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Pegasus Project found numbers of Ten PMs, three presidents and a king

51 points by scottbucks 5y ago

notadev 5y ago
“But here’s who’s on the list: Three sitting presidents, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Iraq’s Barham Salih and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Three current prime ministers, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Egypt’s Mostafa Madbouly and Morocco’s Saad-Eddine El Othmani. Seven former prime ministers, who according to time stamps on the list were placed there while they were still in office: Yemen’s Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, Uganda’s Ruhakana Rugunda, France’s Édouard Philippe, Kazakhstan’s Bakitzhan Sagintayev, Algeria’s Noureddine Bedoui and Belgium’s Charles Michel. And one king: Morocco’s Mohammed VI.”
soco 5y ago
I can understand governments spying on each other. Here I understand though that it's (also?) governments spying on opposition, parties spying on each other, and probably many private entities (mob?) spying on whoever they see fit.
- varjag 5y ago
  The worst thing IMO it enables the regimes who are too technically inept and would never had a chance of building anything remotely as effective to successfully spy on their dissidents. It's the outsourcing of totalitarianism.
  - srmarm 5y ago
    It's a chance for the tech type to act as mercenary and just as immoral.
  - WJW 5y ago
    What a weirdly phrased sentiment. As written it seems to imply that it's OK to spy on dissidents if you are technically competent enough? In any case, I don't think any government that wants to be totalitarian will be stopped by technical limitations.
    - varjag 5y ago
      It means that previously complicated ways of high tech surveillance become ubiquitous as they are accessible for moderate price to any entity. A proliferation issue. More of bad thing is worse than less of a bad thing. But I seriously feel as you almost insist in uncharitable reading of my post.
      - WJW 5y ago
        I did not mean to and perhaps not being a native English speaker affected how I interpreted it. Sorry if I offended you here. I do still think that entities (especially nation-states) which want to surveil dissidents will not be overly hindered by their technical expertise or lack thereof. If anything, I expect that the presence of high-profile politicians on the list will finally spur some serious research into defensive measures. Proliferation of offense begets proliferation of defense in a mouse-and-cat game after all.
        varjag 5y ago
        Unlike oldschool surveillance methods these provide a high degree of automation. This allows for qualitatively different surveillance state than was possible with a bunch of Stasi guys in trenchcoats. It also isn't held back by borders or jurisdictions. It's not much of cat and mouse game either: neither Apple or Google appear to be able countering the threat but worse it's not them who are the targets. It's the individuals/dissidents who are (short of ceasing electronic communication) utterly helpless here.
    - Y_Y 5y ago
      I think that's an uncharitable interpretation. I understood it as something like: "Before Pegasus there were lots of regimes which would have liked to spy on their populace, but were prevented from doing so by their technical incompetence. It's fortunate that totalitarians are often not sophisticated enough to spy effectively, but that is mitigated by the availability of tools like this."
- Jenk 5y ago
  > mob? I'd have thought it _much_ more likely to be corporate entities wanting information on local officials, other corporations, etc. I'm thinking based on incidents like Coca-Cola paying paramilitary groups/mercenaries to form death squads to quash unions at their factories[1] or Nestlé's malfeasant water acquisitions[2]. [1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1448962.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1448962.stm [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-figh...
  - atatatat 5y ago
    lol, CocaCola plants turn up cocaine trafficking all the time, surely that's not someone's black budget gone global
TaXxEr 5y ago
Here I was, thinking: "why are they interested in product managers"? Working in tech screws up you associations...
- GEBBL 5y ago
  This got me too!
- maartennn 5y ago
  Hahaha same here
- high_byte 5y ago
  haha chuckled
appstorelottery 5y ago
Would be great to have this HaveIBeenPwed type service for this list. I've heard this list of numbers is floating around somewhere... does anyone have a source?
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  I have heard you can find magnet links around for it. Not sure where specifically. Perhaps popular torrent sites?
pomian 5y ago
Did anyone else find the writing style confusing, in that it wasn't clear if the listed people had installed Pegasus to use it on others, rather than finding it installed on their cell phones to spy on them? Finally in the last part of the article, one can infer the obvious (and expected) assumption. For example Macron has secure phones for official secure conversations, but his personal iPhone has been hacked, and Pegasus has been installed, to spy on him. (Not for him.)

