Israel accused of planting mysterious spy devices near the White House

Not sure what that has to do with this at all? It definitely sounds like bourgeoisie/boutique political signaling though. Only those with a certain level of privileges can make platitudes like that while the rest of us deal with the real world ... where borders clearly matter.

National borders are not about "discriminating against people for where they are born", anymore than your family house discriminates against people based on which family they were born into.

One would assume you don't just let anyone in your house, or feed everybody just like you do your children, or share your family assets with the whole neighborhood (even if it would be nice if you did, it, for one, would live less for you. Plus, not everybody is nice and altruistic, but most manage to be that towards their family).

People build a nation as a community, often fighting hard for it to exist (e.g. wars of independence), working hard to make it better, building it's culture, and so on. They have a right to want to preserve their preferred way of life, their culture, and the country/infrastructure/etc they have built (of course not everything is always harmonious inside a nation, the same way things are not all roses all the time inside a family. No human made thing is perfect - and no natural made thing, for that matter).

If nations did not exist, people should still have the right to invent them, that is, to create their own communities with people they share their living on a place, hardships and culture with, build their own thing, and protect it against people who don't share their values or haven't contributed to building them.

In fact nation states didn't exist in the far past, they are a development of enlightenment and modernity. We had empires, and feudal fiefdoms loyal to some remote king, and such before, and people literally struggled to break their pre-nation-state nations (ethnic, cultural and historical groups) free from them...

FIFY: where they are trying to annex as much Palestinian oil as possible

Genie Energy’s strategic advisors is the who’s who of your typical movie villains: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_Energy

I could probably dig up a half dozen examples of this; I try not to pay attention to politics, but I am old and every time I hear this story again I figure we couldn't possibly have any secrets left for the Israelis to sell to China.

Heres one: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/175404

Moar examples: https://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2014/06/06/how-israel-h...

Denying this is kind of like denying the sky is blue.

FWIIW the FARA act was passed in 1938 because of fascist and Nazi groups like the German American Bund interfering in US elections. Maybe as time goes by, AIPAC will become about as important in US politics as the German American Bund.

I don't think you really see what I'm saying. As literally written, they were presenting that particular section as fact. You may remark that I'm being excessively pedantic and that they were just writing a little sloppily, and you may be right, but at the end of the day the result is the same: each individual's mental model of the world is formed based upon the information they consume, and neither you nor I (nor scientists in the field) really know the effect this style of "news" reporting has on people at both the conscious and subconscious level.

Let me ask you this: hypothetically, let's say there was a way to enforce a law outlawing presenting speculation or opinions as if they were facts - do you think this would have an effect on society? I think HN would be a good testing ground for this experiment, but I don't sense much support for the idea.

It's not just my opinion, even AIPAC has become critical of Israel's departure from historic norms: https://jewishweek.timesofisrael.com/aipac-conference-urgent...

> Your entire issue with this is likely because you perceive Israeli spying to oppose your political party.

Yes, every Democrat must be fuming at attempts to spy on their political foe, President Trump. (FWIW, I'm not a registered Democrat.) But, okay, sure, there's definitely a growing undercurrent of anti-Israel sentiment among Democrats. And like many partisan issues it has it's obnoxious and counter-productive moments. But why do you think that is? It has gone hand-in-hand with the shift of Israeli lobbying to Republicans. Which came first is irrelevant and not worth arguing except to say it's been a slow shift among many parties (politicians, organizations, etc) across the board that has accelerated in the past 10 years.

> On those lines, would you classify Chinese/Iranian spying efforts as harmless, just because they currently bat for the Democrats? Or Canada, given that they are allied?

China and Iran aren't close allies. They're not even allies. And nothing I've said here or anywhere else would even suggest I believe their espionage is harmless. What their espionage doesn't do is destroy trust, because there's no trust to destroy. And Canada has no reputation for high-level espionage targeting Americans, let alone American political leaders. And whatever the extent of it, if it ever rose to the level of Israeli activity it'd be a shock to everybody inside the Beltway.

> Also, it is being taken as fact that Israel is the originator of the sting rays, when in reality this isn't conclusive.

Of course it's not conclusive. From a standpoint of someone without a security clearance, it's admittedly even less conclusive than the Russian election interference campaign, or 9/11 for that matter. Nothing is conclusive, not even the notion that the sun will come up tomorrow. Everything is contingent on the validity of circumstantial evidence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRNO1LFQBWI&feature=youtu.be...

> it makes zero common sense for the U.S. to undermine it's own national security by repeatedly going easy on Israel.

Neither domestic nor international politics is based on common sense, let alone an objectively rigorous analysis of the situation.

> citations outstanding on the following open ended claims made

I don't even know where to start with citations. I majored in International Affairs as an undergraduate and interned for several years at a K Street lobbying organization that promoted U.S.-Israel defense cooperation. I've read countless books and articles on these issues generally, and have personally met (albeit as an intern) people like John Bolton and an Israeli defense minister (probably Moshe Arens; previously I wrote Ehud Barak but that doesn't seem right looking at the timeline[1]). Of course we never discussed policy, let alone spying, but I'm comfortable believing that as compared to the vast majority of people I have a relatively objective perspective on U.S.-Israel security matters which, if anything, favors Israel.

The facts (such as they are) of Israeli spying in the U.S., the sentiments of the intelligence community, and the opinions of political scholars are readily available with the slightest bit of concerted effort. There's not even any significant dispute about these things generally, only about their prudence relative to Israel's existential security posture, and the substantive threat they pose to American security. As I said, Israel planting stringrays is bold but not that surprising. And, sure, it's entirely possible it will turn out Israel didn't do it, but the claim is quite credible, and regardless there's an exceptionally well established baseline consensus regarding the extent of Israeli espionage on which to uniquely criticize (or at least distinguish) their espionage activities. For example, the Newsweek article I and others posted earlier from 2014 references open Congressional meetings with testimony given by intelligence officials attesting to its unique nature.

