[HN Gopher] Police hacking with Pegasus of key Netanyahu trial w...
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Police hacking with Pegasus of key Netanyahu trial witness explodes
into scandal
Author : tomohawk
Score : 112 points
Date : 2022-02-11 20:59 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.debka.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.debka.com)
| shmatt wrote:
| The newest and weirdest twist in this story, is that some of the
| government officials involved (which had no open investigations
| against them) are now "bringing their phones to NSO" to check if
| they indeed had Pegasus installed on their phones[1]
|
| Now, that would mean NSO has no logs on the phone numbers used to
| install Pegasus. I don't see how they would allow that
|
| If that were true, any country (Saudi Arabia, UAE, for example)
| Who got a green light from the Israeli weapons export to purchase
| Pegasus, can now spy on the Israeli government, army, everyone at
| NSO, the Mossad, and 8200. And the Israeli's would never know? No
| way
|
| NSO is playing dumb by saying "we can't know if you were hacked
| without your physical phone in our hands"
|
| [1] https://www.ynet.co.il/news/article/bjkftweyq (requires
| Google Translate)
| inglor wrote:
| Pegasus (like all products in that space) is an on-prem
| product, NSO send you the system limited to a number of usages
| and certain phone number restrictions and then you use it.
|
| To counter: do you really think every country purchasing
| Pegasus would want the Israeli government and NSO to be able to
| access all that information on their targets?
| yuvadam wrote:
| Counter-argument: do you really think NSO would release their
| 0-click exploits to an on prem product that they have no
| control over?
|
| Citizen Lab reports show significant involvement of exploit
| delivery cloud infrastructure + plausible deniability.
| chaosite wrote:
| Note that Debkafile is biased (and usually proudly so).
|
| The article is editorialized, but not wrong. The Calcalist
| article says what they say it does -- that the Israeli Police
| hacked many phones, without oversight, and some of those phones
| were related to the Netanyahu trials.
|
| Also recall that most of the police personnel involved were
| appointed by Netanyahu's goverment, and were praised by Netanyahu
| himself at the time of their appointment.
| pvg wrote:
| Is there an English version of the relevant Calcalist article?
| They're the original source so if that exists it would probably
| make a better post.
| chaosite wrote:
| That would be this one: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/ar
| ticles/0,7340,L-3928830...
|
| It's the latest in a series of articles by Tomer Ganon.
|
| (previously posted as:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30241488)
| jmspring wrote:
| Debkafile is an interesting site to read. During (before and
| after) the second Iraq war there was a lot of rumor and
| speculation that was way outside mainstream speculation.
| Several ended up being wrong.
| ars wrote:
| I remember them from back then - they had info _WAY_ before
| anyone else, but not everything turned out correct.
|
| They had some amazing sources in the military, but they
| published everything, without trying to verify it first
| (which I guess would be impossible given the nature of their
| sources).
|
| From what I remember they never lied or tried to spin
| articles, but they did not have a strong verification step.
| aaronbrethorst wrote:
| More on this: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/debkafile/
| ggm wrote:
| Could this derail the Netanyahu trial? Political comeback trail
| because the police used tools you empowered them to use, to spy
| on you in a way which undermined the integrity of the evidence
| used to show how corrupt you are.. a modern-day virtuous
| circle?
| recuter wrote:
| Nope. Trial will continue and simultaneously and seperatly
| they'll be investigating this.
| pessimizer wrote:
| To spy on prosecution witnesses, rather. So more like the
| witnesses against you were spied on by the organization you
| controlled until recently, so the trial has to be called off
| as hopelessly compromised. If I'm reading correctly.
| chaosite wrote:
| The "Fruit of the poisonous tree" doctrine is not absolute
| worldwide as it is in the USA. Evidence obtained illegally is
| not automatically disregarded in Israel, though it still
| might be.
| cmurf wrote:
| Well of course it takes the invasion of privacy of upper echelon
| for it to be taken seriously. Had they been nobodies it would not
| be a scandal it would be normal. This is the problem with things
| like EARN IT too. Only once it's used against high powered
| innocents will it be a scandal, ergo privacy is not a right it is
| a product for the rich and powerful, not everyone.
| pessimizer wrote:
| Nobodies don't have much to fear from this kind of
| surveillance. Nobodies have to fear being caught up in
| electronic dragnets and being processed by algorithms. This
| kind of surveillance will only be used against important people
| and people who become important by being a threat to important
| people.
|
| The endgame of this stuff is that societies become completely
| controlled by nameless people; the least surveilled.
|
| edit: just like the cops begging everyone to snitch and putting
| snitches everywhere are the least snitching people on the
| planet, intelligence organizations have mysterious locations,
| methods, budgets, customers, allegiances, owners, and
| employees. The least surveilled people on the planet will be
| the people who own the surveillance.
| LegitShady wrote:
| why is everyone acting like this is all new?
|
| https://www.reuters.com/article/us-germany-usa-spying-idUSBR...
|
| ten+ years ago obama knew they were spying on merkel's phone
| and didn't say anything. The powerful people have already been
| spied on, and participated in the spying. The question is how
| many phones germany is tapping that merkel knew and didn't say
| anything about.
|
| This game is not new.
| anm89 wrote:
| To me it's always interesting because I perceive this all as
| theater. Historically and statistically speaking, the weird
| behavior would be if these people weren't spying on each other
| but then when someone gets caught they all have to pretend it's a
| scandal because otherwise they would be saying the quiet part out
| loud that nobody has had any privacy for a long time and that the
| laws simply aren't followed once you reach a certain level of
| power.
|
| Not saying this justifies any of it, just that it is what I
| perceive as the status quo.
| smitty1e wrote:
| So, if one is engaged in "real stuff", then one expects comms
| probably involve many physical couriers and in-person meetings.
| LegitShady wrote:
| > that the laws simply aren't followed once you reach a certain
| level of power.
|
| That works until you're caught, and then you have to be
| powerful enough to get out of it, or have someone involved
| powerful enough to protect you from the consequences. When
| 'everyone' is in on it, who is going to get you in trouble?
| Maybe the next guy, maybe you have time to bury all the
| evidence before then. Obviously a risk people were willing to
| take to achieve their political goals.
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(page generated 2022-02-11 23:01 UTC)