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Darknet Diaries did a few podcast episodes on the NSO group from the perspective of people who have directly interacted with or have been the target and it real
by sweeter 2y ago
Darknet Diaries did a few podcast episodes on the NSO group from the perspective of people who have directly interacted with or have been the target and it really puts it into perspective how horrific they are. They operate under the protection of the US and are directly allowed to spy on US citizens without any recourse whatsoever.
One particularly grotesque case was the illegal wire tapping of Ben Suda after launching a criminal probe in to Israeli war crimes, which they used to threaten the prosecutor and used it to hide evidence that they knew was under scrutiny or take the cases to court just to drop it so they can tell the ICC that they did make an attempt to prosecute, which is a loophole that disallows the ICC to take up those cases.
I'm certain many countries do this stuff, as well as operate botnets and threaten journalists... but the uniqueness here is that these intel groups located in Israel operate under complete protection of the US without any scrutiny or oversight alongside the US government. We are living in this dystopian universe that people have warned about, for decades at this point.
- tptacek 2y agoThe US hosts and protects firms that are better at this than NSO, and not just because they're smart enough not to be in the news.
- WatchDog 2y agoDo these firms target US citizens without a US warrant?
- tptacek 2y agoUS citizens are routinely targeted by CNE operations enabled by commercial tools, yes.
- dghlsakjg 2y agoYou don’t need a warrant to target US citizens unless you are the government.
- MaxPock 2y agoThe arrangement is that UKs GCHQ spies on US citizens and shares the info with CIA/NSA .
- justin66 2y agoOn the other hand, if you “target” Americans and you’re not the American government, you’re committing a crime.
- tptacek 2y agoNote here that we are describing firms that produce CNE tools, not organizations (lawfully constituted or otherwise) that actually use them. Production of exploits and implants is broadly legal everywhere in the world, including the US and Europe. The legality gets murky when you sell to non-governmental organizations (if prosecutors can demonstrate you knew the crimes that were to be committed with them), but most of the market appears to be governmental.
- singleshot_ 2y agoWell, this is not really true, given what we know about the government actor doctrine.
- hammock 2y agoWho are you talking about?
- stavros 2y agoWhy was this dead? If anything, Thomas' reputation here should at least entitle him to being heard.
- theptip 2y agoAgreed that the flag seems highly dubious here.
- newspaper1 2y ago[flagged]
- stavros 2y agoI don't think it's off topic, we're talking about companies spying. Unsourced, maybe, though I suspect Thomas is a reliable enough source.
- newspaper1 2y agoIt has nothing to do with the OP. Honestly he always jumps in to do whataboutism on Israel posts. He didn’t say who he was talking about, it doesn’t add and only detracts from the discussion here.
- saagarjha 2y agoI strongly doubt the intent here was whataboutism. Rather, it was more to indicate that things get a lot worse than this; it's just not in the spotlight so not many people know about it.
- newspaper1 2y agoDoes it get worse? He didn’t actually leave a source. NSO is certainly the most nefarious known agency.
- 2y ago
- bbqfog 2y agoI refuse to use Israeli tech in my stack if at all possible. I don't see how someone could use software like Snyk and not put themselves at risk (founders are ex-IDF Unit 8200). Especially in the area of security, it seems like using Israeli tech is inviting the wolf straight into the hen house. No thanks.
- Horffupolde 2y ago[flagged]
- bbqfog 2y agoI don’t use Intel either (at least as my main processor).
- neerajsi 2y agoYes, I think the pager attack is also an interesting case study. It's one thing to execute a supply chain compromise for information gathering, where the target may never know what happened. On the other hand, flaunting your abilities in that area will just lead you to being cut out of supply chains.
- bawolff 2y agoHezbolla didn't intentionally include israel in its supply chain. The impressive part of the attack is that they managed to insert themselves into an enemy's military supply chain without their enemy knowing - which is a 101 thing militaries try to prevent. If they were just abusing their known position in a supply chain, it would be much less impressive. So i don't think it follows that the attack would lead to israel being cut out of supply chains, since the attack didn't involve that.
- bbqfog 2y agoIt wasn't "impressive", it just operated outside the bounds of moral values that the rest of the world holds, so it was unexpected.
- bawolff 2y ago> or take the cases to court just to drop it so they can tell the ICC that they did make an attempt to prosecute, which is a loophole that disallows the ICC to take up those cases. As an aside, it should be noted that this wouldn't be sufficient to trigger complimentary at the ICC if its obvious the investigation was not in good faith. The icc can ignore any domestic investigation it believes was not a serious attempt to investigate. Like it'd be a pretty silly court if you could get out of everything by running your own sham investigation.