Spyware and Pegasus: How Democracies Spy on Their Citizens (newyorker.com) 55
Writing for the New Yorker, Ronan Farrow reports on Pegasus, "a spyware technology designed by NSO Group, an Israeli firm, which can extract the contents of a phone, giving access to its texts and photographs, or activate its camera and microphone to provide real-time surveillance — exposing, say, confidential meetings."
Pegasus is useful for law enforcement seeking criminals, or for authoritarians looking to quash dissent.... In Catalonia, more than sixty phones — owned by Catalan politicians, lawyers, and activists in Spain and across Europe — have been targeted using Pegasus. This is the largest forensically documented cluster of such attacks and infections on record. Among the victims are three members of the European Parliament... Catalan politicians believe that the likely perpetrators of the hacking campaign are Spanish officials, and the Citizen Lab's analysis suggests that the Spanish government has used Pegasus....
In recent years, investigations by the Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have revealed the presence of Pegasus on the phones of politicians, activists, and dissidents under repressive regimes. An analysis by Forensic Architecture, a research group at the University of London, has linked Pegasus to three hundred acts of physical violence. It has been used to target members of Rwanda's opposition party and journalists exposing corruption in El Salvador. In Mexico, it appeared on the phones of several people close to the reporter Javier Valdez Cárdenas, who was murdered after investigating drug cartels. Around the time that Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a longtime critic, Pegasus was allegedly used to monitor phones belonging to Khashoggi's associates, possibly facilitating the killing, in 2018. (Bin Salman has denied involvement, and NSO said, in a statement, "Our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder.") Further reporting through a collaboration of news outlets known as the Pegasus Project has reinforced the links between NSO Group and anti-democratic states.
But there is evidence that Pegasus is being used in at least forty-five countries, and it and similar tools have been purchased by law-enforcement agencies in the United States and across Europe. Cristin Flynn Goodwin, a Microsoft executive who has led the company's efforts to fight spyware, told me, "The big, dirty secret is that governments are buying this stuff — not just authoritarian governments but all types of governments...." "Almost all governments in Europe are using our tools," Shalev Hulio, NSO Group's C.E.O., told me. A former senior Israeli intelligence official added, "NSO has a monopoly in Europe." German, Polish, and Hungarian authorities have admitted to using Pegasus. Belgian law enforcement uses it, too, though it won't admit it.
Calling the spyware industry "largely unregulated and increasingly controversial," the article notes how it's now impacting major western democracies. "The Citizen Lab's researchers concluded that, on July 26 and 27, 2020, Pegasus was used to infect a device connected to the network at 10 Downing Street, the office of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.... The United States has been both a consumer and a victim of this techÂnology. Although the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. have their own surveillance technology, other government offices, including in the military and in the Department of Justice, have bought spyware from private companies, according to people involved in those transactions."
But are the company's fortunes faltering? The company has been valued at more than a billion dollars. But now it is contending with debt, battling an array of corporate backers, and, according to industry observers, faltering in its long-standing efforts to sell its products to U.S. law enforcement, in part through an American branch, Westbridge Technologies. It also faces numerous lawsuits in many countries, brought by Meta (formerly Facebook), by Apple, and by individuals who have been hacked by NSO....
In November, the [U.S.] Commerce Department added NSO Group, along with several other spyware makers, to a list of entities blocked from purchasing technology from American companies without a license. I was with Hulio in New York the next day. NSO could no longer legally buy Windows operating systems, iPhones, Amazon cloud servers — the kinds of products it uses to run its business and build its spyware.