51 points by scottbucks 5y ago

“But here’s who’s on the list: Three sitting presidents, France’s Emmanuel Macron, Iraq’s Barham Salih and South Africa’s Cyril Ramaphosa. Three current prime ministers, Pakistan’s Imran Khan, Egypt’s Mostafa Madbouly and Morocco’s Saad-Eddine El Othmani. Seven former prime ministers, who according to time stamps on the list were placed there while they were still in office: Yemen’s Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr, Lebanon’s Saad Hariri, Uganda’s Ruhakana Rugunda, France’s Édouard Philippe, Kazakhstan’s Bakitzhan Sagintayev, Algeria’s Noureddine Bedoui and Belgium’s Charles Michel. And one king: Morocco’s Mohammed VI.”

soco 5y ago

I can understand governments spying on each other. Here I understand though that it's (also?) governments spying on opposition, parties spying on each other, and probably many private entities (mob?) spying on whoever they see fit.

varjag 5y ago
The worst thing IMO it enables the regimes who are too technically inept and would never had a chance of building anything remotely as effective to successfully spy on their dissidents. It's the outsourcing of totalitarianism.
- srmarm 5y ago
  It's a chance for the tech type to act as mercenary and just as immoral.
- WJW 5y ago
  What a weirdly phrased sentiment. As written it seems to imply that it's OK to spy on dissidents if you are technically competent enough? In any case, I don't think any government that wants to be totalitarian will be stopped by technical limitations.
  - varjag 5y ago
    It means that previously complicated ways of high tech surveillance become ubiquitous as they are accessible for moderate price to any entity. A proliferation issue. More of bad thing is worse than less of a bad thing. But I seriously feel as you almost insist in uncharitable reading of my post.
    - WJW 5y ago
      I did not mean to and perhaps not being a native English speaker affected how I interpreted it. Sorry if I offended you here. I do still think that entities (especially nation-states) which want to surveil dissidents will not be overly hindered by their technical expertise or lack thereof. If anything, I expect that the presence of high-profile politicians on the list will finally spur some serious research into defensive measures. Proliferation of offense begets proliferation of defense in a mouse-and-cat game after all.
      - varjag 5y ago
        Unlike oldschool surveillance methods these provide a high degree of automation. This allows for qualitatively different surveillance state than was possible with a bunch of Stasi guys in trenchcoats. It also isn't held back by borders or jurisdictions. It's not much of cat and mouse game either: neither Apple or Google appear to be able countering the threat but worse it's not them who are the targets. It's the individuals/dissidents who are (short of ceasing electronic communication) utterly helpless here.
  - Y_Y 5y ago
    I think that's an uncharitable interpretation. I understood it as something like: "Before Pegasus there were lots of regimes which would have liked to spy on their populace, but were prevented from doing so by their technical incompetence. It's fortunate that totalitarians are often not sophisticated enough to spy effectively, but that is mitigated by the availability of tools like this."
Jenk 5y ago
> mob? I'd have thought it _much_ more likely to be corporate entities wanting information on local officials, other corporations, etc. I'm thinking based on incidents like Coca-Cola paying paramilitary groups/mercenaries to form death squads to quash unions at their factories[1] or Nestlé's malfeasant water acquisitions[2]. [1]: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1448962.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/1448962.stm [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-fight-over-water-how-nestle-dries-up-us-creeks-to-sell-water-in-plastic-bottles https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/29/the-figh...
- atatatat 5y ago
  lol, CocaCola plants turn up cocaine trafficking all the time, surely that's not someone's black budget gone global

TaXxEr 5y ago

Here I was, thinking: "why are they interested in product managers"? Working in tech screws up you associations...

GEBBL 5y ago
This got me too!
maartennn 5y ago
Hahaha same here
high_byte 5y ago
haha chuckled

appstorelottery 5y ago

Would be great to have this HaveIBeenPwed type service for this list. I've heard this list of numbers is floating around somewhere... does anyone have a source?

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
I have heard you can find magnet links around for it. Not sure where specifically. Perhaps popular torrent sites?

pomian 5y ago

Did anyone else find the writing style confusing, in that it wasn't clear if the listed people had installed Pegasus to use it on others, rather than finding it installed on their cell phones to spy on them? Finally in the last part of the article, one can infer the obvious (and expected) assumption. For example Macron has secure phones for official secure conversations, but his personal iPhone has been hacked, and Pegasus has been installed, to spy on him. (Not for him.)