7 ms·
Offering software for snooping to governments is a booming business
- tptacek 7y agoWhat drives me nuts about this narrative is how it immunizes the companies making the most money from these government programs. You'll hear a lot about NSO, but not very much at all about Cisco's role, despite the fact that NSO's revenue from foreign surveillance apparatuses is a rounding error compared to Cisco's.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- ga-vu 7y agoProbably because Cisco is a hardware vendor. NSO actually has support staff that will craft exploits to attack certain targets, fix your server so you won't get discovered, write phishing emails, if you need a hand getting off the ground. Big difference.
- tptacek 7y agoThere is in fact not a big difference. Cisco's AM's know exactly what use their hardware is being put to, and Cisco makes far more money off their hardware than NSO makes off their exploit packs and implant software. They are equally blameworthy.
- m3rc 7y agoIf there's any justice in the world every person who participates in this sort of work will be shamed and ostracized in the future.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoI am wondering why aren’t protests staged in front of these companies’ offices. If they have any in the US or the EU, doing it in saudi arabia, china, etc. means certain death.
- reidjs 7y agoI live in the Bay and even here physical protests aren’t taken very seriously, just kids trying to skip school and lonely elderly folks who are bored. The money’s too good, the tools will still be built and used protest or no.
- ossworkerrights 7y agoA sad state of affairs to be honest.
- mulmen 7y agoLeaving them no option but to continue building surveillance software? Rather than hope for a chance to make someone else miserable I’d rather people just weren’t building this stuff to begin with.
- AWildC182 7y agoIt doesn't matter if they can't hire good talent. The guys running these businesses believe they're "just making tools for the good guys" (actual interview quote from a psychotic surveillance company I turned down a while back). We want to make sure they can only recruit the dumbest codemonkeys and spaghetti chefs that money can buy so their products go nowhere.
- the_cat_kittles 7y agoexpecting anyone to get in trouble... LOL
- ngngngng 7y agoThere's exceptionally few things I wouldn't do for enough money to retire and take care of my family comfortably for the rest of our lives. I assume a lot of people think like that.
- saagarjha 7y agoIdeally, there’d be a number of other things you could do that would work as well.
- PavlovsCat 7y ago> I assume a lot of people think like that. That's what all people who think like that assume.
- BickNowstrom 7y agoGovernment surveillance is a good thing. Change my mind. Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country. Business surveillance is a bad thing. Its stated goal is to monetize user data and surveil everyone on the internet. So basically everyone on hackernews that worked for a modern data-driven consumer-target company participates in adversarial data gathering. Even if you just gave your data to a FANG company, in exchange for comfortable features, you helped them more effectively spy on people like you. So shame on you!
- saagarjha 7y ago> Its stated goal is to catch baddies and protect a country. I don’t think it actually does this as well as the government would like you to believe.
- devit 7y agoThe actual effect might not correspond to the stated goal. For instance, it may be applied to "protect the people currently in power in the country" instead of "protect the [people living in the] country". Business surveillance might be less problematic because laws and government are supposed to make businesses acting for their own interest not be a problem (or be less of a problem), while the same mechanism for governments (constitution and supreme courts) is less restrictive.
- thesuperbigfrog 7y agoLaws do not always stop businesses in search of profit. There are many laws (e.g. Sarbanes–Oxley, Dodd–Frank, etc.) that were created to prevent unscrupulous acts in search of greater profits. Business surveillance and government surveillance can be equally problematic if the people behind it have bad motives.
- BickNowstrom 7y agoWe give the police a monopoly on violence to fulfill its goal of to protect and serve. While there exists potential for misuse, this does not justify taking away that monopoly. I am further under the impression that way more checks and balances are in place to make sure that government surveillance does not overstep its boundaries, where businesses don't really care, especially if the profit justifies the fines or stricter regulation. Government surveillance is not a problem, it is a solution, and it helps save lives. Facebook tracking me without a profile and knowing that I am gay or religious is a problem, because the judge/courts is a room of unethical engineers drinking Red Bull.
- daenz 7y agoShame and ostracization only works when the person cares about being accepted by you.
- briandear 7y agoIs there any possibility that some of this “snooping” actually keeps us safer? Ostracizing these people is not unlike ostracizing police. Even though police have abused power from time to time, I bet there isn’t a single one of us that wouldn’t call the police if our child has been kidnapped.
- saagarjha 7y ago> Is there any possibility that some of this “snooping” actually keeps us safer? Even if it does, is it worth violating rights in the process?
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- xkcd-sucks 7y agoHonestly, if my child was kidnapped and the ransom was affordable... it makes sense to just pay it and avoid the police. Less chance of collateral damage in the pursuit of justice and all that
- luisehk 7y agoThis is why software engineers should also study some humanities.
- quangio 7y agoSoftware Engineers do study humanities. But, you know, there is big money involved.
- JustSomeNobody 7y agoReally? I can’t imagine the software engineers making better than average. I imagine this is where all the mediocre developers go. A top notch developer could go anywhere; why would they choose ... government surveillance tools?
- saagarjha 7y agoSome probably find it to be an interesting challenge.
- StevePerkins 7y agoHave you even considered the possibility that perfectly intelligent people simply might not always share your beliefs or values? This entire sub-thread is so absurd. I can't tell if it's a wisecrack that people have run with, tongue in cheek, or if its lack of self-awareness is truly genuine. "If everyone wrote more book reports on 'Catcher in the Rye', then no one would take jobs in the defense industry"? Come ON, people.
