[HN Gopher] CatalanGate: Spyware operation against Catalans usin...
___________________________________________________________________
CatalanGate: Spyware operation against Catalans using Pegasus and
Candiru
Author : jonbraun
Score : 333 points
Date : 2022-04-18 11:36 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (citizenlab.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (citizenlab.ca)
| shmatt wrote:
| I see something very positive in this news - it looks like Apple
| and other companies have successfully blocked most if not all of
| Pegasus' 0-click exploits
|
| The true scary portion of this world is not even being sent an
| SMS/clicking a dangerous link, for a while people were getting
| infected without ever clicking anything
|
| To me the most interesting leak/investigation that can come out
| of NSO is what happens once a 0-day is patched, is there
| downtime? do customers need to wait for a software update? is
| there automatic rotation of exploits?
| onionisafruit wrote:
| I wondered about how they manage their exploits too. Presumably
| they are constantly developing new exploits. I would guess that
| if they have a live 0-click that is working reliably they sit
| on the others until the current exploit is no longer effective.
| I doubt NSO considers their customers fully trustworthy. So
| they probably check every prerelease of ios and android for
| patches and ship the next exploit to customers only when a
| current exploit is being patched.
| badRNG wrote:
| > To me the most interesting leak/investigation that can come
| out of NSO is what happens once a 0-day is patched, is there
| downtime? do customers need to wait for a software update? is
| there automatic rotation of exploits?
|
| I'd have to think NSO Group has the finances to bank at least a
| few 0-click, zero-days. It seems that the price of such
| vulnerabilities is increasing however. Zerodium, a large zero-
| day broker, is paying up to 2.5 million USD for 0-click Android
| and 2 million USD for iOS: https://zerodium.com/program.html
| EricE wrote:
| It still boggles my mind that input sanitization/validation
| hasn't gotten a formal discipline around it.
|
| It's boring and tedious, yet crucial.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Where's that quote about how Spain always seems to be close to
| collapse, but still somehow keeps going? For a variety of reasons
| I am often surprised that Spain hasn't turned into a Swiss style
| federation, at the very least (i.e. with the Federal government
| almost being powerless). Madrid seems to be the only area that
| actually wants (or wanted) the state to be as it is.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| If you ask me, I think this movement is funded by Russian money
| similar to Brexit. "Divide et impera"
| pvaldes wrote:
| Is a known fact that Russian farms played a huge role in the
| flooding of fake news supporting Catalonia secession movement
| and tagging Spain as evil 24 hours a day. You can spot some
| patterns here also.
|
| But there are other actors. Politicians used this card for
| decades as leverage to obtain more and more power and to
| divert the focus from their own corruption
| ricardobayes wrote:
| It doesn't help that Spain has notoriously bad PR in anglo-
| saxon countries due to the black legend
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend_(Spain)
| smcl wrote:
| It's kinda funny to see vague speculation of nefarious
| Russian involvement in the pro-independence side when we're
| discussing a very concrete case of espionage in the anti-
| independence side. The implication - and we see it sometimes
| in Scottish independence too - is that the separatist side is
| radical and sinister. And that the robust support the
| movement has is simply a mirage, artificially inflated by a
| foreign government who wishes to do harm.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| Catalonia has been trying to secede for longer than Russia
| has existed in its current form. It may well be that Russia
| is funding separatist campaigns like they've done in many
| regions, but there's a genuine desire for independence
| regardless of Russian activities.
| cycomanic wrote:
| I was very surprised how little education there is amongst
| Spaniards about the Franco area, how this plays a significant
| role in the catalonian independence desires. Also how little
| processing of the Franco regime there was (compared to
| Germany), I mean the last Franco statue was removed only last
| year.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| La transicion was way too soft, out of fear of a coup d'etat.
| Decades later and we still suffer the consequences of that
| fear.
| permalac wrote:
| Like just rebranding their fascist tribunal? In the same
| building with the same people, but one day they become
| Democrats.
|
| Amazing story.
|
| Also, they have a tribunal that has two powers, and another
| one that decides if money has been well spent, if they
| decide otherwise you get to pay with your properties.
|
| Amazing country, and is part of EU.
| franciscop wrote:
| Spaniard here, I don't believe a federation-like would work
| here. Historically the more independence/leeway that has been
| given to Catalonia, the stronger it has snowballed into more
| separatism (e.g. when allowed to have somewhat different media,
| education, etc. that was turned to teach the younger
| generations that Catalonia is a different culture and not
| belonging to Spain, which in turn ...).
|
| TBH I do not know what the solution is here, I'd like to see a
| unified country, but I can see how both the left and right
| politic parties are destroying it (one with lies/doctrinism,
| other with oppression/treating them like they are still 3rd
| party) and makes me sad. When visiting Barcelona, Spanish is
| often the 3rd language, after the Catalan (for Catalonian and
| the rest of Spain) and English (for tourists).
|
| Edit: look at the numbers, it's scary how in a single
| generation a whole region has gone from 90%+ wanting to be
| united to 50%+ wanting independence, specially during a "peace"
| era:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_independence_movement#...
| armadillu wrote:
| > Historically the more independence/leeway that has been
| given to Catalonia, the stronger it has snowballed into more
| separatism
|
| Maybe this is what happens when you try strangle a nation and
| its culture, but you fail to do it entirely. Catalonia was
| conquered by force, and luckily its language and culture
| survived along the centuries (despite all attempts). You
| can't invade a region, enforce your language and culture and
| expect it to magically become yours. Look at what happened to
| all the other (former) Spanish colonies, how many of them
| fought for their independence (and won it)?
|
| > TBH I do not know what the solution is here, I'd like to
| see a unified country
|
| You would like a "united country", but this will prove
| difficult, as there is no such thing. Spain is just Castille
| and a bunch of other regions conquered by force - with more
| or less success at assimilating them into the Castilian
| culture over time. Some went along, some do not feel like
| they belong, some feel entirely mistreated but got an ok tax
| deal with enough leeway, and some just had enough altogether.
|
| Many Catalans (me included) don't want to be part of Spain,
| and I doubt this will change any time soon. Especially on
| those who witnessed what happened during our attempt at a
| peaceful referendum in 2017. The speech the King of Spain
| gave after citizens where beaten for trying to cast a vote(!)
| is a great example. The silence of the non-catalans whilst
| the beating was happening another one. The former King
| doings, his fleeing out of the country with total impunity,
| and how the farce of a judicial system treated the whole
| thing, one more for the list. There's a certain "way of
| doing" embedded deep into Spain, that I fear will never go
| away ("atado y bien atado").
|
| There's only one solution and it's what Catalonia has been
| asking for all along. Allow a fair referendum, where the
| repercussions of both options (stay and secede) are explained
| clearly to the population, and let the people decide. It
| seems inconceivable to me that a proper referendum about this
| ongoing issue is not allowed, especially in a supposedly
| democratic country like Spain.
|
| I could see Spain and Catalonia being good allies within the
| EU; but as it is setup now, the relationship is just not
| working. And making it work "by force" will only stir more
| and more trouble.
|
| > it's scary how in a single generation a whole region has
| gone from 90%+ wanting to be united to 50%+ wanting
| independence, specially during a "peace" era
|
| I think you are confusing 90%+ "wanting to be united" for
| "not bothered enough to do anything about it".
|
| The end of the dictatorship (without consequences the fascist
| side btw) gave hope to a lot of people, and attempts were
| made to "make it work" despite all the terrible acts
| Catalonia suffered. As soon as it became obvious there was no
| way to decide our own future whilst inside Spain (see Estatut
| d'Autonomia 2006 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statute_of_Aut
| onomy_of_Catalon...), it was clear that it was all a farce.
| Anti-Catalanism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-
| Catalanism) and other attitudes / reactions from many parts
| of Spain towards Catalonia lead to this. It is way too easy
| for political parties to get votes around Spain by stirring
| anger towards Catalonia... I think most catalans would be
| happy remaining in Spain if their language, culture,
| traditions and pockets were respected. But that's just not
| what Spain wants Catalonia for.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I'm undecided between if is propaganda or trolling, but
| there are so many falsehoods and hallucinations in this
| post that I don't even know where to start.
|
| > Spain is just Castille and a bunch of other regions
| conquered by force
|
| Hem... not and not. Marriage arrangement is not the same as
| violence necessarily
|
| Nobody has been beaten for "casting a vote" in this country
| in many, many time. That scam was not even a real election
| and the desired results were rigged from the start.
|
| Please, stop with the Franco bullshit. You were not the
| only Spanish that suffered in the civil war.
| armadillu wrote:
| Are the Galician, the Basque, the Catalan, and even some
| Andalusians happy to be part of Spain? Who is
| hallucinating here?
|
| Were referendum voters not beat? Is this also an
| hallucination? That was just unjustifiable. Legal or not,
| Spain left the catalans who want to decide their future
| no other choice than to organize a mock referendum. This
| is what happens when you deny peoples rights for that
| long. And after seeing how the Spanish government reacted
| on its own peaceful citizens, how would anyone want to
| stay?
|
| Nobody said Catalonia was the only one suffering during
| the dictatorship, lots of people from many places in
| Spain did. And I am not sure why they want to stay in,
| especially seeing how certain things will never change.