In recent years, investigations by the Citizen Lab and Amnesty International have revealed the presence of Pegasus on the phones of politicians, activists, and dissidents under repressive regimes. An analysis by Forensic Architecture, a research group at the University of London, has linked Pegasus to three hundred acts of physical violence. It has been used to target members of Rwanda's opposition party and journalists exposing corruption in El Salvador. In Mexico, it appeared on the phones of several people close to the reporter Javier Valdez Cárdenas, who was murdered after investigating drug cartels. Around the time that Prince Mohammed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia approved the murder of the journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a longtime critic, Pegasus was allegedly used to monitor phones belonging to Khashoggi's associates, possibly facilitating the killing, in 2018. (Bin Salman has denied involvement, and NSO said, in a statement, "Our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder.") Further reporting through a collaboration of news outlets known as the Pegasus Project has reinforced the links between NSO Group and anti-democratic states.
But there is evidence that Pegasus is being used in at least forty-five countries, and it and similar tools have been purchased by law-enforcement agencies in the United States and across Europe. Cristin Flynn Goodwin, a Microsoft executive who has led the company's efforts to fight spyware, told me, "The big, dirty secret is that governments are buying this stuff — not just authoritarian governments but all types of governments...." "Almost all governments in Europe are using our tools," Shalev Hulio, NSO Group's C.E.O., told me. A former senior Israeli intelligence official added, "NSO has a monopoly in Europe." German, Polish, and Hungarian authorities have admitted to using Pegasus. Belgian law enforcement uses it, too, though it won't admit it.
Calling the spyware industry "largely unregulated and increasingly controversial," the article notes how it's now impacting major western democracies. "The Citizen Lab's researchers concluded that, on July 26 and 27, 2020, Pegasus was used to infect a device connected to the network at 10 Downing Street, the office of Boris Johnson, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.... The United States has been both a consumer and a victim of this techÂnology. Although the National Security Agency and the C.I.A. have their own surveillance technology, other government offices, including in the military and in the Department of Justice, have bought spyware from private companies, according to people involved in those transactions."
But are the company's fortunes faltering? The company has been valued at more than a billion dollars. But now it is contending with debt, battling an array of corporate backers, and, according to industry observers, faltering in its long-standing efforts to sell its products to U.S. law enforcement, in part through an American branch, Westbridge Technologies. It also faces numerous lawsuits in many countries, brought by Meta (formerly Facebook), by Apple, and by individuals who have been hacked by NSO....
In November, the [U.S.] Commerce Department added NSO Group, along with several other spyware makers, to a list of entities blocked from purchasing technology from American companies without a license. I was with Hulio in New York the next day. NSO could no longer legally buy Windows operating systems, iPhones, Amazon cloud servers — the kinds of products it uses to run its business and build its spyware.
It's not democracy, it's plutocracy (Score:5, Insightful)
When the rich own the government and the government does thier bidding, it's no longer a democracy, it's now a plutocracy. Money is power, power corrupts. We have a corrupt, unethical government controlled by the upper class. Sure we vote, but they preselect who we vote for. They control the political parties and they control the governments at the local, state and national level. People, we are economic slaves. Face facts.
Self-fulfilling insight (Score:5, Interesting)
When the rich own the government and the government does thier bidding, it's no longer a democracy, it's now a plutocracy. Money is power, power corrupts. We have a corrupt, unethical government controlled by the upper class. Sure we vote, but they preselect who we vote for. They control the political parties and they control the governments at the local, state and national level. People, we are economic slaves. Face facts.
At first sight this looks insightful. But consider what happens when enough people believe this apparent insight. Won't this just lead to a cycle of despair? So instead of doing the little things they can still do, such as vote or join an online protest, people just sigh and say to themselves: Why bother, we are just the slaves of the kleptocracy?
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Won't this just lead to a cycle of despair?
If you haven't noticed, we're already there.
So instead of doing the little things they can still do, such as vote or join an online protest, people just sigh and say to themselves: Why bother, we are just the slaves of the kleptocracy?
As a card-carrying cynical bastard, we're beyond hope at this point. The powers that be are far too entrenched for us to do anything about it. We have a chance in 2024, I just hope to God that we don't choose Trump again because... damn, we're done for if we do that again. I hope for DeSantis myself, he's like Trump in thinking but not nearly as brash, condescending, and whatever kind of negative word you can think of when it comes to that absolute idiot named Tru
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I've not been wearing a mask for two and a half months and I work in public. I've probably been exposed to COVID-19 more times than I can count but I've yet to get sick since back in January of 2021.
