>’ ... but that would cut into sales.

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Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by inglor on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:11AM (#23624987)

NSO is strictly regulated by both the Israeli and US government - and only sells to bodies those two approve - I guess your beef is with those entities then.

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Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by ramraj07 on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:31AM (#23625131)

His and my beef is with the employees who think they're not doing anything wrong and partying/making bank while part of their head definitely knows that their work directly funds authoritarianism and evil acts by governments.

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Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by inglor on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:58AM (#23625333)

Oh and I agree with both of you and would never go work for NSO. I didn't when they offered me double my current pay (I'm Israeli) and I wouldn't for triple either.

I am just saying NSO is an extension and a tool of the US government and its regional (mostly controlled but somewhat autonomous) colonial ally Israel. So arguing about who gets Pegasus when the US government regulates it rather directly (through the "ethics subcommittee" in Israel that is semi-supervised by the US delegate) is ironic and funny.

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Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by ishi on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @02:37AM (#23624788)

Is there any country that doesn't have a bad human rights track record? Sure, some are worse than others. But where do you draw the line, and how far back into history are you willing to look?

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Re:Journalist’s phone hacked: all he had to do was visit any... by jtsuken on Wednesday June 24, 2020 @03:08AM (#23624970)

This is a decent source: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index-new There are 16 countries with personal freedom ranking above 9 (out of 10). US is ranked 26 with a score of 8.72, which intuitively makes sense. Morocco is 135th with a score of 5.68, which pretty obviously indicates, that there is more than one thing wrong about offering hacking tools to the government

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