Wonder if they are even helping to hack US government employees through China, etc. (besides just helping to torture dissidents).
If you look at the list of customers, it quickly becomes clear that they are the same organizations that make the laws.
Israel's unicameral, sovereign, supreme state body, the Knesset [1]?
More importantly, they are the ones that decide what laws are enforced.
What is sad is that in America, the law around surveillance and security is largely a nice marketing campaign. Sure, you have rights that protect you from the government.
But practically speaking the government won't enforce them, doesn't stop its employees from abusing them even for personal drama, undermines or stops dead any lawsuits by saying the discovery is impossible due to "national security", or will invent terms like "enemy combatant" and then apply them to its own citizens to bypass even the constitution. It will setup "oversight courts" that rubberstamp everything and have no real power or regulatory function/safeguard.
The result of this is that each presidential election is becoming truly dangerous to the opposition. If a McCarthyism movement takes over either party that's in power with the modern surveillance infrastructure, legal "precedents" established by Bush in the war on terror, the confirmation of those powers by the Obama administration holding onto them and continuing funding of infrastructure, undermining of judicial powers, rote acceptance by the people at large, and propaganda outlets available to push messaging, and huge amounts of institutional mores and standards thrown out in the Trump administration, the opposition has real motivation to feel an existential threat.
Sometimes I avoid listing directors of a new corporation by forming an LLC and privately filing with the IRS to treat it as a C-Corp
Doesn't mean the regulations were tough, but still burdensome in some small way
edit: the tone is lost via internet; my own opinion on this: yes, it is.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON#Examples_of_industrial...
This statement needs the "we" defined to be meaningful.
If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state. If "we"` is e.g. China, probably no, because words have meanings and the arms of recognized foreign states don't conduct terrorism, they do espionage and they do war. If "we" is a freshman dorm room, then, of course, the NSA is a terrorist organization alongside the student government.
> If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state.
Its perhaps worth noting that “terrorism” originally exclusively denoted action by the State against its own subjects, though it was within a few years expanded to include other activities.
Correct, in the French Revolution, I believe. There are a variety of definitions of terrorism. The common elements seem to be the (a) peacetime use (b) of violence (c) against non-combatants (d) as a political tool. There also seems to be an unspoken requirement that it occurred after the formation of modern states (otherwise almost all of the preceding human history was terrorism and the word gets normalized); the French Revolution is a useful line.
The NSA targets non-combatants (c) in peacetime (a). It does not use violence (b), though it does enable it (⅓b). It does not do so for domestic political aims (to any proven degree); the degree to which it does so abroad depends on where one draws the line between politics and geopolitics. (The CIA, in contrast, engages in all four overseas.)
When an organization that has done terrorism becomes a terrorist organization is another question.
Some here in the states don't exactly feel like the people running the USG have the people's best interests at heart. Common folk across countries probably have more in common with each other than with the ruling elite.
State-sponsored terrorism is a thing - and has been for a LONG time. And US citizens are targets as well as non-citizens.
Nothing about US foreign policy suggests that. Very little about the Federal government’s domestic policy does.
Some will never leave the Matrix.
2. Even if they develop their own tools and research their exploits, using NSO provides a layer of plausible deniability and hiding behind someone else's fingerprint (think about the command and control servers, for example).
3. Even if they develop their own stuff, most governments have multiple arms which can use these tools (think about FBI, CIA, NSA, various military intelligence branches), and they tend not to share between them. This makes smaller government branches which don't have the resources and expertise of the others (think DEA, ATF...) buy from 3rd parties.
4. Zero days are a scarce resource, if I ran an agency I'd rather use someone else's every day and keep my own just for the special stuff.
In summary, it's exceedingly appealing for bodies like the Dutch police to use NSO tools and NSO's association with the Saudis and other provides a convenient masking to their operations.