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Comment by smashah | Hacker News Reader

WhatsApp "attempted" to get NSOs export license revoked and failed. How would you expect America to stop two of their allies from dealing with each other (with a potential courtship in the works)? Especially when America itself gets major weapons contracts to look the other way?

This will just continue to get worse. More journalists and human rights activists will die because some delusional maniacs feelings were hurt, some ex IDF techs want to make some money and a President wants to keep jobs at Lockheed Martin.

Maybe the BDS list should include more countries. Maybe tech as a whole should replace lip service and instead redirect (and/or reject) major funds to fight injustice on a geopolitical level. Maybe VC funds shouldn't "techwash" despot dollars.

The tech industry has a lot of power in itself and can push the needle without the need to rely on 'America' to do something.

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>human rights activists will die

Most Israelis I talked to (about this specific subject; including the ones, working for NSO Group) do not understand the concept of human rights. First two questions I get are "How gives these rights?" and "Where does the list written?" in this order with the same intonation. My guess it is result of some kind of indoctrination during high school and army service.

P.S. I'm israeli

That's absolutely bullshit, many tech literate people here are against the weapon industry, which NSO is part of. Enough of them don't give a shit, which is why NSO can hire people from the intelligence arm of the army for ridiculous salaries.

I'm firmly in the camp that my brain will never be used in the weapons (or gambling) industry - no matter what the salary.

Not in the weapons industry, but in my experience statements like that struggle to hold up to the test of time. Seems like the places I wanted to work the least for offered the most, by a significant margin.

It's about making your lifestyle fit around the expected income and making a choice to accept lower wages in industries which align greater with your morals.

Utter crap. The overwhelming majority of NSO's hiring pool -- i.e. army tech "graduates" -- are firmly against them. Another chunk doesn't care and is swayed by their 2-4x salaries, luxurious company vacations, gifts, all things to "make it up for" what you do.

They're known to be "the bad guys". The tech courses we took in the army had plenty of emphasis on ethics, both the moral kind and conflict-of-interest kind.

Source: I'm an Israeli.

>tech courses we took in the army had plenty of emphasis on ethics, both the moral kind and conflict-of-interest kind

All the things done to all citizens of Israel (for example, indiscriminate movement and contact tracing) and residents of occupied territories are made possible by graduates of these courses.

Main emphasis of "emphasis on ethics" is explanation to soldiers how each choice made during a chain of events resulting in underage kid, teenager or old woman in her sixties being shot point-blank is correct and no other choice is possible.

What I meant is "don't go black hat", along with things that, upon writing this reply, might be too revealing to put online.

I've written and rewritten this reply maybe four times, but there's really no way to phrase it in a way you won't twist it to fit your "you're personally responsible for civilian murder" narrative. But I know what we did (my dept. at least), and that was not it.

Everyone involved from NSO execs through to the Saudi's and Emirati's should be facing DOJ indictments no different to what Russian, North Korean and Chinese hackers face

This thin veneer of NSO being a legitimate company has been exposed

Exposed? We knew NSO was selling exploits to authoritarian governments for years. Pegasus is nothing new.

If the buck stops with the execs then you concede that NSO is a legitimate company. The techs know what they're making and what it's being used for.

They are just as, if not more, responsible.

india for the last couple of years has been cracking down on "whatsapp groups" in occupied kashmir for reasons unknown. the encryption has not helped them because now they cant just use their homegrown network analyzer called "netra" to sift through whatsapp messages like they do on facebook. instead they opted to have whatsapp admins get "registered" and "licensed" to operate their groups. this resulted in being called into the police station and having this pegasus and other shit installed so that they can get backdoor access.

https://thenextweb.com/in/2020/01/08/kashmirs-police-want-pe...

https://m.thewire.in/article/government/kargil-police-asks-a...

https://www.firstpost.com/india/jammu-and-kashmirs-kishtwar-...

https://theintercept.com/2020/12/06/kashmir-social-media-pol...

the one thing these media outlets don't outrightly say is the reason why admins are told to report to police stations and someone on twitter has an answer to that.

https://mobile.twitter.com/CRolanova/status/1260932017916506...

I did not know this. This is incredibly concerning and warrants another HN post on its own.

Thanks for sharing

not an issue. i just crossed the 500 days of no high speed mobile internet so yeah, fuck tyrant governments

> Maybe tech as a whole should replace lip service and instead redirect (and/or reject) major funds to fight injustice on a geopolitical level.

So instead of a democratically elected US Govt dropping freedom from a 1 billion bomber on a 10$ tent, A bunch of hippies in a small part of the US should use the power of social media to control and direct conversation, culture and world events like some sort of a uber-exclusive shady techbro-illuminati?

The problem is genuine but any solution involving tech would only worsen the problem

This is not what I mean.

The tech industry internationally should participate in some form of BDS (as much as they are comfortable with I guess) with these countries.

Also, I believe there should be something akin to the Hippocratic Oath but for developers and engineers.

The US is actively encouraging this business and these weapon deals. If interested in it, the US could thwart it in a second.

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