4 ms·

It is astounding to me that a state as paranoid as Israel has leaned so hard into the far-right that they would actively sell some of that highly sensitive tech

by jprd 5y ago

It is astounding to me that a state as paranoid as Israel has leaned so hard into the far-right that they would actively sell some of that highly sensitive tech to other states that not that long ago had a death wish for Israel as a main position of said state. A state born of hard-edged refugees escaping a world that had recently written them off to die, carried through several existential wars, and now they are EMPOWERING that same evil. Also, please please do not trot out the "NSO isn't Mossad/IDF" nonsense. I wouldn't be surprised if all of this was a façade to penetrate the infrastructure of states that Israel wanted to monitor. There has never been a more competent, sophisticated, and dedicated group than that of Israeli intelligence. To imagine that they would allow all this as an oversight without some state benefit is not something my brain can comprehend.

whizzter 5y ago
I don't doubt the Mossad/NSO link either but as for "empowering and giving away" I wouldn't reach that far. Rather I suspect they were selling it as hacking-as-a-service and the clients they had never actually got their hands on the software or any physical servers (apart from possibly NSO relays), rather everything probably passed through their servers hosted in Israel where they could control that +1 and +972 numbers were never targeted. The people they had as client only cared as long as they got into the iPhones,etc they wanted, I doubt they cared if they had control of the software or not.
Terry_Roll 5y ago
You dont have a clue do you! Have you thought your prejudices are being played here, the hatred of Jews goes back centuries its engrained in cultures around the world. NSO were too bloody clever for their own good because they never thought about how their hack-as-a-service could be _spun_ against them. Have you not thought how US companies like MS, Apple, Google do stuff for the US govt, just like when it comes to financial sanctions on Russians, its the US asking the UK to do it. Look at the Ukraine and the NordStream2 pipeline between Germany and Russia, US leaned on the EU to make things difficult for Russia. Look at the criticisms of China's HueWei spying using 5G networks, the fact HueWei hold more global 5G patents seems to be irrelevant to the US except its not because its a classic case of leap frogging in technology whilst older tech patents are milked. Its what you would expect from the leading nation on this planet ie the US to engage in behaviour wise but all this US repression makes those countries double down and come back with something better. NSO is just the latest fallout, but its nuanced and not everyone picks this up when reading the global news. The US is end of empires time, its just natural just like Afghanistan is the only country on the planet to have never have been colonised by an outside force, namely Russia empire, British empire and US empire and how many people knew that?
NumberCruncher 5y ago
> It is astounding to me that a state as paranoid as Israel [...] would actively sell some of that highly sensitive tech to other states that not that long ago had a death wish for Israel You should google up the story of the Swiss company Crypto AG Tl;dr; bought by the CIA and the BND (German counterpart) in 1970 and sold security software to governments all around the world. With built in backdoors for the CIA and BND. It was the main source of foreign intel for decades for the CIA.

by jprd 5y ago

whizzter 5y ago

I don't doubt the Mossad/NSO link either but as for "empowering and giving away" I wouldn't reach that far. Rather I suspect they were selling it as hacking-as-a-service and the clients they had never actually got their hands on the software or any physical servers (apart from possibly NSO relays), rather everything probably passed through their servers hosted in Israel where they could control that +1 and +972 numbers were never targeted. The people they had as client only cared as long as they got into the iPhones,etc they wanted, I doubt they cared if they had control of the software or not.

Terry_Roll 5y ago

You dont have a clue do you! Have you thought your prejudices are being played here, the hatred of Jews goes back centuries its engrained in cultures around the world. NSO were too bloody clever for their own good because they never thought about how their hack-as-a-service could be _spun_ against them. Have you not thought how US companies like MS, Apple, Google do stuff for the US govt, just like when it comes to financial sanctions on Russians, its the US asking the UK to do it. Look at the Ukraine and the NordStream2 pipeline between Germany and Russia, US leaned on the EU to make things difficult for Russia. Look at the criticisms of China's HueWei spying using 5G networks, the fact HueWei hold more global 5G patents seems to be irrelevant to the US except its not because its a classic case of leap frogging in technology whilst older tech patents are milked. Its what you would expect from the leading nation on this planet ie the US to engage in behaviour wise but all this US repression makes those countries double down and come back with something better. NSO is just the latest fallout, but its nuanced and not everyone picks this up when reading the global news. The US is end of empires time, its just natural just like Afghanistan is the only country on the planet to have never have been colonised by an outside force, namely Russia empire, British empire and US empire and how many people knew that?

NumberCruncher 5y ago

> It is astounding to me that a state as paranoid as Israel [...] would actively sell some of that highly sensitive tech to other states that not that long ago had a death wish for Israel You should google up the story of the Swiss company Crypto AG Tl;dr; bought by the CIA and the BND (German counterpart) in 1970 and sold security software to governments all around the world. With built in backdoors for the CIA and BND. It was the main source of foreign intel for decades for the CIA.