All of Netanyahu's allies in the world seem to have profited from this relationship by obtaining military grade surveillance inorder to suppress human rights of journalists and opposition.<p>This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators.<p>I'm convince pegasus was used against Israeli journalists, opposition leaders and law enforcement officials. Too bad our political system is still under his thumb and doesn't shed light on this crap even now that he's no longer PM.
If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices and legal disputes that take years without a noteworthy resolution. Due to how alliances within the union work - Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself.
So far Orban's regime is the only eu/western government involved in this scandal. I see that no surprise.<p>There is no need of official government approval to conduct such surveillance. It's enough to have weak access contol to such technologies, political roles within the agencies, and poor work ethics in civil servants: there alway will be someone with will and motive to act in favor of the system, off the record. Orban deliberately shaped the government this way.
I came to the conclusion that politicians are a big problem. Not sure we can get rid of them but they are.<p>FWIW I just see them use the money of others for their own purposes coactively and provoke a lot of polarization. Many times with bad intention for selfish interests. I am talking about ALL of them.<p>I think people should be able (Hungarian case at hand) to choose whether they want certain contents to be taught at certain age for their kids. No matter which ones. It should be a free to choose thing.<p>The minimum stuff we must all agree upon should be not killing, discriminating, etc. in legal terms. But when you try to force people to like or dislike something, instead of respecting others (whether they like or not other people ideas) then you have this highly polarized environment because you will always find the other half resisting, since it is imposed contents highly ideological.<p>I think that things could be way better with fewer of these people.
Here is a technical report about the exploits: <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/" rel="nofollow">https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...</a>
Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.
I perceive this as an example why allowing privacy violation for one group for the "sake of greater good" does not work. Usually the same tools will be used with oppressive regimes.
In the beginning it will start with pretext that "we are using this tools to find terrorists, pedophiles and protect children" but more often it will end up prosecuting journalist, silencing whistleblowers and undermining political opponents creating perpetual state of oppression and corruption.
Does anyone have any idea how Pegasus actually works? I haven't found any teardowns or even a clear description of what the iMessage says.<p>This is some kind of code injection attack that can go through a text message?
I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces?<p>Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more.<p>I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?
It’d be interesting to learn how the NSO group's marketing worked.
Did NSO go knocking on the doors of all these despotic regimes? Or was it the other way around?<p>And what was the hand of the Israeli government in the deal-making? For instance, reports state that the spying in India began right after the India’s PM met with Netanyahu in 2017 [1] So was NSO actively backed by the government?<p>Sigh. So many questions.<p>[1] <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-rahul-gandhi-among-indian-targets-of-nso-client" rel="nofollow">https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-...</a>
> The son and one of the closest confidants of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. They were both selected as targets before the Hungarian national election of April 2018. Back then, Simicska was the owner of a media empire, and he was openly waging war against the Orbán government. (It would have been futile to target Simicska with this spyware as he did not use smartphones.)<p>There's literally no winning here. You can literally disconnect from the internet and they'll just target the people around you…
Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus:
<a href="https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-spyware-attacks/167909/" rel="nofollow">https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s...</a><p>Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?
"Pegasus takes advantage of so-called zero-day vulnerabilities of software running on mobile phones, meaning built-in flaws that not even developers and manufacturers are aware of."<p>Vulnerabilities, eh - 'flaws'?<p>Or backdoors there by design?<p>What's in a name?
When you don't do the EU's bidding, their propaganda machinery will work so hard that even Goebbels would be impressed. Then comes the sanctions and other bullying approaches to force your ways. God I hope more countries follow the UK and leave the world's fattest bureaucracy.
a friend of mine had written an interesting piece of investigation journalism on this topic<p><a href="https://medium.com/@maribst" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/@maribst</a>
TL;DR: the government hacking into private mobile phones is completely legal practice according to Hungarian laws and nobody can be held responsible for it.