You can stick to your own faux skepticism if you want. But if you applied it equally to everything in your life I'm not sure how you'd have confidence in the existence of anything you didn't personally observe yourself.

[1] It was during the week of several events in Washington for NATO's 50th anniversary, the same week and possibly even the same day I also got to shake hands with the President of Bulgaria who handed me a CD of propaganda[2] material to post on our website that supported their entry into NATO. So maybe sometime in 1999?

[2] And "propaganda" isn't an accusation or judgment. It's just the proper term for material used by governments to sell and persuade an idea or objective. I don't think we ever used much if any of the videos and other material on there as nobody wanted to write an article or essay as a pretense for publishing it. I don't think any American leaders ever had serious reservations about Bulgaria joining NATO, anyhow. That lack of caution is exactly why Russia has been so pissed about NATO expansion.

2004: https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2004-sep-03-na-spypr...

2008: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-spy-who...

Notice the thread: Israel is uniquely aggressive, especially as an ally.

This article is full of innuendo and conjecture (they say this up front), but provides insight into the complex web of business and intelligence relationships that make it easy for Israel to accomplish electronic surveillance in the U.S.: https://www.wired.com/2012/04/shady-companies-nsa/

A specific case of spying intended to undermine U.S. policymaking: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Franklin_espionage_sc...

And the same thing 10 years later, except now patently partisan: https://theintercept.com/2015/03/25/netanyahus-spying-denial...

Another thread: Allies typically spy on each other to understand their motivations and to predict their next moves. But Israel is increasingly doing it to enable them to directly interfere in domestic American politics. Some might excuse it as Israel being justifiably paranoid about Iran; others won't excuse it. But you can't deny that it stands apart.

The reported examples are just the tip of the iceberg. As people readily report, it's widely known/believed that the above is just the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes this results in misleading and false accusations, but this is a consequence of consistent, significant, long-term espionage activity, as well as the fact that their intelligence activities run the gambit of methodologies (legal and illegal), much of which doesn't fit the Hollywood definition of espionage.

Talking about private sector, private contractor doing shaded activities for US clients is not the same as "Israel espionage". Israel is a country, does the article suggest evidence that Israel (or someone on its behalf) have done any espionage in US?

Qouting your comment from another thread: "The article is presenting a claim [you are, Israel espionage is not claimed in the article] which needs to be backed by sound evidence, like research papers [or any other evidence]. That's where the burden of proof lies, not on those who reject the claim on face value."

Https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20886710

Former workers are sometimes just that.

Why assume extra cell security would be a hardware build-out? Surely all towers in existence can get remote firmware upgrades, the same way all of todays routers can?

> For HTTPS you have a lot of altruistic people and companies, like letsencrypt and Mozilla willing to give some resources to make HTTPS everywhere possible.

That seems true in retrospect, but there was lots resistance to, and futility thinking about HTTPS before it happened, I remember it, I was there. It only seems like there are altruistic people helping now that it basically is everywhere and now that it’s easy & cheap to do, and everyone knows it’s a good idea.

> So unless the government mandates it

Agreed that’s unlikely to happen, but it doesn’t seem like a real barrier to me. Maybe GDPR or Europe will take the lead on this one too. But very little of the security & privacy we have in the US has ever come from a government mandate, yet we do have some. HTTPS wasn’t a government mandate. They didn’t oppose it either, possibly because they have keys and/or cooperative ISPs, but they sure didn’t do anything to push it forward.

> I just don’t see how given where we are today.

Public awareness about the issue for one. Rather than saying it’s futile and will probably never happen, talking to your friends and family about it will help. Though we have a super long way to go, improvements in privacy do tend to happen once the public truly understands how they’re being spied on. Privacy pushes by Apple and Google could make it happen. Even Apple alone might be able to make it happen, and they’re currently on the side of privacy. It might also unfortunately take more widely reported cases of StingRay before people perk up to this issue.

> But LEA are the ones setting up the illegitimate “towers”.

The article said it’s a foreign government, Israel, spying on lawmakers, not U.S. law enforcement. You are suggesting the StingRays are ours and not black hats?

> as far as the carriers are concerns most of the public doesn’t care, LE is happy

That’s because they haven’t heard from the public on this issue, nobody’s complaining because nobody knows. As soon as they do hear about it, they will realize the public cares. This is why public awareness of the lack of security in our current cellular setup is important.

Law enforcement is a non-argument in my opinion. Of course they want it easy, but we do not have to make it easy. Many of the safety measures we currently enjoy happened despite law enforcement’s complaints, including device locking and encryption.

And, like I said before, I believe they can get what they want with little to no effort and continue to spy on us without forcing the public to lose privacy to Israeli or Russian or Chinese or even your local neighborhood black hats.

Israel's neighbors were the ones who encouraged Palestinian leaders to reject both citizenship and two-state solutions across multiple deal opportunities and instead opt for waging an endless violent rebellion. And when the coordinated wars were lost and the time came for offering aid, resources, and immigration opportunities - neighboring countries offered the Palestinians very little compared to the opportunities that Israel offers. They did not step up.

Perhaps true, but these days Lebanon is up in the running. They do have a weird approach to "power sharing" in government, but it's not like Israel is free from its own sort of weirdness, as you've mentioned.

Why should that be considered?

Does that include the Palestinians, do the Israeli government counts them as people?