UK-Based Dissident Can Sue Saudi Arabia For Alleged Spyware, Court Rules (reuters.com) 26
A judge has allowed Saudi dissident Yahya Assiri to sue the kingdom for allegedly targeting his devices with Pegasus spyware and other Israeli-made surveillance tools. Reuters reports: Yahya Assiri, a founder of the opposition National Assembly Party (NAAS) who lives in exile in Britain, alleges his electronic devices were targeted with surveillance software between 2018 and 2020. He is suing Saudi Arabia at London's High Court, saying the country used Pegasus - made by Israeli company NSO Group and sold only to nation states - and other spyware made by lesser-known Israeli firm QuaDream because of his work with dissidents.
Earlier this month, Roger Eastman, a judge in the High Court, gave Assiri permission to serve his lawsuit on the Saudi government, a step that required the court to find Assiri has an arguable case. The decision announced on Monday to allow the case to be served on Saudi Arabia in Riyadh was made on Oct. 11. Assiri said in a statement: "I am fully aware that the authorities will want to target me. However, it is outrageous for them also to target individuals such as the victims of rights abuses and their families in Saudi Arabia simply because these people have been in contact with me."
Earlier this month, Roger Eastman, a judge in the High Court, gave Assiri permission to serve his lawsuit on the Saudi government, a step that required the court to find Assiri has an arguable case. The decision announced on Monday to allow the case to be served on Saudi Arabia in Riyadh was made on Oct. 11. Assiri said in a statement: "I am fully aware that the authorities will want to target me. However, it is outrageous for them also to target individuals such as the victims of rights abuses and their families in Saudi Arabia simply because these people have been in contact with me."
Cool but what about the company actually... (Score:1)
The NSO group has been openly touting it's no-click hacks on iOS and Android since 2014. Apple even said in court that they can't secure their devices because of the NSO group but they recen
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Unless the crime occurred in the UK, British courts have no jurisdiction over a crime against a Saudi citizen in Saudi Arabia.
British courts also have no jurisdiction over a sale by an Israeli company to the Saudi government.
Just because you don't like them doesn't give you jurisdiction over them.
Re:Cool but what about the company actually... (Score:4, Informative)
It's not quite as simple as that - take a look at the oligarchs who use the judicial system to conduct lawfare in London.
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Unless the crime occurred in the UK, British courts have no jurisdiction over a crime against a Saudi citizen in Saudi Arabia.
British courts also have no jurisdiction over a sale by an Israeli company to the Saudi government.
Just because you don't like them doesn't give you jurisdiction over them.
The thing about lawyers is that they're always on the lookout for creative ways to make new law, almost always by disguising some new thing as an old thing.
"You see your honor, my theory of law really isn't novel at all... why, it goes back to the very principles of our judiciary itself!"
It basically just depends on how sympathetic the judges are to the lawyer's/plantiff's cause.... for all the good it's done, that's the weakness of the Common Law system. Common Law judges have extraordinary powers.
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Yeah, it's not the burglars' fault if people can't make their houses secure enough, right?
This is not that far removed from the argument being made in parts of the U.S. these days.
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Again, don't be stupid.
You can stick your false equivalency up your ass.
The US has waterboarded the shit out of people, and there has been isolated abuse in a military prison.
These are big problems, particularly for a country that gives a shit about human rights, like the US.
But you're trying to compare us to Saudi Arabia, where the literally cut motherfuckers heads off in a public square. Don't
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Only difference is kind of religion people are killed for.
Only if you make up bullshit alternative facts to move your point forward. Let's see what kind of stupid shit you've got.
In Arabia it's Islam, so they execute heretics.
Heretics. Political dissidents. Women who say they should be able to wear the clothing they choose... But ya.
While in US it's almighty dollar so they strangle to death random shoppers suspected to be dealing in fake currency.
You're doing it again. You're conflating a systemic practice with random abuses that amount to a statistical rounding error.
How fucking stupid are you? I thought I told you not to be stupid.
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In the current tech environment, iOS and Android devices are by definition incapable of being secured.
Amen. Governments love smartphones. The population is basically paying for their own surveillance.
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But the only reason that warfare could actually reach this guys doorstep is because he's being sold hackable devices while being told they're secure.
And people die in crashes in cars that they're told are safe. No reasonable consumer is seeing a phone marketed as "secure" and thinking "this means I can never be hacked, ever". If you've got evidence that Apple and Google are deliberately making their OS insecure, let's talk.
And regardless, what's your proposed remedy here? Kill off Apple and Google and replace them with some mythical company that manufactures an un-hackable smartphone? Ban the smartphone as a platform inherently too complex to secure?
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My proposed solution is that we stop letting fictional entities defraud large swathes of the population and then pay for the right to keep doing it. Apple is a recidivist offender and would be facing lif
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Apple even said in court that they can't secure their devices because of the NSO group but they recently dropped the lawsuit because discovery was hurting their business more than a lawsuit could help.
Actually, they said their lawsuit was unlikely to succeed after the Israeli government was seen taking a bunch of documents from the NSO offices which would leave incomplete records for discovery.
This guy will be fine (Score:2)
Completely fine. He absolutely won't find himself chopped up in small pieces never to be seen again.
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Completely fine. He absolutely won't find himself chopped up in small pieces never to be seen again.
Nonsense.. That stuff does not happen in the UK.
Here you only chop a body up small enough to move, then you feed it to pigs.
An egregious example (Score:3)
Don't use Whatsapp. Pegasus - made by Israeli company NSO Group and sold only to nation states, took advantage of Whatsapp 0-days. Whatsapp can get you killed [cnn.com].
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