| melenaboija wrote:
| > When visiting Barcelona, Spanish is often the 3rd language
|
| Non separatist Catalan here and I can say this is complete
| BS. There is no doubt that there is more people in Catalunya
| that doesn't know Catalan than Spanish. I have been raised in
| a family that has been speaking Catalan for many generations
| and everybody now is almost bilingual with Spanish. And oh
| hell if I wish that English was the second language there.
|
| Tired of this propaganda that only causes more pain and
| exalts nationalist feelings in both sides.
| franciscop wrote:
| Just my experience as an occasional visitor to BCN, lots of
| people will answer in Catalan when you talk to them in
| Spanish to make a point, but then in the tourist areas
| everyone speaks English. Not BS, maybe an isolated
| experience but that was my experience over there (and I
| only visited tourist-y spots, so there's a strong bias
| ofc). I'm not saying they don't know how to speak Spanish,
| I'm saying many people won't to make a point.
| mejutoco wrote:
| As a bilingual Spanish-catalan speaker this does not
| match my experience at all. I was raised in Barcelona and
| approach people in either language and I can remember
| maybe 2 occasions were sbdy demanded to be spoken in one
| specific language. You can see this a lot in groups of
| friends where people switch languages all the time. It is
| a beautiful thing to see.
| capableweb wrote:
| Based on a couple of occasions I've been in Barcelona and
| around Catalunya, people always answered me in Spanish
| (both in tourist and non-tourist locations) when I was in
| Barcelona and surrounding areas, while when I visited
| Lleida and Vic (and surrounding areas), they always
| answered me in Catalan (and one time even got visibly
| angry when I couldn't reply to them in Catalan, only in
| Spanish).
|
| So my anecdote would be that generally Barcelona seems to
| be fine with Spanish (and walking around the city I heard
| a lot more Spanish than both English and Catalan) while
| areas up north/west seems to almost require you to speak
| in Catalan.
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| Makes sense too as Barcelona is aan international city
| and has many immigrants from Latin America. And many
| people from other parts of Spain live here too.
|
| In the rural area that's much less except for the migrant
| farm workers
| the_gipsy wrote:
| It's not bullshit. It is the 3rd language, in a synthetic
| effort from the local government.
|
| You could say that this is not bad, ok. But you can't deny
| it.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| Sorry but it is bullshit. I actually _tried_ to learn
| Catalan (I am already pretty fluent in Spanish) while I
| was teaching in Barcelona out of all places and found it
| impossible to use it in real-life. Everyone would just
| speak Spanish between themselves, even other teachers.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| So true!
| melenaboija wrote:
| Is not BS it is a synthetic effort from the government?
| Lol.
|
| Go there and experience it yourself and try to create an
| objective opinion from it. Another fact, most of the
| first generation immigrants will learn Spanish way
| earlier than Catalan, if they ever learn Catalan at all.
| And I am not saying this is bad, as for practical reasons
| they will obviously learn the 4th most spoken language in
| the world before learning a language that is spoken by 7
| million people. Besides they know that with Spanish they
| can communicate with everybody, which is not the case
| with Catalan.
|
| More rigor and an independent point of view from
| politicians and media is needed if there is a real will
| to solve the issue.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I've lived there for a decade.
| lynguist wrote:
| Catalan is spoken by 9.2 million people in Spain,
| Andorra, France, Italy (one town in Sardinia).
| nudpiedo wrote:
| That was an overwhelmingly optimistic article made long
| long ago. The truth is that not even everyone who got to
| learn it uses preferently within Catalan speaking
| regions. Let alone southern France or Alguer (Italy).
| GekkePrutser wrote:
| This is my reason for learning Spanish yes. It's just so
| useful in the world. Catalan is useless outside
| Catalonia.
|
| If they do secede from Spain I will not learn Catalan, I
| will just leave. I'll probably have to anyway because I
| assume Spain will force them out of the EU and there's no
| way the multinational I work for will stay then.
|
| It feels very similar to Ireland where they also use
| heavy handed methods to keep their language alive but in
| a globalized world it would hurt them a lot if it were
| actually needed to live there. So it has to stay this
| fringe thing. A lot of it is just to pacify the old
| people that still associate English with the British
| oppression (which was brutal to be fair)
|
| I assume this will happen to Catalan too, the oppression
| is just a lot more recent to them. So it's more fresh and
| alive.
|
| FWIW I'm Dutch and I wouldn't care if my country
| abolishes Dutch in favor of English. I view language as a
| means of communication, not cultural identity. And as
| such being able to communicate with as many people as
| possible makes a language more valuable.
| [deleted]
| ipaddr wrote:
| This sounds crazy but why not let go and allow them to decide
| their own fate?
| pvaldes wrote:
| > This sounds crazy but why not let go and allow them to
| decide their own fate?
|
| Because is my country also, and they want to gag me and to
| steal me.
|
| The sovereignty of a country relies in all citizens, and
| the citizenship came with some inalienable rights. In the
| same way as Nevada couldn't wake up tomorrow and decide
| that they will became part of China and the rest of the
| Americans can't enter or live there anymore. Changing the
| fate for every citizen would need to consult every citizen
| in the country about what they want to do, and the immense
| majority of us don't want to lose part of our country by a
| bunch of crooks. Period. Is called democracy.
| raverbashing wrote:
| Balkanization is the wet dream of several national
| adversaries (speaking generically)
|
| Oh and you can bet Puidgemont was seeking russian support
| for his independence plans
| https://elpais.com/espana/catalunya/2021-09-03/el-equipo-
| de-...
|
| (Which doesn't mean many people don't have a legitimate
| wish of independence or more autonomy but of course the
| discussion has many nuances)
| zozbot234 wrote:
| > Balkanization is the wet dream of many enemies of
| Europe
|
| Meanwhile, back in the real world, states in the actual
| Balkans are actively joining the European Union and
| gaining freedom of movement throughout the region. Even
| Balkanization is not what it used to be.
| recuter wrote:
| He used the term not in reference to the actual balkan
| geographical area.
|
| In the real world there are world powers that benefit
| from a unified Europe with strong central authority and
| those that don't. Brexit serves the interests of the
| later. Scottish independence would further those
| interests still.
|
| Catalan independence weakens Spain and by extension NATO.
|
| This is not a statement on the morality of such movements
| or whether they might be a good idea in the narrow sense
| for Scots, Catalans, the people of Flanders and so forth.
| Rather it is a look at the larger map and unintended
| consequences.
|
| Finally, as to what is actually happening in the Balkans
| - the state of affairs between Kosovo and Albania
| (ironically they might form a union) and Bosnia is.. not
| fantastic to say the least.
|
| Sadly memories are short and attitudes are cavalier.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| > Scottish independence would further those interests
| still.
|
| > Catalan independence weakens Spain and by extension
| NATO.
|
| Why? Does any of these actually want to leave NATO?
|
| Or is this just a generic conservative position "change
| causes political instability, political instability bad
| therefore change bad"? ?
| recuter wrote:
| _Divide et impera_
|
| I am not a conservative. Your attitude itself is an
| example of the division and political instability.
|
| The SNP (love them or hate them, I don't care): "an
| independent Scotland would prioritise the speediest
| possible safe removal of nuclear weapons."
|
| Say this populist party has its William Wallace moment,
| now what is left of the UK will have to disentangle
| itself militarily. It will certainly be a politically
| heated moment in time, I'm sure you're aware of Russian
| interference in these things if nothing else as agents of
| chaos - Voila.
|
| It is certainly easier to agitate an independent small
| country to force the Brits to move their nuclear subs.
|
| You can be all for Scottish independence conceptually,
| morally, whatever - and still be concerned about the
| whole board.
| capableweb wrote:
| To prevailing reasoning for not letting Catalunya decide
| that without involving the rest of Spain seems to be
| because Catalunya is one of the biggest contributor to the
| overall economy of Spain, so if Catalunya leaves Spain,
| it'll impact the entire country, not just Catalunya itself.
| scns wrote:
| This. Same as in belgium. The part with lots of industry
| wants independence, the part without does not want them
| to leave.
| ipaddr wrote:
| To force them to stay because other groups rely on money
| taken from them doesn't sound right. A similiar reasoning
| for keeping slavery existed in the US over similiar
| claims.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| They are wealthy _because_ they have high-quality policy-
| making and a less corrupt government than the other
| autonomous communities. Other parts of Spain could engage
| in reform efforts of their own and contribute just as
| much to the government budget. Why should this be an
| argument _against_ Catalunya?
| capableweb wrote:
| > Why should this be an argument against Catalunya?
|
| I have no stake in either outcome of independence
| happening or not, but I can definitely understand that
| some people can see it as problematic if one part of a
| bigger thing wants to leave without considering the other
| parts.
|
| I still think Catalunya should be able to decide
| themselves, just like the UK decided themselves if they
| wanna leave the EU. Forcing states to belong to other
| states is something I thought we left behind a long time
| ago.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > they have a less corrupt government than the other
|
| Yeah, sure.
|
| "In July 2014, Jordi Pujol confessed that for 34 years,
| including 23 as the President of Catalonia, he had
| maintained secret foreign bank accounts inherited from
| his father".
|
| "His children have amassed a fortune in private
| businesses that frequently did business and received
| contracts from the Catalan government" (The infamous 3%
| scandal).
|
| "They have investments in the tens of millions of dollars
| in Mexico, Panama and Argentina. Financial records show
| the movement of money between foreign banks in Andorra,
| Switzerland, Jersey, Cayman Islands and other tax havens
| in excess of EUR100 million".
