[HN Gopher] Edward Snowden calls for spyware trade ban amid Pega...
___________________________________________________________________
Edward Snowden calls for spyware trade ban amid Pegasus revelations
Author : georgecmu
Score : 164 points
Date : 2021-07-19 19:10 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| beebeepka wrote:
| Trade ban...
|
| Every single government uses such tools. The ones that don't
| likely have bigger problems such as sustenance, lack of
| electricity, etc.
|
| What people should be looking at is the crazy amount of Israeli
| presence in the so called cyber security sector. I can think of a
| few such companies that literally spy and track hundreds of
| thousands of people all over the world. The government is using
| their services and therefore lets them whatever they want.
|
| I know a few guys working for such companies. No longer friends
| with them. Works foriteral evil. No better than military types
| newacct583 wrote:
| > What people should be looking at is the crazy amount of
| Israeli presence in the so called cyber security sector.
|
| Limiting the ability of nations to export this kind of
| capability as a product for other entities to use is precisely
| what "trade ban" would do.
|
| You're right that a trade ban won't affect the ability of
| nations to develop and deploy their own spyware, but most of
| the targets in the Pegasus dump seem to be of people peripheral
| to smaller governments that don't have this kind of capability
| themselves (which is exactly why they buy it!).
| anothernewdude wrote:
| Nations that want to do this will do it, and trade bans won't
| stop them. Or even discourage them.
|
| It's like banning arms sales to countries like Saudi Arabia.
| All it does is push them towards China or Russia.
|
| Banning this stuff just leads to consolidated power blocs of
| nasty regimes.
| newacct583 wrote:
| > Nations that want to do this will do it, and trade bans
| won't stop them.
|
| Again, that's experimentally false. Saudi and Mexico _didn
| 't_ develop their own home-grown spyware. They bought an
| Israeli product instead. This stuff is harder than you
| think.
| throwaway33432 wrote:
| this stuff is vastly easier than traditional weapons
| development.
|
| if you're in a precarious political position, a homegrown
| entity that produces these tools can quickly become a
| threat; the citizens you train/employ will have their own
| political ambitions, nationalistic tendencies, empathy
| for their fellow citizens, etc.
|
| there are most certainly situations where it's safer to
| just outsource your natsec/tradecraft to an entity that
| only cares about their bottom line.
| beebeepka wrote:
| You seem under the impression this software is being
| developed exclusively by big governments. It's mostly tiny
| shops in Israel, Bulgaria and such
|
| Who would issue and enforce such a ban? The US?
| newacct583 wrote:
| For a start, yes. Also Israel, of course, and anywhere else
| countries host these kinds of malware companies. A trade
| ban would inevitably be best implemented via a treaty, but
| there's no reason unilateral action can't happen first.
|
| I can't tell what your point is, exactly. You're just
| making a cynical point that this won't work so we shouldn't
| even try?
| skarz wrote:
| I would like to point out that this kind of tech isn't only used
| by state sponsored operations.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50166147
|
| Lone wolf creepers or quasi legal harassment companies have
| access to similar tools.
|
| https://www.nefariousjobsmain.com/the-works
|
| https://www.vice.com/en/article/ppmpe8/a-revenge-for-hire-bu...
|
| Although of course the state sponsored aspect of this is very
| real too, and the greatest threat.
| AlexAndScripts wrote:
| That is entirely disgusting. Destroying a life for money. That
| that's a possibility...
| blooalien wrote:
| That's what happens when people are trained from birth that
| money is _always_ more important than _anything_ else.
| runningmike wrote:
| 20 years ago I discovered antivirus software did not detect
| spyware by design. So never ever trust software that is not FOSS.
| Use Foss with reproducible builds to be a bit more safe against
| these by design created weaknesses.
| AzzieElbab wrote:
| What about open source spyware?
| blooalien wrote:
| There was recently a big kerfuffle over something kinda like
| that. Look into recent noise about Audacity audio editor to
| see how that played out... ;)
| dane-pgp wrote:
| It would probably have such a bad UX that no one will bother
| installing it. Problem solved.
