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Comment by anon007 | Hacker News Reader

Why is the moderator censoring "Israel" out of the title of the original article?

"WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world"

The article title is "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world", which exceeds HN's 80 char limit, so it had to be shortened somehow. The submitted title was "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping hack phones around the world". I changed that to "WhatsApp sues NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world" because it seemed to me that the "spies" bit adds more information than the "Israel's" bit. There's a difference between "helping hack" and "helping spies hack".

For completeness, I do think the commenters pointing out a slightly nonstandard weirdness in the phrase "Israel's NSO"—like the one comparing to "America's Google"—have a fair point. (Exercise for the curious: have there ever been many titles like that?) But it was not the determining factor.

Until I read the article, I assumed "NSO" would be a US government three letter agency. But hard to convey it is a company too in 80 chars I guess.

The way the name "NSO" sounds like a government intelligence agency reminds me of the way "United States Chamber of Commerce" also confuses people: https://0x0.st/zYWr.png

>Exercise for the curious: have there ever been many titles like that?

I found a few "China's Huawei", "China's Tencent" and "China's Baidu".

So it could as well be "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones".

NSO founders' ties to the Israeli government are a bit more essential to their business than the Google example. See also the China examples from another commenter. I'll bet there are examples of "Russian company XYZ" as well. In cases like these, the nationality of the company and especially of its former-unit-8200 founders does seem rather germane.

Because it's a company, not a country. It's like referring to Google as "America's Google."

Also, the article has nothing to do with Israel besides the company being located there. Don't try to politicize everything.

It does take a lot of context out. I know what Google is. No idea what "NSO" is.

On the other hand, "Israel's" makes it sound like it's a governmental intelligence agency rather than a company. Misleading context could be worse than no context.

Sure... I'm no expert. But "NSO" is CLEARLY not enough context for readers...full stop.

On HN, there's no need for every title to explain itself fully, especially when it's trivial to find out the missing information. It's good for readers here to have to work a little: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...

Also, many readers have followed this story and know what NSO is. There's no title that fits the bill for everyone.

I respectfully disagree. A three letter acronym implies shared understanding. NSA, CIA, GHQ, MI6, KGB, IBM, AMZ, USA, etc, are globally recongized. NSO is ambiguous and confusing in a headline and demands explanation.

Google tells me that "NSO" is "Nurse Malpractice" for the entire first page fold. I assume it's similarly unhelpful in other regions for other people. 'Cmon, it's not a big, recognized, entity. Wait a year and the problem will be even more apperent.

There have been a number of posts about NSO on HN, and most of them do not say Israel in the title. But most of them do say "NSO Group" instead of "NSO", so maybe this title should have said that too. Although you might blame that on Reuters as well for not having "Group" in their title when that is actually in the name of the company.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&prefix=true&query=NSO&...

Good point. "NSO Group" would have helped me a lot, and avoids the immediate political innuendo. @dang: An obvious compromise.

Ok, we can do that.

You disagree with calling a company by their name?

If you have an issue with how they named their company, you could write to their CEO and let him know that he is using 3 letter entity names improperly. Unless you want the community to pick a new name to bestow upon them, I’m not sure what you expect from us.

Apparently, their name is "NSO Group". So I agree with many of your points.

Or we could all just simultaneously guess what popular 3 letter NSO acronym it really is?

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/NSO

Seriously, that's a lame answer. There's almost certainly another "NSO" company with more past or future notoriety/revenue/whatever. Why be ambiguous when that's not actually their name? The name is , "NSO Group".

This entire thread could have been avoided by you simply reading the first sentence of the article. No Google searches or long discussion needed.

Literally the first sentence of the Reuters article says what it is. It's not as if this is hard to answer.

The principle that it's good for readers to work a little is bedrock on HN. We want users who figure things out for themselves. That spurs the intellectual curiosity HN exists for.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

The first sentence of the article states "surveillance firm NSO Group".

Typical double standards. See any post on HN (or anywhere else in the western media) about any chinese company.

I disagree. I know who Huawei is and don't need the "China" context. No idea what "NSO" is, and I don't think I'm unique in this regard.

If you haven't heard of NSO, does "Isreael's NSO" actually clarify anything? Maybe now you know where they are, but you're still no more informed as to what they are.

Yes, it tells me a lot about intent, where people's opinions might lie, and so on. We can pretend like global politics doesn't set context, but it just...does.

"Israelie Security Firm NSO" would totally clarify it for me.

NSO is a hacking and government-sponsored-terrorism firm, not a security firm.

Good context I could use.

Bit wordy for a title limited to 80 characters though.

I imagine news orgs find a way to balance. "NSO" is pretty clearly not enough.

It's not "government sponsored." It used to be owned by a British company, and was sold to a European private equity firm.

> See any post on HN (or anywhere else in the western media) about any chinese company

That of course is not true.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Given how strongly the Israelian security sector is tied to its national government, including directly recruiting from the military and often acting on its behalf the distinction is quite ridiculous.

Would HN have censored "China's Huawei?" Obviously not, it's the typical bias concerning western governments and allies that seems to be getting more blunt as time goes on the website.

Tech companies in Israel, security-related or otherwise, are tied to the government just as much as, if not less than, in the US, the UK, or France. There's nothing even remotely resembling the situation in China. "Recruiting from the military" is true for virtually every company in Israel, including sewage treatment companies, because military service is mandatory, and that's where people usually are before they get a job.

What about the 2 spies who interviewed citizen lab researchers looking for dirt on them?

Clearly it's the Israeli government.

It's owned by European private equity fund Novalpina Capital. Not really an Israeli company.

It's part owned by Novalpina. It's still a company founded by Israelis, headquartered in Israel. Is Ikea a dutch company? I'd say no.

From 2014 to Feb 2019 (during which I think a lot of the hacking occurred) it was 100% owned by the American company Francisco Partners.

Without clarification it's unclear exactly what NSO stands for. If Google was relatively unknown, it probably would be referred to "America's Google."

Also, NSO's founders were members of the Israeli Intelligence Corp (source: Wikipedia). Given the military links it would be reasonable to include its origin. News outlets would likely do the same for a Chinese company.

That they served in the intelligence corp does not imply "military links" in Israel (I'm not familiar with the company, and there could, indeed, be military links, but that fact is not any evidence in support of that). Probably 80% of people with technical background in Israel have done their mandatory military service in the Intelligence Corp or the air force. Among startup founders the ratio is probably higher. In other words, virtually much everyone with a higher education served in the military, and those in STEM fields are likelier than not to have done it in the intelligence corp.

double standards. obviously it is an Israeli-led company

Ummmm...Israel Govt allows them to export these tools. So yeah. The Israeli probably gets something in return from countries, in addition to NSO getting paid.

Once I clicked through to see "Israel's", it immediately clarified who they were, at least to me -- in fact I recently watched an entire 60 Minutes segment about them.

Just NSO sounds like some government agency I had forgotten about.

To give the benefit of the doubt, this is the longest title on the HN homepage, even without "Israel". Perhaps it was just to shorten it?

I wonder if the same censoring would happen if it’s a Russian or Chinese company?

Well, let's see:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I don't see any reason to have a policy about this one way or the other, but in most cases there's no need to say which country a well-known company is from. There are a couple instances of "China's Huawei" from over a year ago, but that's negligible compared to the number of headlines about Huawei overall.

Because it's not hard to find out that the NSO Group is from Israel, eg googling.

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