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Comment by zrth | Hacker News Reader

This is great news. The more people in power have been hit, the more repercussions we can hope for.

One possible way to force a bit of scrutiny upon NSO group would be to crowdfund an Pegasus subscription and use it against Netanyahu.

Any serious suggestions what we can do to ensure that in the long run there will be less and not more "Hacking for hire" companies lending their tools for use against journalists and the opposition?

Shit will really hit the fan when the "ransomware as a service" discovers the "targeted surveillance as a service" business model.. Interesting times to be alive.

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Can we really say "targeted surveillance as a service" isn't already a booming business though? Camera feeds and device breadcrumbs from wireless devices incl. iphone & android, watches, headphones, vehicle toll tags, etc. are aggregated from every big name store, street camera, doorbell camera, etc. and processed by handful of companies that aggregate facial and location data for marketing and trend analysis. Police subscribe to these same services to track people, or get access through warrants if subscription isn't an option.

News articles talking about the massive aggregation of data come up every now and then, but I don't think the general public understands it well enough to be angry let alone scared. They may not have a name to a face, but guaranteed if you've been in a public place in the past few years, there's a record somewhere that you were there.

What may be more frightening is that it's untargeted

The UK has cameras on every block that are staffed by a person watching them. I'm not usually a betting man, but I'd bet they're going to toss this job to software one day and every other nation that lags behind them as a surveillance or nanny state will attempt to follow suit.

No we don’t. 80% of the cameras out there in your statistic don’t actually exist. From what remains, 25% are dummies, 25% don’t work, 25% are potato quality and what remains are staffed by people who aren’t even paying attention.

It’s a typical British implementation of surveillance. The only winners are CCTV installers.

Long may our governments be hopelessly incompetent.

"every block" was a bit of hyperbole, but any American would be shocked at this visibility and acceptance of these kind of cameras. You can argue that the quality makes them ineffective right now but that can be iterated on, especially as cost is reduced. I don't think it's an unreasonable thing to express a good deal of concern over.

> "targeted surveillance as a service"

Is it just a commercial service in the first place? Or a deniability cover for Israeli spy agencies?

Remember, every pegasos hit was cleared by Israeli cabinet as a "weapon export"

> The more people in power have been hit, the more repercussions we can hope for.

This reminds me of a story I heard at a presentation when working at a bank. A politician was going through a closing process for property he was purchasing. He had an issue and found out that the banks automatically tac on PMI for his type of loan, regardless of loan to value ratios.

A year later, their state passed legislation saying PMI cannot be forced on mortgaged loans with certain ratios and must be disclosed before closing.

Funny how things work :)

Had to look up, PMI = Private mortgage insurance.

For reference, normally banks mandate that stuff when the loan to value (LTV) ratio is very high. Meaning they didn't put a large down payment there. It's insurance you pay so that in case you quit paying or cant, the bank can recoup their losses. Essentially you're forced to pay to insure the bank's investment. Now normally you can remove it once you reach whatever LTV the financial has in their policy (usually 75-80%), but at the time when the politician was dealing with it, you basically had it on for the "life of loan."

There exists a saying in Icelandic exactly for this situation; 'it matters if you are reverand John or just plain John' (is. 'það er ekki sama hvort er Jón eða séra Jón')

I think a similar well-know idiom is:

"Quod licet Iovi, non licet bovi."[0]

("what is permitted to Jupiter is not permitted to an ox")

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Appendix:List_of_Latin_phrase...

This is essentially the argument behind prohibiting private schooling.

Then the argument should be that the children of public servants must go to public schools.

Meaning:

* the people who fund reelection campaigns get to opt out of public education.

* politicians before and after their political careers can opt out.

* a quick change to the law is all that would be required for politicians to opt out while theyre in office.

It would be enough to make them care a bit more, but only an outright prohibition would make them truly committed to public education.

This argument can be applied to anything: “everyone must have or experience the same government thing because otherwise the government provided good will be shitty.”

The counter-argument is the same in all places too, which is that: “freedom is good, so you should have a really good reason for restricting it and restrict it as little as possible, and this isn’t a good enough reason because it probably won’t work out like you intend”

Here's another one. A small town mayor got raided by the state SWAT over marijuana (package shipped to wrong address, at that). Himself and his mother-in-law were handcuffed and held at gunpoint for several hours in their underwear, and his two dogs shot. The mayor went on to sponsor a bill that required all police departments with SWAT teams to publish reports on how often they're deployed, and the reasons for deployments - which showed that the vast majority of SWAT raids are to serve search warrants in non-violent crimes, mostly drugs. Despite strong opposition from law enforcement, the bill passed.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berwyn_Heights,_Maryland_mayor...

I'm afraid this story doesn't have a good ending in the long term, though - the law expired in 5 years, and wasn't renewed.

  One possible way to force a bit of scrutiny upon NSO group would be to crowdfund an Pegasus subscription and use it against Netanyahu.

I think it's naive to think this has any chance to succeed. This company is in a close relationship with israeli intelligence. As close as imaginable imho. Every target is vetted. The "surveillance as a service" thing is only marketing. It's just a private intelligence agency hacking people for profit without any ethics.

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