|
| He and his seven children face charges for illicit
| association, money laundering, falsification of documents
| and seven different tax crimes. the prosecutor asks
| between that could compris between 28 and 7 years of
| jail. The wife has been recorded laundering money but has
| been exonerated by her problems of health.
|
| Totally not a godfather figure, for sure.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Pretty much. The fact that we can read about these things
| is what implies that the government is less corrupt.
| Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Well, a much more desirable solution would be not having
| a corrupt government for most of the last decades.
|
| At least four of the last presidents of Cataluna (all
| either from the Pujol's party or their legacy) had been
| involved in a rich catalog of scams and frauds, including
| one fugitive in search and capture and two inhabilitated
| by repeatedly disobeying the laws that they should
| represent or spending public money in very questionable
| ways.
|
| There is material here for several godfather trilogies
| plus a police academy series. Is simply grotesque.
| mejutoco wrote:
| > ncluding one fugitive in search and capture
|
| While there has been corruption in all sides, this
| statement needs clarification. The search and capture
| issued to interpol was obeyed by Germany. Upon
| examination of Spain's reasons the court in Germany
| decided it was not enough proof to send Puigdemont back
| to Spain. If anything, this seems to contradict what one
| would think of when reading the above sentence without
| context.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| They have taken from the economy and now want to go,
| partly because they don't want to give back. Ironically
| claiming that they are getting their money syphooned out
| to poorer regions. Which is even more ironic, when they
| also claim to be more social/left-leaning.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > They have taken from the economy
|
| Exqueeze me? Catalunya is the region has been the
| greatest net contributor to the Spanish economy.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| You can't look at net contribution on its own. Catalonia
| didn't bootstrap itself into wealth just like that. There
| is infrastructure investment, which may be payed back net
| later. Other regions didn't get this treatment.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| Infrastructure investment should not be an argument for
| imperialism. The British built plenty of railways in
| India too, doesn't mean they get to rule the country.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| I did not say that Spain has a right to rule. I am saying
| that arguing around "net contributions" is moot (even
| contradictory) in the case of Catalonia and similar
| regions.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Why not let Barcelona (not in favour of independence) go of
| an independent catalonia? See where this goes?
| ipaddr wrote:
| Why not? If Barcelona can make it as a city state why
| hold them back?
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That's my point. The independence movement would be dead
| if it excluded Barcelona.
| recuter wrote:
| Are you adjudicating a kindergarten dispute? What an
| amazing attitude.
|
| For the record I am neither for nor against Catalan
| independence, it is none of my business and not my place
| to judge.
| ipaddr wrote:
| But it's your place to judge other regions that may want
| to separate?
| recuter wrote:
| I honestly don't understand what you're asking or what
| you think I think.
| logicchains wrote:
| Surely the kindergartener attitude is the attitude that a
| group of people should be denied self-determination and
| forced to be part of a larger political body against
| their will. It's the same kind of childish reasoning
| China uses to justify oppressing Xinjiang and Tibet, and
| that Russia's using for annexing parts of Ukraine.
| recuter wrote:
| > Surely the kindergartener attitude is the attitude that
| a group of people should be denied self-determination and
| forced to be part of a larger political body against
| their will
|
| HN lately doesn't fail to disappoint. I don't know what
| else to do other than quote what you are replying to.
| Turn your auto pilot off.
|
| > _I am neither for nor against Catalan independence_
|
| The reasoning China and Russia give for their actions is
| _facile_. You 're rather making my point.
| "Catalonia should be independent! And Barcelona should be
| an independent city-state within it! Why not!"
| "I am neither for nor against independence but this is an
| overly simplistic attitude, you clearly haven't thought
| about what you're saying seriously at all"
| "You're just like China!"
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Would this actually be such a bad idea if all parties
| were still part of some supranational entity like the EU
| with some level of free movement and common regulation?
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I actually would like to see this type of balkanization
| happen while still keeping everything inside the EU, incl
| open borders. This was actually the idea of the early
| Pan-Europa people... As it is right now, the population
| heavyweights in the EU have way too much say compared to
| the smaller states.
| Darmody wrote:
| Same reason they wouldn't let one of their cities vote for
| independence of Catalonia. What about a small town of 100
| inhabitants?
|
| You can't just start voting to secede from the country you
| belong to. Voting independence for the sake of it doesn't
| make any sense.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Voting independence is preferred over military or
| terrorist tactics.
|
| An independent town may want to separate but wouldn't
| have the resources.
| Darmody wrote:
| Giving me a billion dollars is preferred over terrorist
| tactics. The argument makes no sense here.
|
| What if that town votes for independence and then votes
| to be part of, lets say, China? They would have enough
| resources then. But anyway, nobody is using the resource
| argument here in the Catalonian independence issue.
| smcl wrote:
| > Giving me a billion dollars is preferred over terrorist
| tactics. The argument makes no sense here.
|
| You may not _like_ it but it does make sense - countries
| have come into existence as a direct result of
| "terrorism" leading to civil war. Given the demographic
| breakdown of HN, it is very likely you live in one of
| those right now. Also remember that Spain struggled with
| violent separatist movement which was still active _well
| into_ this century, so it is certainly not outside the
| realm of possibility.
| Darmody wrote:
| No, it doesn't make sense because we're not in a
| situation where we have to stop terrorism from happening.
| It's just a made up scenario, a false dilemma, terrorism
| or independence.
|
| Terrorism in Catalonia was a thing years ago but it
| stopped. They never went as far as the ETA terrorist
| group from the Basque Country. And even then,
| independence was not an option. If you start conceding
| things under the thread of terrorism, where do you draw
| the line?
|
| The Spanish constitution is clear. You can't claim/vote
| for independence. As in any other modern country we are
| subject to the rule of law so if they want independence,
| they should start by trying to change the constitution.
| mdp2021 wrote:
| > _I 'd like to see a unified country_
|
| Careful 'what you wish. You want options.
|
| If all your rooms get painted green but your colour is
| white...
| logicchains wrote:
| >TBH I do not know what the solution is here, I'd like to see
| a unified country, but I can see how both the left and right
| politic parties are destroying it (one with lies/doctrinism,
| other with oppression/treating them like they are still 3rd
| party) and makes me sad. When visiting Barcelona, Spanish is
| often the 3rd language, after the Catalan (for Catalonian and
| the rest of Spain) and English (for tourists).
|
| What's wrong with having separate countries? Would Canadians
| be better off if they were part of America? I don't
| understand westerners who cheer for independence in places
| like Xinjiang and Tibet but steadfastly oppose the idea when
| any region of their own country wants to be independent.
| [deleted]
| mikem170 wrote:
| Agreed! There's the theory that people don't willingly
| aggregate into large countries, they need to be manipulated
| or coerced (pledge every day in school, anthem at sports
| events, etc), and that large countries inevitably become
| bullies, unable to restrain themselves from dominating the
| weak.
|
| The book Breakdown of Nations by Leopold Khor talks about
| this. He talks about the idea of dividing into smaller
| political units to fix our problems. He makes a lot of
| sense. There's a video summarizing the book [0].
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gaszpQaNwAU
| inglor_cz wrote:
| The Basques got the right to manage their own finances and it
| seems to have quelled the independence push. Financial
| autonomy also helped to rein in separatists in South Tirol, a
| German-speaking region of Italy.
|
| Maybe the same should be extended to the Catalans.
| franciscop wrote:
| The Basques got their most extreme terrorists put into Jail
| after decades of blowing up people, which you could also
| argue might have helped quelling their independence push as
| well...
|
| Luckily I'm too young to remember, but I do know older
| people talking about ETA with fear and me thinking they
| were overblowing it, until I stumbled upon the wikipedia
| article with all they did and holy cow when I looked at the
| list of the 2000s:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ETA_attacks#2000%E2%8
| 0...
| [deleted]
| inglor_cz wrote:
| ,,I am firmly convinced that Spain is the strongest country of
| the world. Century after century trying to destroy herself and
| still no success."
|
| Source: https://quotepark.com/quotes/1886698-otto-von-bismarck-
| i-am-...
