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Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses

posted by janrinok on Tuesday July 20 2021, @12:36AM   Printer-friendly
from the NSO:-No-Such-Operation dept.

takyon writes:

Israeli Spyware Maker Is in Spotlight Amid Reports of Wide Abuses

Data leaked to a consortium of news organizations suggests that several countries use Pegasus, a powerful cyberespionage tool, to spy on rights activists, dissidents and journalists.

A major Israeli cyber-surveillance company, NSO Group, came under heightened scrutiny Sunday after an international alliance of news outlets reported that governments used its software to target journalists, dissidents and opposition politicians.

The Israeli government also faced renewed international pressure for allowing the company to do business with authoritarian regimes that use the spyware for purposes that go far afield of the company's stated aim: targeting terrorists and criminals.

[...] The allegations may escalate concerns that the Israeli government has abetted government abuses by granting NSO an export license to sell software to countries that use it to suppress dissent.

The accounts, published by The Washington Post and an alliance of 16 other international news outlets, follow recent reporting by The [New York] Times that Israel permitted NSO to do business with Saudi Arabia, and encouraged it to keep doing so even after the Saudi government was implicated in the 2018 assassination of a Saudi journalist and dissident, Jamal Khashoggi.

Pegasus: The new global weapon for silencing journalists

Also at Business Insider, The Hill, The Verge, and Al Jazeera.

Related: Israeli Firm NSO Linked to WhatsApp Hack, Faces Lawsuit Backed by Amnesty International
Saudi Crown Prince's WhatsApp Account Reportedly Used to Hack Jeff Bezos
The Great iPwn -- Journalists Hacked with Suspected NSO Group iMessage 'Zero-Click' Exploit

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 20 2021, @11:06AM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday July 20 2021, @11:06AM (#1158217) Journal

    but the CIA might as well be considered Mossad just as the Mexican government might as well be considered the cartels.

    How about in a world where we don't conflate different organizations like you just did?

    It is estimated that 25% of Mexicans are Jewish, converso Jews who fled Europe during the inquisition. By my estimate, the rate of Jewish ancestry in Mexico is a much higher figure, as evidenced by their "gimme gimme" attitudes and lack of foresight in how they piss off everybody around them just to get their gimmies.

    You do realize that every human has problems with that? Your post is an example of the absurdity of shoehorning human dysfunctionality into one frivolous metric.