[HN Gopher] Poland's PM says previous government illegally used ...
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Poland's PM says previous government illegally used Pegasus spyware
Author : arkadiyt
Score : 159 points
Date : 2024-02-18 19:45 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apnews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (apnews.com)
| andrenth wrote:
| "Poland and the demon in democracy"
| https://theupheaval.substack.com/p/poland-and-the-demon-in-d...
| Kwpolska wrote:
| Politicians committing crimes end up in courts and then in
| prison, plain and simple. And this is plain propaganda,
| repeating many talking points of the PiS party (the party
| previously in power, who illegally used Pegasus).
| Tostino wrote:
| iT's poLitICal PerSeCutiOn!
| andrepd wrote:
| Is anyone fooled by this drivel? Honest question. Because some
| things are pernicious: misleading but in a subtle way, sly and
| devious. This is just so in-your-face laughable.
| padjo wrote:
| About 40% of American voters appear to be falling for it.
| bobx11 wrote:
| The author seems to contradict themselves in many places...
| maybe they just really want it to be true. For example,
| "allegedly" and "convicted" in this case:
|
| > He was convicted during Tusk's previous regime (2007-2014)
| for allegedly abusing his power while pursuing government
| corruption with "excessive zeal," but was officially pardoned
| by then-new President Andrzej Duda in 2015 - a long-standing
| point of displeasure for the Polish left.
| Tade0 wrote:
| > The former top European Union official's party only won 30%
| of the vote compared to the 36% of his incumbent conservative,
| EU-skeptical rivals, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, but was
| nonetheless able to assemble a coalition of leftists to take
| power.
|
| Just one party in this coalition is from the left. The rest is
| decidedly centre to centre-right.
|
| Hard to treat this piece seriously.
| rasz wrote:
| 1 Over 7000 licenses for Pegasus alone. Both opposition and own
| party surveilled.
|
| 2 Usage of Pegasus means all intercepts are on the servers in
| Israel. All Government secrets and potential kompromat
| transferred to foreign power.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| _> Usage of Pegasus means all intercepts are on the servers in
| Israel_
|
| Wait, seriously? Any sources on that? I find it hard to believe
| that any government would spend $$$ on a security tool that
| doesn't allow on-prem installation and instead beams all your
| surveillance to another country.
| DANmode wrote:
| You have a lot to catch up on, then.
| xemoka wrote:
| I'm curious about this statement too, seems there's evidence
| that they don't and the customer is the data handler: https:/
| /www.edps.europa.eu/system/files_en?file=2023-01/0221... top
| of page 4.
|
| I guess this is all according to NSO claims. I'd like to see
| evidence otherwise!
| axlee wrote:
| Why would you trust anything a spyware company says? This
| is not a tongue-in-cheek question.
| miohtama wrote:
| No honour among the thieves
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| It is a lot of money lost if it comes out that you lied
| to some of your biggest clients.
| rasz wrote:
| That was one of the claims during parliamentary committee
| investigating it.
| voytec wrote:
| S(pyware)aaS
| siva7 wrote:
| a) it's not a security tool but spyware b) this spyware is
| meant to spy on the government so this job is better
| outsourced to another government
| Szpadel wrote:
| this was meant to be used for spying terrorists and such, so
| should not be big deal
|
| from what I heard about Pegasus: noone could get that malware
| for themselves to not compromise it, so it's you wanted to
| hijack some phone you would send them phone number so they
| could resend exploit again (spyware was not persistent across
| reboots, so you needed to rehack it every time)
| odiroot wrote:
| 3. And most importantly: all of that funded by the taxpayer, to
| satisfy one man's paranoia.
| agilob wrote:
| "and illegally" is strangely missing from the title
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| God knows what dystopian regulations/powers they created for
| themselves.
| dang wrote:
| That's no doubt an artifact of HN's 80 char title limit, which
| required the submitter to shorten the title.
|
| Edit: I've changed it now.
| sjwhevvvvvsj wrote:
| Fuck NSO Group.
| FirmwareBurner wrote:
| The NSO is only supplying a product for which there is
| insatiable demand from every government. If they wouldn't build
| them, someone else will.
|
| They're kind of like arms manufacturers. Do you blame them if
| your government shoots you?
| Qem wrote:
| > They're kind of like arms manufacturers.
|
| More like hired hitmen.
| p_l wrote:
| If the arms manufacturer explicitly works with unethical and
| illegal uses of clients as main sales target, yes.
| axlee wrote:
| > The NSO is only supplying a product for which there is
| insatiable demand from every government.
|
| There is also insatiable demand for nuclear weapons, but if a
| private company from the US started selling them to random
| dictatorships, yes, I would blame them.
| CPLX wrote:
| Of course I do. Is your theory that manufacturing weapons of
| war is a morally neutral occupation?
| someotherperson wrote:
| Replace NSO group's spyware with child sex slaves, reread
| what you wrote, and then revisit your moral compass
| lmm wrote:
| And, more importantly, fuck the states that support them, and
| the people who are complicit with them at any level.
| nickysielicki wrote:
| Why? It serves no purpose, if it wasn't them, it would be New
| NSO Group instead. So long as these vulnerabilities exist,
| they're going to be exploited. Every time they find an exploit
| it's a moment of pure genius. With every new baseband and every
| new OS update there's a good chance that they find they have no
| answer. I don't blame the hackers in the slightest. It's also
| not useful to blame governments.
|
| More useful to blame the systemic issues that allow these
| things to take place: the one that pops to the front of my mind
| is that the FCC has such a high degree of standards with modems
| that it results in a severe lack of competition. Google and
| Apple choose to release phones without contractually demanding
| full source access to the entirety of it so that it can be
| audited by their security teams. Those are things that can and
| should change.
| machinekob wrote:
| best of all they spy on their own party members and some
| businessmen's which were rivals of some party members family
| dkjaudyeqooe wrote:
| To absolutely no one's surprise.
| miohtama wrote:
| This is what happens when democracy starts to dysfunction and the
| ruling party wants to cling to power any means necessary.
| chewz wrote:
| Just bear in mind that this is the same Polish PM whose former
| government set World record making requests to Apple for data
| from 241 509 iPhones in 1H2015... (out of 300 thousand total
| request from the entire World)...
|
| Quarter milion iPhones in 2015 in Poland was basically everyone
| who counts in public life.
|
| https://www.apple.com/legal/transparency/pdf/requests-2015-H...
| dmortin wrote:
| Making requests is one thing, because Apple can deny the
| request, while using Pegasus simply hacks the phone without
| oversight.
| Szpadel wrote:
| from your linked document:
|
| *Poland: predominately requests from Customs and Revenue
| Authorities
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(page generated 2024-02-18 23:01 UTC)