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| There is also a nice quote from when, after a period of chaos
| in the late 19th century, Spaniards democratically chose to
| bring in a foreign King to govern them (sorry if I got this
| wrong -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amadeo_I_of_Spain ).
| In a short two years, Amadeo ended up fleeing the country
| claiming Spain to be simply ungovernable; and that the most
| dangerous enemies of Spain where the Spaniards themselves.
| medell wrote:
| Check out The Silence of Others (2018) on Netflix, produced by
| Almodovar for more background on the Franco atrocities and how it
| still is echoing today.
| marcodiego wrote:
| Candiru is the name of an amazonian species of fish with a
| history of anecdotes of entering the human urethra sometimes
| requiring amputation of genitals.
| sofixa wrote:
| That's a very apt name, kudos to whoever came up with it.
| randomhodler84 wrote:
| No kudos but curses.
|
| A thousand curses on them. A disgusting fish, a disgusting
| software and a disgusting developer.
|
| This is something that hurts people. Do not celebrate it.
| nix23 wrote:
| I can celebrate any fish i want! It's a free country...at
| least on my side.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Amazing name for such an insidious malware.
| pvaldes wrote:
| I would appreciate more info about what the software does for
| the non tech
| lgl wrote:
| This seems like a good time to remember when an (apparently solo)
| spanish speaking hacker completely owned Hacking Team's (italian
| company that sells spyware to governments and that was
| mentioned/used in this post/attack) network and then detailed all
| the steps in what is still a really fascinating read. [0]
|
| The sysadmin's password was, wait for it... P4ssword
|
| [0] https://pastebin.com/kHUzWWm9
| denton-scratch wrote:
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Catalonia is indeed the North East corner of Spain. This has
| nothing to do with the coastline
| denton-scratch wrote:
| OK; so in which corner of Spain is the Basque country
| located?
|
| I've heard it said before that Catalunya is north-east Spain,
| so I was surprised when I learned that it is south of the
| Basque Country, and situated on the mediterranean.
|
| I can see how someone from Madrid might consider both the
| Basque Country and Catalunya to be "north-east". But I think
| it's misleading to describe Catalunya as the "north-east"
| corner, when there are three other regions further north than
| Catalunya on the eastern border, and none further south.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Looking at a map, I would call it either north or north-
| east Spain. I would not call it the north eastern corner.
|
| The simplest test is to cut a country into quadrants with
| lines running and north-south and east west.
|
| Similarly, in the US, Oregon is considered part of the
| north-west and Pennsylvania is considered part of the
| pacific north east.
|
| Maine has a south facing coast, but is certainly not part
| of the south.
|
| You are claiming that Minnesota is the northeast corner of
| the USA because it is further north than Maine
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > The simplest test is to cut a country into quadrants
| with lines running and north-south and east west.
|
| Sure, OK, maybe that way of thinking is why I've had so
| much kickback. If you draw a rectangle around Spain on a
| map and divide the rectangle into quadrants, then Pays
| Basque and Catalunya both fall squarely in the northeast
| quadrant.
|
| But by that reasoning, the entire eastern part of Spain
| is the "northeast". Spain is not rectangular.
| wswope wrote:
| You sure you know where France and Spain are on a map? Seems
| like you're mixing them up.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Gosh, I've been to both Catalunya and Pays Basque. I've lived
| in France. Catalunya is on Spain's south coast. North of
| Catalunya is Pays Basque, which also adjoins the pyrenees to
| the east. The north-east portion of Spain is the Pays Basque,
| not Catalunya.
|
| You can certainly get further south than Catalunya; but only
| by going west or getting on a boat. Catalunya is the southern
| portion of eastern Spain; it is therefore south-east, not
| north-east.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| >I've lived in France.
|
| Where do you think the north east-corner of France is?
| Hauts-de-France or Grand Est?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regions_of_France
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I've lived in France; but I haven't lived _everywhere_ in
| France. And I 'm certainly not French.
|
| I'll assume goodwill, although you've thrown me a trick
| question; so my answer is that France doesn't have a
| northeast "corner". Looking at that wikipedia map, I'd
| say they're both in the northeast, but neither is in the
| corner (Belgium is).
| wswope wrote:
| Looking at the most charitable map projection I can find, I
| see where you're coming from - but I think most people
| would still call it the NE corner.
|
| -\\_(tsu)_/-
|
| https://1igc0ojossa412h1e3ek8d1w-wpengine.netdna-
| ssl.com/wp-...
| dordoka wrote:
| Spaniard here. I reckon you are the one that needs to learn how
| to read a map.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| I'm looking at a map! The eastern border of Spain is the
| pyrenees, and Catalonia lies at the south end of the
| pyrenees; it as far south as you can go, down the eastern
| border. North-east Spain lies on the Bay of Biscay; South-
| east Spain lies on the Mediteranean.
|
| The north-east portion of Spain is the Basque country. That
| _does_ lie on the Bay of Biscay.
|
| I agree that Catlunya is north of e.g. Madrid, or Grenada, or
| whatever. But Catalunya is certainly the southernmost part of
| eastern Spain. Saying it is "the northeast of Spain" is just
| wrong. Hell, look at the wikipedia link that sibling posted:
| it's as clear as daylight. You can't go further east without
| arriving in France; but you _can_ leave Catalunya through it
| 's northern border, without leaving Spain.
|
| Catalunya is therefore not "the northeast of Spain".
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| north-eastern corner need not be the same as the
| northernmost point.
|
| Basque country has the same problem, you cant drive further
| north without leaving, but you can drive further east
| without leaving.
|
| You can go further east from Basque country, than you can
| travel north from Catalonia.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| You can't go east from the Basque country without leaving
| Spain.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| Seems like like you don't know your cardinal directions
| or are trolling. I guess this was obvious from the start,
| but I wanted to give the benefit of the doubt.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| What do you think is east of the Pays Basque, if not
| France? Like, everyone's voting me down, but nobody's
| setting me straight.
| brimble wrote:
| It seems like you're mixing up the orientation of the
| country, as far as the cardinal directions go. It is indeed
| in the North-Eastern part.
| rinze wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalonia
| aborsy wrote:
| CEOs, executives, members of parliaments, journalists,
| researchers at industrial labs, those working in
| defense/military, etc are at elevated risk of being hacked by
| governments and hacking companies such as NSO.
|
| I wonder how these people protect their digital assets? Are there
| guidelines?
|
| For example, if I am Microsoft CEO, would it be okay if I use the
| closed source iPhone from a competing company? Or perhaps these
| people use special hardened devices?
|
| Because even Apple CEO uses iPhone, and Pegasus apparently could
| hack any iPhone with zero click. So what prevents acquisition of
| highly valuable inside information by NSO or its customers
| (sensitive data about the company, iOS source code, implanting
| malware by infecting Apple engineers for the next exploit, etc)?
| Barrin92 wrote:
| > So what prevents acquisition of highly valuable inside
| information by NSO or its customers
|
| Given the Bezos hack two years ago I think the answer to that
| question is actually, very little. Cisco and Blackberry for
| example used to provide hardened phones for executives but with
| the prominence of modern smartphones it seems like even CEOs of
| large companies are increasingly on insecure hardware.
| slim wrote:
| If I was NSO, I would have a team who's sole purpose is to make
| sure they maintain access inside Apple, Google and Microsoft.
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| Seems random developers were targeted as well as European
| Parliament members (and more):
|
| > Jordi Baylina is the technology lead at Polygon, a popular
| decentralised Ethereum scaling platform. He is also an advisor on
| projects related to digital voting and decentralisation, and has
| built a widely-used privacy toolkit. He was extensively targeted
| with Pegasus, receiving at least 26 infection attempts.
| Ultimately, he was infected at least eight times between October
| 2019 and July 2020.
|
| > Baylina received a text message masquerading as a boarding pass
| link for a Swiss International Air Lines flight he had purchased.
| Targeting in this case indicates that the Pegasus operator may
| have had access to Baylina's Passenger Name Record (PNR) or other
| information collected from the carrier.
|
| Scare stuff that not just random text messages can infect you (we
| knew this) but combined with harvesting other data (like PNR),
| they can time to exploit messages with other actions you do (like
| buying an flight ticket) and get you that way.
|
| I was scared of receiving random text messages already, but easy
| to just ignore them as they have nothing to do with me. But if I
| buy a flight ticket and receive a text message that looks
| relevant to me, I'm not sure I'd be able to guess it was actually
| malicious. Scary stuff.
|
| Edit: The more I read, the worse it gets:
|
| > Another common mode of targeting was to masquerade as official
| notifications from Spanish government entities, including the Tax
| and Social Security authorities.The messages also used SMS Sender
| IDs to masquerade as official agency accounts.
|
| > Notably, fake official messages were sometimes highly
| personalized. For example, a message sent to Jordi Baylina
| included a portion of his actual official tax identification
| number, suggesting that the Pegasus operator had access to this
| information.
|
| Seems clear at this point that the official Spanish government
| was behind these attacks, or the official registries got hacked
| (together with various delivery companies). Both are bad, but
| that signs are pointing to the earlier makes it even worse.
|
| It seems that the Spanish government can't help itself to give
| more fuel to the fire that is the fight for Catalan independence.
| Who'd want to belong to a state that constantly suppresses and
| surveillance you?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| [deleted]
| capableweb wrote:
| I don't know him myself, and after a quick search he seems to
| be another blockchain developer involved in bunch of project,
| I have no idea about his ties to any "freedom fighting"
| organizations.
|
| If what he is doing is illegal, does that mean there is a
| warrant out for his arrest? He seems to be doing talks,
| presentations and other things out in public, wouldn't he be
| arrested by now if he's doing something illegal?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| https://twitter.com/jbaylina
| capableweb wrote:
| That seems to be his Twitter indeed. What about the
| warrant and that he should have been arrested already if
| he's doing something illegal?
| ricardobayes wrote:
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Canada? The federal government literally had to resort to
| participating in the referendum campaign in quebec, since
| they couldn't really do anything more than that.
| iso1210 wrote:
| UK? The SNP constantly champions for Scottish
| independence, plenty of people agree, plenty disagree, I
| don't recall any suggestion from either side it's
| illegal. There are also independence movements of varying
| sizes in Wales, Cornwall, "The North", and London.
|
| The Texas Nationalist Movement may be funded and driven
| by Russia, but I don't believe Daniel Miller has been
| arrested or indeed broken any laws.
|
| Corsican nationalists likewise seem fine. Corsica Libera
| for example got 8 seats in the 2021 regional elections in
| France
|
| The general view of the world is that people have a right
| to self determination. Some governments trample on that -
| Spain and Argentina for example do not like the right to
| self-determination, but the UN GA agrees it's a universal
| right.