As for forcing people to wear masks, that is quite simply Un-American. There's this little thing that we call freedom, it's something that as a patriotic American I hold near and dear to my heart. Forcing people to wear masks goes against that kind of freedom that our ancestors fought (and died) for so that you
Re: Self-fulfilling insight (Score:1)
Are you fucking retarded ? It's a serious question.
You're a battery hen wage slave bitch to your corporate masters, your country is going up in flames, you're poorer, sicker and less educated than almost any other OECD citizen, and you're fucking whining about taking a commonsense health measure to mitigate a disease that's already removed a million of you ?
Fuck. No wonder the USA is almost a third world country with you clowns in it.
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Sadly voting for one side or the other in a plutocracy just reinforces the power the upperclass has.
The hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has corrupted democratic systems, in rich countries as well as in poor ones.
~ The World Has Reached Peak Plutocracy ~ https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/op... [unu.edu]
The real soultion is to defund politics and don't allow class to govern our public institutions. We need both political and economic reform in order to root out class discrimination. The best way to do this is to fairly capitalize the poor. Make usery illegal again amd mandate that all companies share all profits with all employees.
Re:Self-fulfilling insight (Score:5, Insightful)
Sadly voting for one side or the other in a plutocracy just reinforces the power the upperclass has.
The hyper-concentration of wealth in the hands of the few has corrupted democratic systems, in rich countries as well as in poor ones.
~ The World Has Reached Peak Plutocracy ~ https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/op... [unu.edu]
The real soultion is to defund politics and don't allow class to govern our public institutions. We need both political and economic reform in order to root out class discrimination. The best way to do this is to fairly capitalize the poor. Make usery illegal again amd mandate that all companies share all profits with all employees. This can easily be done simply by making the employees the shareholders.
See, it can be done. If only we all care enough to do it.
But in the present Western democratic system, how can we make usury, class discrimination, and other social ills illegal without voting for the politicians who will write the laws to make it illegal? Are you suggesting revolution? To vote or to revolt. At some point we have to choose.
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But in the present Western democratic system, how can we make usury, class discrimination, and other social ills illegal without voting for the politicians who will write the laws to make it illegal? Are you suggesting revolution? To vote or to revolt. At some point we have to choose.
Easy solution, simply defund politics and force through recall legislation and transparency legistation. Once we get rid of politcal donations and reign in poitical and beaurocratic salaries, all the selfish, greedy and irresponsible upper class people will no longer be able to sustain a corrupt system.
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But in the present Western democratic system, how can we make usury, class discrimination, and other social ills illegal without voting for the politicians who will write the laws to make it illegal? Are you suggesting revolution? To vote or to revolt. At some point we have to choose.
Easy solution, simply defund politics and force through recall legislation and transparency legistation. Once we get rid of politcal donations and reign in poitical and beaurocratic salaries, all the selfish, greedy and irresponsible upper class people will no longer be able to sustain a corrupt system.
Yes, but won't this involve voting into office first the representatives (i.e. the politicians) that would write those laws? In short, we still have to use the system even if it's to dismantle the system.
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~ The World Has Reached Peak Plutocracy ~ https://ourworld.unu.edu/en/op... [unu.edu]
so if the world reached peak plutocracy in 2015, the good news is that it has been going down for 7 years?
sorry, couldn't resist :O)
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the peak simply continues until the decline, so we can expect societal collapse at some point thansk to the greedy selfish people making society so top heavy that economically we all fall over. therby proving that rich people are the problem, or at least their insatiable greed is
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The real solution is to defund politics and don't allow class to govern our public institutions.
Yep. We need to get big money out of politics and while we're at it, pass hard and fast term limits. You want to go to Congress? You get one ten-year term, that's it. Because let's face it, the whole time you're in office you spend nearly the whole damn time whoring yourself out to whoever has the deepest pockets to get re-elected only to have to do it all over again in a few years.