| hughrr wrote:
| That is both painful to read and accurate.
| blooalien wrote:
| Sadly, most people when hearing this will prefer to argue to
| the death to support their "choice" of ${favorite giant
| corporate product} and try to tell you "you're just being
| paranoid". We live in a world where a great many people will
| accept the most outlandish conspiracy theories as undeniable
| fact with little to no supporting evidence, but when you try to
| warn them about _real_ and _verifiable_ concerns, it doesn 't
| matter how much _proof_ there is... You 're automatically
| _wrong_ in their eyes. What 's more terrifying than that? Some
| of those people hold positions of great power in this world.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| We've got to get to them before microsoft and google do.
| Teach Linux in schools and about the importance of FLOSS. In
| my school in California it was all windows in the 1990's and
| 2000's.
| blooalien wrote:
| > In my school in California it was all windows in the
| 1990's and 2000's.
|
| Yeah, it was that way even before that. Microsoft and Apple
| got into a "donation war" tryin'a get their corporate
| garbage into schools back when I was a kid. Looks like
| Microsoft largely _won_ that war. Hard to fight multiple
| generations deep corporate brainwashing.
| TaylorAlexander wrote:
| Ah yes, the efficiency of the free market. Where
| companies with deep pockets get kids hooked on their
| product early so they can abuse them for the rest of
| their lives.
|
| In these cases I think administrative oversight of broad
| and long term benefits to society is important, rather
| than the more narrow decision of "this choice will
| benefit next year's budget". Early offers by Microsoft
| were in a way a trap that kept schools and students
| paying for decades.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >tryin'a
| revscat wrote:
| Do you have an example of someone who holds that belief? That
| feels like one of those stereotypes that people are sure
| exists but actually doesn't.
| ttctciyf wrote:
| It continues to strike me as a little odd that (AFAIK) there's no
| mention in The Guardian's reporting of this story of the parallel
| technology[1] sold by Gamma Group[2] and licensed for export by
| UK to several suspect regimes[3].
|
| Extensive (40G) information on this was leaked via reddit in
| August 2014[4], and the leaker noted[5]:
|
| > I assumed the hacking would be the hard part and once I got the
| data it would just kinda go viral on it's own or something. But
| it turn's out without any media access or idea how that shit
| works, getting people to notice or care is actually kind of hard.
|
| ------
|
| 1:
|
| "FinSpy Mobile. Version 4.4, released in of Q4 2012, has the
| ability to collect data through Skype across iOS, Blackberry,
| Android, and Windows Mobile platforms . An updated Version 4.5,
| released in Q1 2013, included the ability to target emails,
| calendars and keylogging of Windows Phones, and an updated
| ability to collect data through the camera of a Blackberry or iOS
| phone."
|
| - https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1522/six-things-we-kno...
| (2014)
|
| 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamma_Group
|
| 3: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/uk-spyware-
| wi...
|
| 4: https://privacyinternational.org/blog/1522/six-things-we-
| kno...
|
| 5:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/2cjlop/gamma_int...
| ozymandias12 wrote:
| NSO gets the mic because its the biggest commercial name, there
| are several other companies that fly under the radar with
| similar technologies.
|
| I like what some other user proposed here: military grade
| classification. Tada. Now sanctions apply to both sellers and
| users of this crap.
| xbar wrote:
| Classifying such technology as military weapons would begin to
| address a number of international and national concerns with for-
| sale-malware (aka spyware).
|
| The use of such military weapons by civilians (or civilian
| police) against civilians become more obviously ban-able.
| Goety wrote:
| Enforcement here would probably be centered on adding
| additional sentencing time or punishment for misuse.
|
| That said we have near zero ability to enforce this at the
| moment.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| As the government that allows itself to use this spyware will
| always have an advantage over the government that does not, it
| will never be banned.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-07-19 23:01 UTC)