| kodah wrote:
| Texas has wanted to secede far before Russian influence
| was a thing. Similar movements are present in California
| (mainly to split it rather than secede, but same
| mechanics)
| iso1210 wrote:
| I don't think Texas wants to secede, polls in 2016 put it
| about 2:1 against, but some people in Texas have wanted
| to secede since the Civil War. Their's nothing illegal
| about their movements, and them trying to expand their
| cause.
|
| Presumably if a majority* of people in Texas (or Alaska,
| or Nebraska, or New York City) wanted to be independent
| from the US then they would be allowed - certainly there
| would be a moral right to do so.
|
| * Definition of majority, the location of borders, etc is
| a different discussion, but the fundamental right to
| people in New York City, Barcelona, Crimea, Portugal,
| etc, to determine their own affairs isn't up for
| discussion as far as I'm concerned.
| [deleted]
| kodah wrote:
| I was agreeing, I was just being specific that secession
| has been on the table for Texans since it was a country
| being adopted into the United States. Russians might go
| ruffle some feathers there and make them talk about it
| more but it's an idea all to Texas' own.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| Thanks for this reply, it's great to have some global
| perspective on this. It is important sometimes to view
| things as an outsider and this comment made me realize a
| few things.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Moltes gracies.
| capableweb wrote:
| I'm not terribly knowledgeable about Spain's "democratic
| legal framework" so maybe you can instead point me to
| what laws he's breaking?
|
| Is it possible as well that you have a different
| understanding of that "legal framework" than the
| prosecution/government/courts of Spain has? Since again,
| he doesn't seem to be wanted nor arrested for anything.
|
| Wasn't the Catalan politicians also jailed for "misuse of
| public funds" rather than "inciting against territorial
| integrity" just because opinions about independence _is
| not_ illegal in Spain? Or maybe I have that wrong. In
| that case, it seems Jordi in this case cannot be held
| responsible for that since he doesn 't manage any public
| funds.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I'm not either, that's why I asked. Maybe we can find out
| together?
| capableweb wrote:
| Oh. Seems a bit extreme for you to claim "According to
| Spanish law [...] what he is doing, is illegal" then,
| don't you think?
|
| If everything points towards him not breaking the law,
| shouldn't we by default assume that he in fact didn't
| break any law? Unless you have something pointing towards
| that he did break the law after-all.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| I can't reply to the branch comment so I do here: I have
| edited my parent comment to reflect the fact it's an
| opinion and might not be true. Thanks for bringing some
| insight to this. I must also add I'm a bit disappointed
| that people are flagging comments they don't agree with.
| I thought users here value freedom of speech highly. My
| comments broke no terms I know of. Perhaps a bit
| passionate, if anything.
| rdevsrex wrote:
| It should be legal everywhere or else it's not really a
| full democracy. Inciting violence to accomplish those
| ends should be illegal but not self determination itself.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| Any "democratic" framework that forbids advocating for
| regional independence is in violation of the Universal
| Declaration of Human Rights. In Spain, such advocacy is
| called "secessionism", and is illegal, and sanctioned
| with long prison sentences.
| biorach wrote:
| > In which democratic legal framework inciting against
| the territorial integrity of a country is NOT illegal?
|
| Most modern democracies...
|
| E.g.
|
| https://www.snp.org/policy-area/constitution/
| sbarre wrote:
| So two wrongs make a right in your mind?
| eptcyka wrote:
| > Anyone doing illegal activities must face consequences.
|
| Appealing to authority does not grant one any moral high-
| ground.
| brian_cloutier wrote:
| To everyone reading this comment please be aware of Poe's
| law. It's very hard to intuit intent online, this comment
| _could_ be sincere, but it could also be satire.
|
| So, good chance the author has _the same_ views you do, so
| there 's no reason to be mean to them.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I feel like even Poe's law is a bit optimistic, and time
| has shown that it is real life that is indistinguishable
| from satire.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| teddyh wrote:
| Correction: Anyone doing things that the government doesn't
| like will probably be forced to face the fact that the
| government is the arbiter of what is, and isn't, "illegal".
| gjulianm wrote:
| Supporting independence is not illegal in Spain.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Supporting independence is not illegal in Spain.
|
| This is debatable. Speech is not illegal, rioting in the
| streets or putting a log in a railway to stop a train and
| deploy a banner is definitely illegal. Spending millions of
| public money in a fake ridged election without any
| guaranties is 100% illegal, and it feels so close to a
| disguised coup that it hurts.
| SkyBelow wrote:
| >Anyone doing illegal activities must face consequences.
|
| While I'm not familiar with Spain's legal system, it is
| normally the case in legal systems that there is not a 'must'
| at play. Consequences can be given by the state, but the law
| does not demand they must be given. The state is not in
| violation of the law when it chooses to not attempt
| enforcement of the law. Be this a cop not choosing to give a
| speeding ticket to someone who wasn't speeding too
| dangerously, a prosecutor not enforcing a case they aren't
| sure they'll win, or for other reasons.
|
| This is relevant because given that the law lacks a 'must'
| directive ensuring it is always enforced, we need to
| determine when should the law be enforced. Even if one really
| does support enforcing the law whenever it is broken with no
| exceptions, support for such a stance is as warranted as
| support for any other stance would be.
| ricardobayes wrote:
| sneak wrote:
| Yet another data point supporting the fact that the phone
| number people have for you should never be that of the sim card
| actually inside your phone.
| eklitzke wrote:
| I'm not sure I understand. Let's say your SIM card has number
| X but you also use Google Voice number Y. If you buy flight
| tickets, you're probably going to give them number Y when you
| purchase your tickets. If a malicious state actor has access
| to the passenger flight manifests for the airline it's pretty
| likely that they also access to the other information you've
| given the airline, including the phone number and email you
| supplied the airline, so they'll also know that you gave them
| number Y in the checkout flow. What am I missing here?
| lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote:
| > What am I missing here?
|
| To my knowledge NSO software (and similar) target exploits
| in OS-specific applications (think default Messages app on
| iOS) rather than, e.g., Google Voice. That being said, I
| personally don't know if Google Voice and similar are
| special enough not to have their own exploits (spoiler:
| they probably aren't, and Google Voice in particular would
| be a very enticing target).
|
| I'd expect there's more to it than that, though. I'm really
| not familiar with these exploits.
| ta988 wrote:
| How do you do that?
| dron57 wrote:
| Look into the Google Voice app. You can get a free US
| number that works with both SMS and calls. It routes calls
| through Google's VOIP I believe.
|
| I use it as a burner for any website that requires a phone
| number. I figure it will be easy enough to change my burner
| phone number if it gets leaked to some shady DB.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Last time I looked, you can't sign up and use Google and
| Google Voice without verifying that you're a real person
| via SMS.
| hungryforcodes wrote:
| But pretty much no where else in the world -- including
| Spain. So this is practical how for anyone outside if the
| US?
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Substitute DIDww for Google Voice, then.
| wswope wrote:
| Not sure how relevant that is against a nation state actor
| that's willing to pull from airline passenger records.
|
| All they'd have have to do is get a few timed hits for your
| location and then look for a common IMEI at nearby towers.
| Symbiote wrote:
| > a nation state actor
|
| I am a bit of a broken record on this point, but it's a
| _state_ actor.
|
| Spain comprises multiple nations, Catalonia being one of
| them.
| permalac wrote:
| Only one of them control the state, and that is and has
| always been Castilla.
|
| This may be a technical forum, people can Google it up
| and do some deep research.
| pvaldes wrote:
| > Only one of them control the state, and that is and has
| always been Castilla.
|
| More BS. Are you saying that the Catalonian politicians
| in the government are spies from Castilla? Maybe
| disguised under evil twisted castillian moustaches?.
|
| Please, lets be serious. I can see politicians from each
| coin of Spain in the government.
| greggsy wrote:
| 'Nation state' is the appropriate term of art in the
| context of cyber security. The fact that a domestic
| service appears to be attacking an area that is seeking
| autonomy makes it more relevant.
| nudpiedo wrote:
| Nowhere in its constitution is defined like that, it's
| not a confederation of nations but a parliamentarian
| monarchy that respects regional cultural differences.
| ikurei wrote:
| No official document, not even the Constitution, can be a
| final authority on what a nation is. That's just the
| official definition.
|
| Many scholars, politicians, and citizens, even excluding
| people outside of the Overton window, describe Spain as
| containing several nations. At the very least Catalonia,
| the Basque Country / Euskal Herria, and Galicia are
| widely (but not unanimously) considered to have the
| historic, cultural, social characteristics that would
| make them nations. The spanish constitution is a document
| of compromise, born of a very special time in history;
| whatever it says about what Spain is, we don't have to
| accept it.
|
| (Biases disclaimer: I'm Spanish, specifically castilian;
| I don't support Catalonian independence, and I dislike
| all nationalisms; all nations are more like big balls of
| wibbly wobbly... nation-y wimey... stuff)
|
| This piece of news doesn't yet show up on the spanish
| newspapers I trust; I'm really curious to see if it makes
| the news. I'll be extremely concern if, as I fear, if
| doesn't.
| pvaldes wrote:
| "Many people are saying that or this"
|
| We are very misunderstood, for sure.