And on top of all of that, we need to make it so that one cannot go and work for a public thinktank for at least fifteen years
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So to reverse the trend of wall-to-wall surveillance, you are going to choose someone who believes in wall-to-wall surveillance?
It's not democracy, it's plutocracy (Score:2)
At first sight this looks insightful. But consider what happens when enough people believe this apparent insight. Won't this just lead to a cycle of despair? So instead of doing the little things they can still do, such as vote or join an online protest, people just sigh and say to themselves: Why bother, we are just the slaves of the kleptocracy?
Wow, denial sure runs deep. Amazing how so many people refuse to acknowledge anything that demonstrates how selfish and greeedy many people are. Face facts, unethical people elect unethical leaders. People get the governance they deserve, depite how much they deny it. It's this very lack of personal responsibility that led us all to the current corrupt and decendent state of affairs.
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I don't deny what you said is true (your original post). But some beliefs, okay let's call them delusions, are necessary as psychological or sociological crutches in order to have a fair chance of doing things. A fine example is Sanders. Do you think Sanders had a fair chance to win as president, and even if he did, could he have done all the reforms he intended, without turning into a Stalin? There's this still this thing called Congress, and the progressives simply don't have the numbers. But still people
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I don't deny what you said is true (your original post). But some beliefs, okay let's call them delusions, are necessary as psychological or sociological crutches in order to have a fair chance of doing things. A fine example is Sanders. Do you think Sanders had a fair chance to win as president, and even if he did, could he have done all the reforms he intended, without turning into a Stalin? There's this still this thing called Congress, and the progressives simply don't have the numbers. But still people voted, because it gave them hope. So instead of vanishing, some decided to form their own group, inspired by the experience of winning a few battles even if they lost election.
Another example are the dissidents in Putin's Russia. Why do they even bother, when they'll either be assassinated or jailed on trumped up charges? Maybe it's because they are hoping some young Russians today would in the future try and try again until finally they succeed in transforming the system.
give me a break, Sanders has as much chance as anybody, and he'd be better than what we have. I notice the more ethical a candainte is, the more unethical people seek to cut him down, I assume they must feel threatened in their unethical positions ...
Your atteempt to vilify Sanders as a despot like Stalin is the worst form of character assination, you trolling is both abusive and ineffective, just more partisan bs, all this divide and conquer, get one side fighting the other so the evil can remain, you shou
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I don't deny what you said is true (your original post). But some beliefs, okay let's call them delusions, are necessary as psychological or sociological crutches in order to have a fair chance of doing things. A fine example is Sanders. Do you think Sanders had a fair chance to win as president, and even if he did, could he have done all the reforms he intended, without turning into a Stalin? There's this still this thing called Congress, and the progressives simply don't have the numbers. But still people voted, because it gave them hope. So instead of vanishing, some decided to form their own group, inspired by the experience of winning a few battles even if they lost election.
Another example are the dissidents in Putin's Russia. Why do they even bother, when they'll either be assassinated or jailed on trumped up charges? Maybe it's because they are hoping some young Russians today would in the future try and try again until finally they succeed in transforming the system.
give me a break, Sanders has as much chance as anybody, and he'd be better than what we have. I notice the more ethical a candainte is, the more unethical people seek to cut him down, I assume they must feel threatened in their unethical positions ...
Your atteempt to vilify Sanders as a despot like Stalin is the worst form of character assination, you trolling is both abusive and ineffective, just more partisan bs, all this divide and conquer, get one side fighting the other so the evil can remain, you should be ashamed buddy, just saying
greed, exploitation and self-justification is all I see here :(
Please re-read what I wrote. I used the conditional (speculative) mood. What I said was that "if" he had tried to implement the reforms without the help of Congress, say, by issuing presidential decrees, he "would" be no better than a dictator. Whether those reforms were good or not is beside the point. The means to achieve an end also matters.
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You have nothing to fear (Score:2)
If you have nothing to hide.
