when you face extermination and terrorism maybe you will understand how the world works and what needs to be done to survive.
peace sometimes comes from understanding of others strength.
I'm not saying the indignation isn't understandable—of course it is. But users here need to use the site for its intended purpose, not for things that destroy its intended purpose.
I'm Israeli, and I know a lot of people in this industry. I know many people like me who actively refuse to work on active offensive cyber solutions because of moral reasons.
OTH I see many greedy people working in NSO and the only thing they think about is money. They don't give a damn about positive or negative consequences of the industry they work in.
But "We face extermination therefore we should be able to get rich by selling our (cyber)weapons to despots who in turn use it against their own citizens" doesn't sound like a winning argument.
But let's focus on Israel again, always the safe scapegoat.
They can, and many have made a "living" by moving on to working on normal tech startups.
Nobody needs to make a killing to make a "living".
You don't need to like it, but you probably wouldn't be able to let me know without acknowledging it.
The industry has technological authority, but that doesn't mean it is owed a moral authority.
Just how (I hope) you wouldn't give moral authority to a grooming gang just because they're super efficient in their trafficking techniques.
Seems more like ‘war’ than a ‘war crime’
That is decidedly not what NSO is doing. They run the C&C servers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crime
Asssuming they are running C&C servers as you suggest, which international law of war did that break?
Would think twice before creating tools for others to do this exact thing
https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium-1948-n-y-times-lette...
Despite siding with the Nazis in WW2, Lehi membership was first granted a general amnesty and later an award was named in their honor.
In other situation it would be funny to point direct parallels between above and state of Israel, but this ain't even slightly funny topic. They achieved impressive things, but these kind of actions make them lose any moral points pretty quickly.