| [deleted]
| smilespray wrote:
| And if you have a burner phone, they can just track which
| IMEIs tend to travel together.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > Seems clear at this point that the official Spanish
| government was behind these attacks, or the official registries
| got hacked
|
| There is a third alternative. An insider leaked it.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| That's similar to the Spanish government being behind the
| attacks... Effectively, a member of the Spanish government
| used (misused) their official capacity to take action against
| Catalan officials.
|
| Perhaps that's not the official stance of the government, but
| an organization is only a monolith with a single public
| position to the extent that they're able to enforce proper
| actions. The official Spanish government being publicly
| neutral but actually unable to ensure that their own members
| act in accord with this position and instead instigating
| extensive attacks is not that different from the official
| Spanish government being behind the attacks. Will the insider
| be punished sufficiently to deter others from following in
| their footsteps?
| azernik wrote:
| "Insiders" are a very broad set of people, including low-
| level bureaucrats and motivations can include profit.
|
| To pick one of the more likely scenarios: if a government
| worker sold a database on the open (criminal) market,
| there's no meaningful sense in which "the Spanish
| government is behind this".
| permalac wrote:
| They could be using such database, in that case they
| would be involved.
| FerociousTimes wrote:
| You mean a whistleblower?
| dgut wrote:
| > Seems clear at this point that the official Spanish
| government was behind these attacks, or the official registries
| got hacked (together with various delivery companies). Both are
| bad, but that signs are pointing to the earlier makes it even
| worse.
|
| Not arguing again't your claim either way, but SMS sender can
| be set to anything, it's a feature of the system for it to
| work. The "DNI" (Spanish identification number) can't be
| considered private information and isn't difficult to find.
| capableweb wrote:
| The mix of having access to Pegasus, PNR database, records
| from delivery services and more makes it clear that it's not
| a solo/individual hacker/group doing all of this, it would
| require extensive compromise of multiple organizations to get
| access to those kind of things.
| pluc wrote:
| https://twitter.com/RonDeibert/status/1516011319719247873
|
| https://twitter.com/citizenlab/status/1516016174559121409
| 88840-8855 wrote:
| I really never got the Catalonia crisis, especially around 2017,
| 2018. A region of approx. 8 million Catalonias who see themselves
| as Catalonians first and as Spanish second, with their own
| distinct history, vote with over 80% for their indipendence from
| Spain. People representing the interests of Catalonians go to the
| Spanish parlament, explain their goal of indipendence.
|
| And then stuff happens that I only read from bad China and bad
| Russia. Those political leaders are arrested. Police is sent in
| to stop the protests. Protests are suddenly called "the
| rebellion", people are arrested, the representatives of the
| indipendance movement have to flee Spain. Later it comes out that
| the police was seizing ballet boxes during the election.
|
| Spain then acts hard on the region, holds a gun against the head
| of many businesses located in the Catalonian region so they have
| to move out from there.
|
| So much more bad stuff has happened around that.
|
| I am just wondering - where is the outcry? I cannot stop
| overseeing the paralls to other conflicts around the world, very
| hot conflicts.
| dfxm12 wrote:
| _where is the outcry_
|
| There were huge protests at the time, ala
| https://www.nbcnews.com/video/barcelona-protests-escalate-ov...
|
| https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-41229486
|
| This happened very recently. I still vividly remember the
| stories on the radio. The artifacts are online & visible if you
| really cared to look. I'm not quite sure of the point of
| questions like this.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| No country likes itself to be split apart, especially when a
| relatively rich part of the country tries to separate. I don't
| know about Spanish law, but serious attempts to break up the
| country could be considered treason where I'm from. On the
| other hand the whole civil war they fought 90 years ago makes
| the point quite complicated to the Catalan people.
|
| If California tried to leave the USA, the American government
| would do anything in their power to keep them from leaving.
| This is still quite different, as Spain isn't as loosely
| structured a government as the USA, but it's equally
| preposterous from a government point of view.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > No country likes itself to be split apart
|
| Indeed. But some countries handle independence movements with
| more grace than others. It's perfectly legitimate for a
| region to ask for independence. If the host nation is
| graceful, and (for example) allows independence referendums,
| a civil war becomes much less likely.
|
| The host nation always fights back; but passing ten-year
| imprisonment sentences on the leaders of the secessionists
| isn't very graceful. Sending paramilitaries to beat up
| prrotestors and voters isn't graceful at all. A little more
| "graceful" is to resort to dirty tricks; Alex Salmond, former
| leader of the Scottish Nationalist Party, was dragged into
| court on trumped-up sexual harrassment charges.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Spain supports separatist movements elsewhere though. They
| have no issues supporting western saharan independence, even
| if the separatist groups are engaged in armed conflict.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > They have no issues supporting western saharan
| independence
|
| ...formerly known as "Spanish Sahara". That's old-fashioned
| colonialism.
| mikem170 wrote:
| > No country likes itself to be split apart
|
| That doesn't morally justify forcing thousands or millions of
| people to remain in a political situation that they are
| opposed to.
| marcusverus wrote:
| A country which forces a separatist region to remain in their
| country is engaged in imperialism.
| aisengard wrote:
| This is getting pretty close to the "War Of Northern
| Aggression" nonsense that's peddled throughout the United
| States South.
| marcusverus wrote:
| Imperialism against people with abominable ethics is
| still imperialism.
|
| When the southern states used their democratic
| institutions to secede, and then the North invaded 'to
| preserve the union', that was imperialism. Waging an
| imperial war and then freeing the slaves of the conquered
| doesn't retroactively make your war a just, non-
| imperialist one. It just makes you an imperialist whose
| moral views on slavery are superior to those of the
| people whom you conquered. But you're still an
| imperialist.
|
| Now, if the Yanks had actually engaged in a moral crusade
| to free the slaves, that'd be one thing--but they didn't.
| If you think they did, then I'm guessing your
| understanding of the civil war comes from your education
| by said Union, or from movies. If this is the case, read
| a history book (Battle Cry of Freedom is a good start)
| and you'll find it impossible to believe that the Union
| fought the war to free the slaves. That the "moral
| crusade" nonsense is still peddled throughout the United
| States is a simple matter of the winners writing the
| history books (and nobody wanting to be seen sympathizing
| with slavers).
|
| And since I'm certain you'll follow up with that tired
| old canard about the South starting the war at Ft.
| Sumpter, I'll provide you with the relevant history in
| advance:
|
| 0) Abraham Lincoln wins the 1860 presidential election on
| November 8, 1860. 1) On November 10, the South Carolina
| General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the
| people of S.C. to elect a commission to determine whether
| the state should secede. 2) Convention delegates were
| democratically elected on December 6. 3) These duly
| elected delegates convened in Columbia on December 17th.
| 4) They voted _unanimously_ for secession. 5) The South
| Carolina General Assembly declared their independence on
| December 24. 6) At this point, American troops occupy
| Fort Sumpter, which at this point is foreign soil. 6) On
| Jan 9, the US attempts to reinforce the fort. They are
| prevented from doing so when Confederate artillery fires
| on the resupply ship. 7) On Jan 31, 1861, Governor
| Pickens demands the surrender of Fort Sumpter. 8) Lincoln
| sends multiple ships, with hundreds of soldiers and
| sailors, to reinforce the fort. 9) On April 11, knowing
| Lincoln plans to reinforce the occupying force, the Rebs
| once again demand the surrender of the fort. The
| commanding officer refused (then tried to play for time
| by making up conditions, which were refused). 10) At this
| point, American troops have been occupying foreign soil
| for ~4 months, and are effectively signaling their intent
| to stay indefinitely. 11) On April 12, the Rebs start
| shelling the fort. They shell it for 34 hours, then the
| Americans surrender. 12) After their surrender, before
| the Americans took down their flag, the Confederates
| allowed them to honor the flag with a 100 gun salute. One
| of the Yanks ' guns misfired, killing Edward Galloway--
| the only American soldier who died.
|
| You should feel free to say "well they were slavers, so
| fuck them". That's perfectly valid! But facts is facts,
| and the Civil War was imperialism.
| HideousKojima wrote:
| >No country likes itself to be split apart
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissolution_of_Czechoslovakia
| capableweb wrote:
| Happened because of the "Velvet Revolution"
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velvet_Revolution) which was
| yet again the people pushing the government to do
| something. I think when parent said "No country likes
| itself to be split apart" they refer to the current people
| in power (the government), not the people actually living
| in the nation. Otherwise all successful independence
| efforts can be considered "The country wanted to be split".
| denton-scratch wrote:
| As the industrial heartland of Spain, a lot of non-
| Catalans live in Catalunya. They don't want to suddenly
| find themselves in a foreign country. That's not "the
| people in power" - that's ordinary people.
|
| There's quite a lot of nationalism in Spanish politics;
| when Franco died, there was no proper national
| reconciliation. Catalunya suffered quite badly in the
| Civil War and afterwards, and there should have been
| something like the SA Truth and Reconciliation
| Commission. Instead, they restored the monarchy, which
| was, as you'd expect, nationalist.
| gjulianm wrote:
| I'm not one to approve of the spanish government management of
| the crisis, which was terrible, but there are quite a lot of
| missing things here that are important to the story.
|
| > vote with over 80% for their indipendence from Spain
|
| The 2017 referendum vote ended up with 90% of votes for
| independence. However, only 43% of the census participated,
| mainly due to the fact that this referendum was not binding at
| all, and wasn't even "legal". Other referendums have had
| similar results.
|
| > And then stuff happens that I only read from bad China and
| bad Russia.