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"Give me six lines written by the most honest man, and I will find something there to hang him."
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I am unaffected by gravity.
I am light years from here.
I am not alive.
I am a ghostly apparition.
These are not the lines you're looking for...
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We don't use this on our own citizens. (Score:2)
Even if this isn't a duplicate post, it's an old story.
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We have tried and tested technologies, such as PRISM and Magic Lantern for that. Pegasus is strictly fer them ferigners - well, and anyone else we need to know about.
Even if this isn't a duplicate post, it's an old story.
Slashdot is on a paranoia binge lately
Espionage is necessity in real life (Score:3)
Espionage is necessity and (within limits to be defined by law and case law (don't omit case law) in the modern world or any world.
Surveillance is expensive but failure unaffordable. Ideally only the "right" targets would be watched but that would require publics who choose to be tech-literate then choose to demand reasonable policy.
Spying is now how Authoritarians work (Score:5, Insightful)
The main technique for controlling a population is to divide it into easily manageable groups and to prevent those groups from working together.
You see this pattern over and over and over again. India uses a caste system. America race, sex and sexual orientation. Europe uses country of origin. When Japan didn't have a race or castes and didn't particular care about sex they used job titles & family names (google "Burakumin", they had to keep books of names because they couldn't tell when you were one of the "bad" Japanese).
Now, you will see authoritarians try to get fellow citizens to rat each other out. Like you do with all the laws that let private citizens sue even though they haven't suffered any personal damages (like those abortion or CRT laws). But these are, again, about getting us mistrusting and fighting each other.
There's a name for the whole process: Punching Down.
Spying is something they do because they can. Once you've got the masses punching down they hand the reigns of gov't and industry over to you have unlimited money and power. So they'll use it for less important matters just to hedge their bets, but if you care about freedom, real freedom, it should be a minor concern for you just like it is for the ruling elite.
Ask yourself how much money and time they spend getting us to hate each other vs spying on us. The latter is a lot, lot more.
There is (Score:3)
Then again if grade school is have developed such big brains that they're studying graduate level law courses there's no way we can compete with their Chad brains. It's only a matter of time before they take all our women folk.
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Spare a thought for the poor Palestinians, and what they must go through. They have no legal protections whatsoever, and Israel has no limit over what it can do to the occupied population.
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I'm not sure you know what you're trying to say. Do you really think the Israeli forces use of violence to ethnically cleanse Palestinians is 'restrained?' Do you really think the US police rounds up and imprisons whole blocks of people for years if someone threw a rock at someone? And then, after all that, to grudgingly admit you support Israel using wall to wall surveillance but not anyone else. I think you've drunk the cool aid.
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Spare a thought for the poor Palestinians, and what they must go through. They have no legal protections whatsoever, and Israel has no limit over what it can do to the occupied population.
It's not that hard for the cycle of violence to stop. Just stop the shellings and bombings. (Which side do you think has the power to stop the conflict? It's not the side you paint as the boogeyman. Israel can't end this conflict while they're under attack.)
I am sure thr powers that be (Score:2)
America is no longer a democracy (Score:3)
It hasn't been in decades. (and don't start with the constitutional republic stuff. that's a form of democracy by its very design).
Politicians are owned by big business. They do their bidding and not the peoples.
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If the Republic worked as intended by the Founding Fathers, the courts would put a quick stop to all these Executive and Legislative Branch shenanigans on obvious constitutional grounds.
Sadly, we see that from the Supreme Court down, we are left to the tender mercies of our overlords. The Judicial Branch has completely abdicated. Putting Harvard-educated beltway insiders on the court in the name of diversity (ha!) just perpetuates the problem.
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All good points. The judicial branch rarely complains nor puts it into specifics, but once in a while they do. I can't remember the specific case, but recently in the news was something that the Supreme Court refused to decide, and stated explicitly in the summary that it was for the Legislature to make laws, not the Supreme Court.
