[HN Gopher] Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife using NSO Pegasus spyware...
___________________________________________________________________
Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife using NSO Pegasus spyware, high court
judge finds
Author : lostlogin
Score : 128 points
Date : 2021-10-06 18:19 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theguardian.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theguardian.com)
| s5300 wrote:
| I was reading about this the other day on Wikipedia.
|
| IIRC, he also used this to locate his two estranged daughters,
| who were on a boat belonging to the Indian government, and sent
| helicopters filled with UAE special forces in full battle rattle
| to kidnap/abduct them.
|
| Definitely living in an age where being estranged from somebody
| rich and powerful is something you very much do not want to be.
|
| (Oh no, I'm shadowbanned :( spent my controversial post-ability
| karma a little too quickly I guess...)
| oh_sigh wrote:
| How would they have found her if she followed basic op
| sec(basic for professionals, not basic for random individuals),
| maybe just not having a cellphone and using communication
| relays?
| shkkmo wrote:
| I'm not sure why people downvoted this comment until it was
| killed, perhaps because it is making a pretty significant claim
| without any citations.
|
| Since other people have cited sources to back this claim up,
| I've gone ahead and vouched and upvoted it.
| smoldesu wrote:
| We're definitely posting on a site where being estranged from
| somebody karma-loaded and powerful is something you very much
| do not want to be.
| miohtama wrote:
| Infinite amount of money, but no love. Money does not bring
| happiness, eh?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| Maybe that is just his love language. If you love your dog and
| it runs away, you might drag it off the streets where it may
| prefer to be in order to live with you.
| speedybird wrote:
| > _The latest judgments will increase scrutiny on Britain's
| relationship with the UAE_
|
| Pressuring NSO's customers is well and good, but I fear this
| madness will continue until America and Israel's other allies
| find the political will to sanction Israel for permitting the
| criminal organization known as NSO to operate with impunity.
| So... no end in sight.
| gerash wrote:
| Let's start by voting for politicians who value US interests
| over their own lobbyist's
| shmatt wrote:
| They work under a weapon exporter license. Which means the
| Israeli government knows very well each and every user, and
| decides who is allowed to buy the weapon and who isn't
|
| It's not exactly permitting, the government is part of the deal
|
| I'm sure some of these deals were part of the background when
| it came to Arab nations and Israel becoming closer over the
| years (and the Abraham Accords as a result)
| sgpl wrote:
| I'd highly recommend Darknet Diaries [0] to get a bit more colour
| on the NSO group for those that are interested. The relevant
| episodes are #99 & #100.
|
| It seems like a lot of the NSO group's customers (a lot of which
| are authoritarian/corrupt governments) abuse the system and
| there's no real check on that power. The host mentions that
| officially the company has said that there have been 'only 3
| instances' of abuse of its systems that they've detected and he
| goes on to expose how blatantly false that is. Anyways this is
| now all third hand info - I'd highly recommend checking out the
| podcast (not affiliated, just a fan).
|
| [0] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| I mean, they abuse the system like dictators "abuse" guns to
| kill people.
|
| If you have a company selling a weapon, it's pretty obvious
| it's going to be used to harm. That's by design.
|
| And just like we were never able to prevent the guns to arrive
| in the hand of the wrong people, or make sure people using guns
| respect any kind of rules, why would we expect NSO clients to
| be well filtered and behaved?
| Meekro wrote:
| I'm wondering what kind of check would be good enough. Who
| decides which governments are corrupt? Even if you limit the
| customer base to democratically elected governments, who is the
| final authority on which elections are genuine?
|
| If there's an election in [country] and [politician] decisively
| wins, and [opposition group] says the election was fraudulent
| and has some weak evidence and a bunch of protests, who decides
| if they're legitimate? This describes the 2020 Belarus
| election, but it also describes the 2020 US election.
|
| Munitions suppliers operate in pretty much every country in the
| world, producing everything from rifles to nuclear bombs for
| use by that country's government. If all of that is okay, why
| are hacking tools going too far?
| jung_j wrote:
| In EP 47 of Darknet Diaries the author cites an interview in
| which they said to have an ethics board which makes such
| decisions based on a variety of factors. They might find a
| country having issues with corruption, but still would like
| to help them catch them so called terrorists.
| SllX wrote:
| I can't speak to Belarus but we have a straight answer in the
| US: Congress.
|
| Feeding that answer is the Electoral College.
|
| The Electoral College is appointed by the 50 State
| legislatures and the District of Columbia.
|
| The voters tell them who to select.
|
| In an absolute worst case scenario where the results can't be
| certified, we even have a Constitutional fallback: the House
| elects a President and the Senate elects a Vice President.
|
| For all the noise around what happened in January, the actual
| lawful process is extremely cut and dry. The former
| President's lawyers brought their best legal arguments to
| bear in jurisdictions across the country, and even the Judges
| he himself appointed, even the ones that were most forgiving
| and way more than fair basically laughed them out of the
| courtroom.
|
| Our election system is solid. It's messy, it's debatable,
| it's possible to dispute, but it is reliable, lawful and
| legitimate and we elect the mooks we deserve, not necessarily
| the ones we would like.
| andrei_says_ wrote:
| We elect the politicians "we deserve" from a ballot
| consisting of a selection made by the few thousand richest
| people in the country - the ones fund the candidates.
|
| https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and
| _...
| EL_Loco wrote:
| >a lot of which are authoritarian/corrupt governments
|
| The son of my Brazil's authoritarian and corrupt president is a
| customer. The son himself is a politician and I have zero doubt
| that privacy was/is going to be abused.
| [deleted]
| RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote:
| > The ruler of Dubai hacked the phone of his ex-wife Princess
| Haya using NSO Group's controversial Pegasus spyware in an
| unlawful abuse of power and trust, a senior high court judge has
| ruled.
|
| Illegal under British law. However, under Dubai law, I doubt this
| is illegal because it is the ruler doing it. Thus the question
| comes down ultimately to, is the UAE worth having as an ally in
| the Middle East or not. I think the calculus for the US, Israel,
| and UK is that it is. Given the political and cultural climate of
| the Middle East, any other regime is likely to be worse in a lot
| of dimensions.
| baybal2 wrote:
| Strictly speaking, in UAE hacking will be a federal offence.
|
| UAE supreme court can, in theory, try a monarch of a
| constituent emirate.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Isn't the Monarch a party to every criminal case in the UAE
| though? He'd be trying himself.
| baybal2 wrote:
| There are 8 more kings in UAE.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Can another emirate prosecute a crime that occurred in
| Dubai?
| oh_sigh wrote:
| If there was no pushback from MBS literally murdering a
| dissident in their embassy in a foreign country, why would
| anyone care about someone hacking his daughter's cell phone?
| perihelions wrote:
| Separately, the ruler also hacked his daughter with the same
| Pegasus toolkit, as part of his plot to kidnap her. This
| surprisingly isn't mentioned in the article (though it does
| reference the kidnapping).
|
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/21/dubai-prince...
|
| > _" But there was one threat she hadn't planned for: The spyware
| tool Pegasus, which her father's government was known to have
| used to secretly hack and track people's phones. Leaked data
| shows that by the time armed commandos stormed the yacht, eight
| days into her escape, operatives had entered the numbers of her
| closest friends and allies into a system that had also been used
| for selecting Pegasus surveillance targets."_
|
| _" "Shoot me here. Don't take me back," she'd screamed as
| soldiers dragged her off the boat, roughly 30 miles from the
| shore, according to a fact-finding judgment by the United
| Kingdom's High Court of Justice. Then she disappeared."_
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-10-06 23:01 UTC)