[HN Gopher] 'Somebody Has to Do the Dirty Work': NSO Founders De...
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'Somebody Has to Do the Dirty Work': NSO Founders Defend Pegasus
Spyware
Author : myth_drannon
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-07-29 11:13 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewire.in)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewire.in)
| moistly wrote:
| To my ear this sounds just like an excuse made 88 years ago:
| "Somebody has to kill all these ____!" Ironic and disappointing.
| light_hue_1 wrote:
| The dirty work of helping dictators get away with murder. Of
| preventing countless people from organizing and taking back their
| lives from genocidal maniacs. Of aiding human rights abuses all
| around the world and helping to cover them up.
|
| What these people are doing should be a crime against humanity
| and they should end up in jail over it.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I'm not sure if anybody an Nuremberg adopted the defense of,
| "Look, they kept shipping in prisoners but expected that none
| of them leave. We didn't have food or facilities for them all!
| We had to make room for them somehow!" but this feels along
| that same track.
|
| The fact that this is an Israeli company makes it a very bitter
| irony. Then again, many current Israeli policies would make
| their grandparents blush with shame.
| mcguire wrote:
| I see NSO has a functioning PR department.
| dsr_ wrote:
| I suspect that from a strictly economic standpoint, the only
| thing their PR department should be doing is keeping everyone
| in the company mute.
| [deleted]
| sanbor wrote:
| > The agents said the Israelis' technology, which helped carriers
| troubleshoot their customers' smartphones by sending them an SMS
| link that enabled the carrier to access the phone remotely, could
| be useful for saving people's lives.
|
| A decade later:
|
| > Saudi Arabia, using "Pegasus," hacked the phones of Jamal
| Khashoggi's ex-wife, and of his fiancee, and used the information
| gleaned to prepare for his monstrous killing and its subsequent
| cover-up.
|
| [1] https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/how-nso-group-
| peg... [2] https://edwardsnowden.substack.com/p/ns-oh-god-how-is-
| this-l...
| legerdemain wrote:
| Hey, if NSO hadn't built Pegasus, then an unscrupulous,
| unprincipled actor like Palantir would have stepped in and made
| the same argument!
| agency wrote:
| No comment re: Palantir's scruples/principles but the fact is
| they're not an infosec company. They don't make malware or
| anything close to it.
| JohnFen wrote:
| "And all we hear is this campaign that we are violating human
| rights, and it's very upsetting. Because I know how much life has
| been saved globally because of our technology."
|
| Oh, pity poor NSO. Give me a break.
|
| Even if their goals were good (and I honestly have no reason to
| think otherwise), the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
| And everything they're saying boils down to "trust us". We have
| no reason to believe they can be trusted, and we have several
| reasons to think they can't.
|
| I also don't doubt that lives have been saved. But that doesn't
| excuse everything. There are costs that are too high to pay to
| accomplish the laudable goal of saving lives.
| anonymousDan wrote:
| What I find hard to believe is that NSO are the only ones doing
| this (or by extension Israel). Are there other US based or UK
| based companies doing the same but we just don't hear about them?
| [deleted]
| fmajid wrote:
| Big nation-state security agencies do it in-house, like NSA's
| TAO. Israel itself wouldn't rely on NSO, quite the opposite:
| NSO is alums from Israel's Unit 8200 (IDF signals intelligence)
| repackaging a dumbed-down version the know-how they learned in
| the military for retail sale to tier 2 and 3 countries that
| don't have the capability, or to police departments that don't
| have access to national-security-grade spyware.
|
| I know some Unit 8200 alums, and they are scathing about the
| ethics of their former colleagues who went on to work for NSO.
| neatze wrote:
| Since when spying (by means of hacking personal info including
| family members) on journalists and political oppositions is a
| dirty work ?
| nathanaldensr wrote:
| It's the "if we don't do it, someone else will" defense.
| [deleted]
| f38zf5vdt wrote:
| Is that even a defense? It sounds like something a 6 year old
| would say after punching their sibling for whining
| incessantly.
| klyrs wrote:
| I've seen it used quite a few times in HN discussions of
| unethical business practices. My favorite is when the meme
| "corporation's sole responsibility is maximize profit to
| the shareholder" gets mixed in and folks argue that it's a
| _moral imperative_ to take the dirty money
| atatatat wrote:
| Hard to avoid thinking about that being the reason many
| defend USA holding dozens of countries in a sleeper hold
| with military bases.
| google234123 wrote:
| If they wanted the US to leave they could ask e.g.
| Philippines.
| 8note wrote:
| Someone needs to ensure american owners get a profit. If
| not the American military, who else is going to do it?
| google234123 wrote:
| This is a lazy non sequitur. You really think there are
| americans on the korean DMZ so that "american owners"
| (whatever that means) can get a profit?
| bumblebritches5 wrote:
| Disgusting
| apercu wrote:
| 'NSO Founders Defend Revenue Stream'
|
| FTFY.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| People who are trusted to do "dirty work" are usually licensed or
| otherwise tested by a credible organization of similarly-employed
| professionals to make sure each individual is morally and legally
| accountable for their own actions.
|
| Guess it's finally time for software engineers to be licensed in
| order to legally write code that affects human lives (just like
| every other professional engineer). The ethics oversight boards
| that come with the territory can then laugh off the next
| "Pegasus" that anyone tries to work on.
|
| Not like this will stop people from trying, but at least they
| won't have a professional engineer writing their code :^)
| arpa wrote:
| if therac-25 didn't do that in the eighties, i doubt anything
| will.
| the-dude wrote:
| Article is from July 25th, probably does not contain much new
| info.
|
| Previous : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27920055
| atatatat wrote:
| Probably being upvoted because of the importance of the
| education of both sides of this debate.
| dspillett wrote:
| Maybe. Maybe not.
|
| But no one has to be happy with you for being willing to do the
| dirty work.
| wpietri wrote:
| Exactly. There is a certain logic to "Somebody will do this and
| I am somebody." But anybody taking the money also has to take
| the moral burden that comes with the work.
| JohnFen wrote:
| > There is a certain logic to "Somebody will do this and I am
| somebody."
|
| Yep. But the logic is deeply flawed. I am always disappointed
| when this pitiful excuse gets trotted out. Just because
| someone else will inevitably do evil things is not a
| justification for you to do evil things.
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(page generated 2021-07-29 23:02 UTC)