And frankly the laws have gotten so long and huge, often redundant, often conflicting, that practically speaking no human could possibly comprehend it all and judge fairly. I'd
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Congress can make all the laws they want, but if they conflict with the Constitution, they must be immediately nullified. But SCOTUS shows excessive deference to the politicians and here we are.
I mean, how is "civil forfeiture" still a thing?
Read "Three Felonies a Day" by Silverglate. Good luck overturning precedent if you have funds for lawyers as a regular guy,
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Congress can make all the laws they want, but if they conflict with the Constitution, they must be immediately nullified.
Yes, that's a critical part of their job. Well, to Constitutionalists, and I think very highly of that document. But you have to admit, there's a lot of interpreting going on, esp. in areas of tech, or things affected by tech, which they didn't have in 1700s.
But SCOTUS shows excessive deference to the politicians and here we are.
Pretty much everything is politicized these days. I'd rather see partyless (neutral) judges.
I mean, how is "civil forfeiture" still a thing?
I highly agree. I can see how it might be useful once someone is convicted, but seizing and selling / disposing of someone's possessions before trial and app
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A few countries have a citizen court system at the bottom where normal people are assigned judge duty and no lawyers are allowed. Wealthy still appeal to the normal expensive legal system but it at least provides a 1st level defense. Also, people with judge duty learn a lot from the experience. At least one could force the wealthy to have to show up and listen to humans before they buy their way past in the legal system.
Wouldn't hurt if the juries could toss out 1 vote on either side like the Olympic judges
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Yeah, came here to say the same thing. It's known as a Corporatocracy [wikipedia.org].
They can afford to hire (lots of) lobbyists and swamp the legislators.
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Strangely enough, people keep wanting to give the government more power. Usually for some particular self-interest, but without regard for unintended consequences.
Congress should not have the power to hand out favors and pick winners and losers in the first place.
How is this different? (Score:5, Interesting)
(1) It's from a foreign country which has its own agenda. NSO Group acts within its own country's security regime & more than likely has close relationships with its security agencies. You can't just offer spyware internationally without clearing it first with your govt. No doubt there are some "concessions" involved.
(2) It's privatised, meaning NSO Group has a mandate to seek growth & profit above all else. They're not immediately concerned with any legalities that don't directly come back on them. They're also clearly not concerned with how their services are used & the outcomes/consequences, e.g. destabilising political parties/campaigns, & assassinating political figures & human rights workers.
If left unchecked, NSO Group look likely to become a catalyst for widespread reductions in social & political freedoms, enabling the worst of humanity to go after anyone they don't like in one way or another. Colombian & Mexican drug cartels, Russian mafia, & Saudi & Indonesian authoritarian regimes suddenly have the means to find & silence their critics.
Yes, governments have always done this kind of thing but usually in controlled, limited & purposeful ways, ostensibly in interests of national security. The moment you make it a profit-motivated service available to anyone who can afford it, the world becomes a much, much darker, scarier place for everyone, especially the "good guys."
Public - Private partnerships.... (Score:2)
Are just Government spying operations.
https://theconservativetreehou... [theconserv...ehouse.com]
Laws Smaws.... (Score:1)
In many countries there are laws against stalking. Where are the police? Or are these laws only if you want to Rape someone? If your using stalking to win the game it's OK?
If you can throw your phone out. Or at least turn it off and remove the battery. And for god's sake never talk about important things on the phone or with any phones around you.
Go into the desert with high winds and whisper into each others ears to plan your day.
I wish I could trash my phone forever. Maybe one day. Maybe if i did, my fami
QuaDream (Score:2)
NSO isn't the only bad guy out there. QuaDream is an Israeli competitor.
https://english.almayadeen.net... [almayadeen.net]
I don't understand why AV companies are not currently catching these. Are they on the take? Are they being paid to not detect it?
I think we need software that warns the user. Raise the bar, then not only do they need to get spyware onto the phone but they would also need to hide from software that knows exactly how to detect it. Use a default deny system, or simply open each device, tie it up, and
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