- nosequel 7y agoWhat if you are born and raised in Israel and you've watched Hezbollah carry out terrorist attacks for the past 40 years, would you maybe not be motivated to work for an Israeli firm who claims to make software that helps fight terrorism? I'm not saying that's what everyone's story is at NSO, but I also don't think that company is full of soulless software engineers who skipped out on humanities classes.
- ljd 7y agoI'm surprised that Palantir isn't even mentioned in this article.
- manfredo 7y agoPalantir does not build surveillance technology. They build data visualization technology. They build tools to let organizations better view and correlate between the data they collect. This could be considered to be adjacent to surveillance technology, but the company does not in fact built surveillance tools.
- ljd 7y agoNothing I know is first hand, so I may be wrong. I've been influenced by articles like this over the past decade: https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palantir-helped-the-nsa-spy-on-the-whole-world/ https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palanti...
- manfredo 7y agoThat article illustrates the point I'm making: > For example, a 2010 demo showed how Palantir Government could be used to chart the flow of weapons throughout the Middle East by importing disparate data sources like equipment lot numbers, manufacturer data, and the locations of Hezbollah training camps. Government agencies are the ones collecting data. Palantir is building tools to browse it.
- ljd 7y agoI understand what you're saying but I feel like it's splitting hairs. https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/12/11/report-palantir-took-over-project-maven-the-military-ai-program-too-unethical-for-google/ https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/12/11/re...
- BinaryIdiot 7y ago
- hotsauceror 7y agoI would prefer it if the journalists who wrote about issues like this would stop using cutesy words like "snooping" when they talk about government surveillance programs. It sounds like an effort to whitewash what "those naughty rogues" are doing. Same thing as saying that Politician X is a "fibber". No one out there, as far as I am aware, is clamoring for us to treat this behavior as "naughty", so I don't see why they've chosen to employ this langauge.
- tzs 7y agoSnoop means, according to Oxford: "Investigate or look around furtively in an attempt to find out something, especially information about someone's private affairs". Surveillance is "Close observation, especially of a suspected spy or criminal". Going by those definitions, I'd sure rather have someone surveilling me than snooping on me. I don't see why you consider the word "snooping" to be cutesy or for whitewashing.
- fenwick67 7y agoIDK how to justify it but "snooping" seems cutesy to me as well.
- saagarjha 7y agoMaybe because there’s a comic strip character with a similar name.
- hotsauceror 7y ago"Snooping", to me, brings to mind images of disapproving mother-in-law looking through your medicine cabinet or little kids trying to find where you hid the Christmas presents. Whereas "surveilling" implies gathering the information necessary to blackmail, imprison, or kill someone.
- MereInterest 7y agoAgreed entirely. "Stalking" would also be an appropriate term.
- WC3w6pXxgGd 7y agoHere is the full article: https://web.archive.org/web/20191213200007/https://www.economist.com/business/2019/12/12/offering-software-for-snooping-to-governments-is-a-booming-business https://web.archive.org/web/20191213200007/https://www.econo....
- ga-vu 7y agoYou don't say. Someone's been reading Motherboard, I see.
- turk73 7y agoAll that DNA info you voluntarily mailed in is one subpoena away from government's hands. Probably already is in their hands.
- adamsbriscoe 7y agoOnce upon a time I worked on a mobile app that was to be used by the VA to help with the management of medical trainees. I thought it was routine stuff (time logging, policy directories, etc)... They actually wanted a system that would do that stuff too, but behind the scenes it would track the location of each user down to the room they were in. The administrators were suspicious that residents/trainees were sneaking off premises to "work from Starbucks" and they wanted ammunition to use against the sponsoring institutions to revoke payments (which go to resident salaries)... They weren't the slightest bit worried about the legal, moral, or safety implications. It never crossed their minds at all. (They never got what they wanted, at least not from me.)
- Spooky23 7y agoIt's an example of why collective bargaining is important in your relationship with a big company. Standard terms dictated by an employer and accepted by the employee are that you have no expectation of privacy, period. With modern EDR tools and smartphones, even less sophisticated companies can do big-brother stuff that only a relative few could years ago.
- notlukesky 7y agoSelling surveillance technology is a booming and legal business in most jurisdictions subject to respective export control laws. But they are not as ethically challenged as companies who deliberately sell lemons and backdoors to their customers in return for a payout from the NSA like RSA (part of Dell EMC) did: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa/exclusive-secret-contract-tied-nsa-and-security-industry-pioneer-idUSBRE9BJ1C220131220 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-security-rsa/exclusiv... https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-million-for-a-back-door-into-rsa-encryption-according-to https://www.theverge.com/2013/12/20/5231006/nsa-paid-10-mill...
- JohnFen 7y agoI don't agree. I think they're equally ethically challenged. I accept that there will always be companies that sell offensive software to governments and the like. What gets my goat is when they aren't portrayed as what they are: sleazebag attackers.
- ignoramous 7y agoLMFTFY: Offering software for snooping to the oppressors [0], the rich [1], the law-breakers [2], the law-makers [3], the advertisers [4] is a booming business. The modern day tech seems like a curse and a cancer, despite its enormous potential for good. /rant [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109474 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19109474 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20336762 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874999 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16874999 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346307 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346307 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18082017 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18082017 ...ad infinitum