Opinion: Global spyware such as Pegasus is a threat to democracy.

[Etznab]

Some quotes:

"[...] The consortium reports that Israel’s NSO Group has sold its marquee spyware, Pegasus, to clients that have deployed it against the very pillars of democratic life: press freedom, the presumption of innocence, privacy, and freedom of expression and association.

"[...] The double standard on the part of Israel is particularly striking. The country is home to NSO Group as well as other spyware companies, including Candiru, which Microsoft last week accused of selling tools to hack into Windows.

"[...] The new revelations about the reach and harms of NSO’s Pegasus software are the latest, and hopefully final, wake-up call to rein in the private spyware market. [... .]"

Looks like some sort of Nazi practice to me.

[Henosis Sage]

Post by Etznab
"[...] The consortium reports that Israel’s NSO Group has sold its marquee spyware, Pegasus, to clients that have deployed it against the very pillars of democratic life: press freedom, the presumption of innocence, privacy, and freedom of expression and association.
"[...] The double standard on the part of Israel is particularly striking. The country is home to NSO Group as well as other spyware companies, including Candiru, which Microsoft last week accused of selling tools to hack into Windows.
"[...] The new revelations about the reach and harms of NSO’s Pegasus software are the latest, and hopefully final, wake-up call to rein in the private spyware market. [... .]"
Looks like some sort of Nazi practice to me.

At least such things are being exposed. It's a start. But imo the whole digital arena is a shit show.

[Maplin]

Post by Henosis Sage

Post by Etznab
"[...] The consortium reports that Israel’s NSO Group has sold its marquee spyware, Pegasus, to clients that have deployed it against the very pillars of democratic life: press freedom, the presumption of innocence, privacy, and freedom of expression and association.
"[...] The double standard on the part of Israel is particularly striking. The country is home to NSO Group as well as other spyware companies, including Candiru, which Microsoft last week accused of selling tools to hack into Windows.
"[...] The new revelations about the reach and harms of NSO’s Pegasus software are the latest, and hopefully final, wake-up call to rein in the private spyware market. [... .]"
Looks like some sort of Nazi practice to me.

At least such things are being exposed. It's a start. But imo the whole digital arena is a shit show.

Yep.
Until recently if you ran a company you spent a lot of effort developing
your website and your IT, moving forward with the times. Now, it's all
about security. Good network security guys are in much more demand than
can ever be met, everybody needs them in the modern threat landscape.
Every website and network is basically under attack all the time, so is
the majority of mobile phones. It's ridiculous. Governments are years
behind the pace making laws to keep up, as always, but this is something
they might never get on top of.

So they should change tack IMO, and hire the sort of expertise needed to
respond in an agile, up-to-date way without trying to define every last
detail of it in law. I guess that means giving some kind of broad
authority to a particular branch of law enforcement/response, and that
inevitably gets abused. I don't know what kind of oversight that would
need but one way or another they are going to have to respond properly
to this major and evolving threat.

There have been some good steps forward, and I've been reading how even
the really big tech companies might finally be moving past the more
invasive types of tracking and surveillance. Apple is actually leading
the way here, but even Google is starting to reform itself.
THere may be hope yet. There kind of isn't now, but there could be one
day. Fingers crossed

[Etznab]

Post by Etznab
"[...] The consortium reports that Israel’s NSO Group has sold its marquee spyware, Pegasus, to clients that have deployed it against the very pillars of democratic life: press freedom, the presumption of innocence, privacy, and freedom of expression and association.
"[...] The double standard on the part of Israel is particularly striking. The country is home to NSO Group as well as other spyware companies, including Candiru, which Microsoft last week accused of selling tools to hack into Windows.
"[...] The new revelations about the reach and harms of NSO’s Pegasus software are the latest, and hopefully final, wake-up call to rein in the private spyware market. [... .]"
Looks like some sort of Nazi practice to me.

" Pegasus is spyware developed by the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group that can be covertly installed on mobile phones (and other devices) running most[1] versions of iOS and Android.[2] The 2021 Project Pegasus revelations suggest that current Pegasus software is able to exploit all recent iOS versions up to iOS 14.6.[1] According to the Washington Post and other prominent media sources, Pegasus not only enables the keystroke monitoring of all communications from a phone (texts, emails, web searches) but it also enables phone call and location tracking, while also permitting NSO Group to hijack both the mobile phone's microphone and camera, thus turning it into a constant surveillance device.[3]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)