|
| I think regular media picked up on that with no issues. I
| remember reading detailed articles on Politico or The Guardian,
| for example.
|
| > Those political leaders are arrested.
|
| They were arrested not for explaining their goal of
| independence but because they exceeded their functions and
| competences when they held the referendum. Now, there's a lot
| of discussion to be had about the political motivations of
| those charges and the punishments, but I think the reality that
| they used public resources to hold a referendum that they
| legally couldn't hold is undeniable. That was the trigger, not
| just saying they wanted independence.
|
| > Spain then acts hard on the region, holds a gun against the
| head of many businesses located in the Catalonian region so
| they have to move out from there.
|
| That's not exactly what happened. Some companies legally moved
| headquarters from Catalonia to other regions, and some new
| investments were reduced, but those are mainly motivated by the
| legal insecurity about what was going to happen (and also, take
| into account that businesses are led by people with their own
| ideologies and biases of the situation). But it hasn't been
| that impactful overall.
|
| > I cannot stop overseeing the paralls to other conflicts
| around the world, very hot conflicts.
|
| For starters, other than the police action in the referendum,
| there's been a remarkable lack of violence on both sides. I
| mean, every 11th of september there are demonstrations for
| independence around the Diada (day of Catalonia) celebrations,
| political calls to action and such, and those things are not
| repressed. So I don't think pointing parallels to "very hot
| conflicts" is warranted.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| > Some companies legally moved headquarters from Catalonia to
| other regions, and some new investments were reduced, but
| those are mainly motivated by the legal insecurity about what
| was going to happen (and also, take into account that
| businesses are led by people with their own ideologies and
| biases of the situation).
|
| This happened in Montreal. It was the business capital of
| Canada until the referendums. Now Toronto is.
|
| So it goes.
| cracrecry wrote:
| >The 2017 referendum vote ended up with 90% of votes for
| independence. However, only 43% of the census participated.
|
| That is not true. Those are the numbers given by the
| independentist people themselves, with some people voting 5
| times as there were no the required warrantees(as it was an
| illegal referendum).
|
| The real numbers are those that supported an independentist
| party for the local elections, over 50% of the electorate.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Those are crushing numbers. 90% of 43% of voters who made a
| choice to vote and leave. Such overwhelming numbers. Do you
| think the other side would have gotten everyone who didn't
| vote?
| Darmody wrote:
| Everybody who wished independence voted. 90% of 40% is
| nothing when voting for serious matters.
|
| In most places that wouldn't even be considered a valid
| referendum.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| It _wasn 't_ a valid referendum. It was illegal, and
| everyone knew that it was against the Spanish
| constitution. 90% of 40% in what amounts to an opinion
| poll is not "nothing" - it's a remarkable turnout, given
| that voters knew the Spanish government had sent in
| shiploads of non-Catalan riot police to suppress voting.
| raverbashing wrote:
| 90% of 43% is 38%. Hardly overwhelming numbers.
| zozbot234 wrote:
| 90% of 43% is less than 40% voting for independence. Hardly
| overwhelming numbers, for a referendum that everyone knew
| would not actually matter.
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > for a referendum that everyone knew would not actually
| matter.
|
| Surely if people thought the referendum "didn't matter",
| then they'd be less, not more likely to cast a ballot?
| I'd say that 40% is a pretty strong vote, in those
| circumstances (and given the risk of being beaten up by
| riot police).
| pvaldes wrote:
| Not, because here lies the trap. This was a farce, not a
| real election.
|
| It was practically guaranteed that the votes would be
| replaced later in the cardboard urns guarded exclusively
| by the separatists. The obvious plan was to drag as many
| millions of people as possible to vote and then use this
| number as new upper limit to made up a separatist support
| number (see? 80% of this new cipher voted separatist, we
| counted the votes ourselves, [invented a number], and
| this is two million more of supporters than before, so
| I'm right. Now lets negotiate how money you own me to not
| secede).
|
| It must be noticed that they printed 10 millions of
| ballots, for a pool of voters much lower. Why they needed
| to have like two ballots for each possible vote?... well,
| fill the dots.
|
| The only good move in that situation is avoid voting
| gjulianm wrote:
| Not everyone, but a majority. Going to vote was strongly
| correlated with being for independence: it was clear the
| referendum wasn't legally binding and wasn't approved by
| the Spanish government. People who didn't want independence
| didn't even bother to vote in that.
|
| And it's not an hypothesis: polls and parliament votes have
| shown for years that the support for independence (or for
| independentist parties) has been fairly stable at around
| 45-50%. Support for a referendum vote has been wider (up to
| 70-80% depending on the poll and how you count some party's
| positions) but similarly fairly stable over the years.
| rosndo wrote:
| Remember that in many places it was very difficult to
| vote due to violent interference by Guardia Civil.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Can't tell if this comment is tongue in cheek. 40% is
| crushing and overwhelming? Like, maybe next time all those
| other supposed hidden supporters of independence can be
| arsed to get off their butts and show up to the most
| important vote of their life (at least if it was binding or
| legal according to Spanish law).
| denton-scratch wrote:
| > they used public resources to hold a referendum that they
| legally couldn't hold is undeniable
|
| If the constitution says that calling for secession is a
| criminal offence, it follows that holding an indendence
| referendum is also criminal. I'd argue that a constitution
| that criminalises campaigning for secession is a bad
| constitution, and that the central government should have (a)
| staged the referendum and (b) campaigned in it.
| gjulianm wrote:
| Calling for secession is not directly a criminal offense.
| The charges were sedition and misuse of public funds. The
| latter is fairly clear, the former is a more gray area (in
| Spain, sedition is a public tumultuous rising to stop laws
| from applying, using violence or illegal methods) and one
| could debate whether it applies or not. But in both cases,
| the reasoning was that the Catalan government did not have
| the competence to hold that referendum, was notified of
| that by legal means and they disobeyed those orders. That
| was the core of the decision, not about the contents of the
| referendum but the fact that they didn't have the authority
| to do it and did it nevertheless.
|
| > and that the central government should have (a) staged
| the referendum and (b) campaigned in it.
|
| When some people think that giving Catalonia enough entity
| to even consider independence is too much, a referendum is
| out of the question. If the central government had been
| open to hold the referendum they would also have been open
| to previous smaller claims from Catalonia that would
| probably have satisfied enough people and dropped support
| for independency.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| That story is very one sided.
|
| The truth is that independence is near 50/50 overall, and
| always less in Barcelona.
|
| Both sides provoke each other, the independence parties also
| sabotage _actual_ dialogue and continuously create conflict out
| of thin air.
| LaLaLand122 wrote:
| If I were in the Spanish government, I would give Catalonia a
| legal binding referendum. But splitting a country is not
| something you do in a weekend, we can't have Catalonia
| splitting with 50% + 1 of the votes just for "+1" to change
| his mind next week and Catalonia joining again.
|
| So I would give Catalonia a legal binding referendum... with
| a requirement of at least a 66% vote in favour. For each
| person that wants to remain, there would be two that don't;
| and if you are at that point, it's probably better just to
| let them go. Being a politician, I would surely try to at
| least round it up to 70%.
|
| They would never get 66% of the vote. If it looks risky, I
| could send the police in the Looney Tunes ship again... to
| vote!
|
| And if they refuse my offer... well, it's way easier to argue
| "I have given them the referendum, they are not taking it".
| Right now, Catalans have the easy "freedom" argument.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| > And if they refuse my offer... well, it's way easier to
| argue "I have given them the referendum, they are not
| taking it". Right now, Catalans have the easy "freedom"
| argument.
|
| This would change nothing. And they would never do a
| referendum on those terms. The whole thing, politically, is
| not meant to actually go through.
| LaLaLand122 wrote:
| I would not be trying to solve the problem forever. I
| would be trying to effectively control it.
|
| The alternative was to send police to fire rubber
| bullets, with somebody losing an eye
| (https://www.spainenglish.com/2019/10/01/eye-rubber-
| bullet-ca...), against people that wanted to... vote.
|
| Rubber bullets happen to be a weapon invented by the
| British to use during The Troubles
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rubber_bullet). But even
| the British, the inventors, stopped used them. In fact,
| the Catalan local police were also banned from using them
| and were shot in Catalonia only because it came from the
| non-Catalan police (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/wo
| rld/europe/catalonia-pr...).
|
| (Not to mention all the other images of police violence).
|
| Being able to say "I have given them the referendum, they
| are not taking it" vs giving the other party such a great
| narrative "That's why we want independence. We are more
| civilized than them. They are aggressive animals."
| changes something.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Their narrative would just change slightly, to not
| getting a "real" or "fair" referendum, one that they
| could win. And they would not be wrong.
|
| Yes, sending the riot police was a very, very bad move in
| terms of defusing a conflict. Literally all they had to
| do is let them run their big show, and expectedly declare
| the result void. At most, prosecute the politicians that
| unilaterally proclaimed independence in the parliament
| based on that puppet referendum.
|
| However, the political party in power at the time,
| Partido Popular, knew that they would win some
| (right/fascist) votes _everywhere else_ in Spain by
| exceeding force in Catalonia, in a kind of "scorched
| earth" move. They historically got almost no votes
| represented out of Catalonia anyway.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Catalonian secession would precipitate a similar push by the
| Basque region. From what I understand, these are two of the
| wealthiest areas in Spain, so them leaving would be a huge
| blow.
|
| Another reason for the lack of support is that other countries
| don't want to create a precedent for similar breakaways.
| Catalonia would have a hard time joining the EU for this reason
| (similarly Scotland if they were to secede).
|
| The second reason hints at the explanation for the difference
| to other regions of the world. There is no hard and fast rule
| to apply to see why self-determinism is championed for one
| group but admonished for others. The sentiment is wholly a
| consequence of the motivations of the country in question and
| other interested nations.
|
| Any moral rhetoric deployed by nations to justify policy is
| just post hoc rationalization of the underlying pragmatic
| decision making calculus. I think most people implicitly
| understand this. Which is why I'm incredulous when people act
| surprised by governments acting hypocritically
| BeFlatXIII wrote:
| Scotland was stabbed in the back by other citizens of the UK
| when Brexit won shortly after Scotland's remain referendum
| won.
| dc-programmer wrote:
| Yeah that was whack
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| Part of what you are saying is misleading for the simple reason
| that Catalonia does not consist solely of Catalans (i.e. an
| ethnic group as opposed to just anyone living in that region).
| It is a part of Spain, and thus people from anywhere in Spain
| can move there. They did not participate in the referendum with
| the argument that it was illegitimate.
|
| The closest parallel is probably Quebec in Canada, for what
| it's worth. Highly contentious. One thing I've learnt is that
| if I want to keep my friends in these places, I don't mention
| politics.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| But Quebec would've been independant if the referendum was
| successful. Even at 50+1, it is now clear that the federal
| government would've accepted the results even if they didn't
| explicitly said so back in 1995. So I think there's a huge
| difference, considering that in Catalonia the referendum was
| completely ignored
| raverbashing wrote:
| > that in Catalonia the referendum was completely ignored
|
| Because it was one-sided and those not agreeing with it
| didn't accept its legitimacy, hence not showing up to vote
|
| You don't just put a ballot box outside of the provisions
| of the state and call that a "referendum"
| kiliancs wrote:
| Since Catalans will always be a minority in Spain, what
| you are saying is "you just don't put a ballot".
| denton-scratch wrote:
| The Spanish state doesn't make any provision at all for
| secession or independence movements; it's all criminal.
| They even have a special court for dealing with these
| matters. Any attempt to campaign for independence puts
| you beyond the law.
|
| In those circumstances, it's hardly surprising that
| independence campaigners broke a law.
| mzs wrote:
| You can't really look at it in isolation and hope to
| understand, instead you need the context of history:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francoist_Catalonia
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| > vote with over 80% for their indipendence from Spain.
|
| 92% with a turnout of 43%. Hardly a resounding win for the
| independence side. Since the referendum was arguably illegal, a
| lot of people voted by staying home.
| cracrecry wrote:
| >vote with over 80% for their indipendence from Spain.
|
| You should inform yourself before you talk. In Catalonia NEVER
| over 80% of the population voted for independence. This is BS.
|
| What happened is that a 50 something percent of the votes(not
| of the population) wanted to impose independence over the laws
| of the parliament that require at least 2/3 majorities for
| anything substantial.
|
| >And then stuff happens that I only read from bad China and bad
| Russia.
|
| More BS. How many people died on that rebellion? How many died
| in the US Black lives matter incidents? How many people die on
| South Africa incidents each year?
|
| >Spain then acts hard on the region, holds a gun against the
| head of many businesses located in the Catalonian region
|
| Nobody hold a gun against business but the independentists.
| They just could move freely around national territory,
| protecting their assets against radicals.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| >More BS. How many people died on that rebellion? How many
| died in the US Black lives matter incidents? How many people
| die on South Africa incidents each year?
|
| This is whataboutism, I don't see how those are relevant to
| the situation in spain
| zozbot234 wrote:
| amackera wrote:
| Minus the whole slavery thing, no?
| McWobbleston wrote:
| Yes, because Catalonia was resisting the fascist coup with
| their own revolutionary struggle to collectivize
| agriculture based on consent of the farmers, and worker
| ownership led by the labor unions who had been providing
| education and other community services for years.
|
| Its a lesser known fact that George Orwell wrote a book on
| his experiences there, and that the people's struggle
| inspired him so much he took up arms and joined them. The
| guy who's work people claim is an indictment of socialism,
| fought for it against the rise of fascism.
| bigbacaloa wrote:
| The resistance to Franco was far stronger in Madrid than
| in Catalunya.
| tough wrote:
| I've never took to read Orwell's Homage to Catalonia,
| might as well do so
| qwytw wrote:
| > The guy who's work people claim is an indictment of
| socialism, fought for it against the rise of fascism
|
| Orwell was a socialist before he went to Spain and
| remained one until his death regardless what some people
| might or might not claim.
| gjulianm wrote:
| This is completely wrong, sorry. The 1936-1939 Spanish civil
| war was a coup from the right-wing against the left-wing
| government. Of course, Catalan autonomy was an issue there
| too and one of the motivations for the coup, it but was
| nowhere near the main reason. And no, catalan independence is
| absolutely not at all equivalent to neo-confederate
| secessionism.
| adlpz wrote:
| The Spanish civil war was not related at all to this issue
| and has no parallels whatsoever with the American civil war.
| favourable wrote:
| I reverse engineered a sketchy link I got in an SMS. I opened up
| Tor Browser Bundle (with JS disabled), then went to a URL 'un-
| shortener' service[0]. Furthermore, I saw an interstitial page
| with a JavaScript payload in it, and it was all obfuscated and
| obviously coded to hide what it was doing.
|
| I could have gone further and unpacked the code, beautifying it
| to see what 0 day it was leveraging, but I didn't proceed
| further. Obviously, this was designed to take over my device.
| Luckily, my default browser on my phone is Firefox with
| JavaScript turned off, so it wouldn't have been able to execute
| if I did click on the link.
|
| [0] https://urlex.org/
| dundarious wrote:
| Javascript is absolutely not the only way these payloads can
| infect your device, so I wouldn't consider that particularly
| safe.
|
| Also, if you aren't on a phone or similar, you can just use
| curl to expand shortened URLS. Tell it follow redirects (-L)
| and print headers (-I), and use the last "location: " header it
| spits out. e.g., curl -fsSLI
| https://t.co/blahblah | sed -n 's/^location: //p'
| mercy_dude wrote:
| All these spyware incidents by nation states prove one thing: how
| fickle the so called rule of law is in much of the western
| democracy. In fact west has increasingly become de facto
| kleptocracy with media and nation state security apparatus
| actively seeking ways to maintain and grow the power for the
| national elites leaving them unchecked.
| sbarre wrote:
| I mean, this was all happening before too, we just had less
| visibility into it.
|
| If you think that the governments of 'western democracies'
| weren't spying on their own citizens or going against their own
| laws - even in collaboration with private interests - before
| the advent of the Internet and spyware/malware, I've got bad
| news for you.
| colpabar wrote:
| Sure, but even now with the greater visibility we have, these
| claims are never taken seriously en masse. One group would
| call you a traitor, and another would call you a conspiracy
| theorist.
|
| I do not have a solution, but I'd just like to point out that
| if someone on HN makes a comment like the one GP did, they
| 100% understand that this isn't "new". I also don't think we
| should just accept this as a part of life because "it was all
| happening before", because the level of spying the internet
| has enabled is orders of magnitude worse than it was without
| it. We should be afraid and upset.
| sbarre wrote:
| I agree with the latter part of what you're saying, but as
| for the former, you'd be surprised how many people I've met
| who really do think a lot of this surveillance and "our
| government does bad things" stuff is a recent development.
|
| And yes, I have been, and remain, upset about it. No
| worries there.
| runnerup wrote:
| If anything, what's "new" would be any widespread-among-the-
| proletariat expectation that governments aren't just a
| mixture of personalities assembled into ad hoc and historical
| factions feuding to control as much money and power as
| possible.
|
| I would like to learn more about common views on this. Would
| my belief above actually be true going back as long as
| monarchies have existed, until maybe post WW2?
|
| I'd see it as a magical period between WW2 and today where
| the belief was in fairness and universal rule of law.
| sbarre wrote:
| > I'd see it as a magical period between WW2 and today
| where the belief was in fairness and universal rule of law.
|
| Even this, I would say, was manufactured, and not as
| widespread of a belief as the "winners write history" camp
| would have us believe.
|
| It certainly wasn't true, or even thought true, in America
| (and other western countries too) if you weren't white and
| Christian.
| pvaldes wrote:
| Everybody is pointing to the government because yeah, Spain
| bad. I have a different candidate for you. Why not Interpol?
|
| A lad involved in crypto trade and online voting travels to
| Switzerland, from a place notorious by recent suspicious
| money movements linked with Switzerland banks. I bet that
| this particular combination of keywords would raise some
| eyebrows and trigger a discreet interest by any police
| working in anticorruption or money laundering.
| sonicggg wrote:
| This is on full display in Canada today.
| antattack wrote:
| Is there something better? Seems like pendulum swings the
| opposite way once it reaches western democracy.
| usrn wrote:
| The intelligence agencies are holding the country hostage.
| twoneurons wrote:
| Too many bureaucrats and public servants are more occupied with
| growing their own power and protecting their space, than
| serving the public interest.
| EricE wrote:
| Welcome to human nature. One of the reasons anyone who thinks
| socialism is a realistic strategy just is't with reality.
| colpabar wrote:
| Well hey, at least we're not china or russia. Now pay your
| taxes and stop questioning things!
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