I maintain that NSO is just a deniability front for Israel's espionage agencies, otherwise I don't know how they weren't shut down for so long, knowing what kind of a state Israel is.
NSO is well known to the Israeli state, after all it is their cabinet that clears every deal NSO make. Per Israeli laws, pegasus is a "weapon"
So yes, the problem is primarilly in political dimension.
There's obviously money to be made from selling offensive cybersecurity tools to governments. And you can hardly blame governments for buying these services in the age of end-to-end encryption in the hands of every criminal and terrorist.
While I definitely don't condone spying on human rights activists, journalists, or even regular citizens for that matter, pegasus really is a weapon and as such should definitely be heavily regulated.
But as with other types of weapons, the responsibility for its use (or rather misuse) should lie with the weapon's user first and foremost, not the manufacturer. If NSO/HackingTeam were in the business of selling physical weapons to foreign governments, would they have been responsible for a government killing journalists with said weapons? If they were selling to North Korea, sure. But what about the legitimate governments of stable countries not under sanctions?
Of course it is the fault of the user of the weapons as well - but UK and USA (to just name a couple more egregious examples) governments quite literally give money to foreign governments in order for them to funnel it directly back into arms deals. These weapons can then be used to destroy hospitals and schools in Yemen. Our governments are financing this loss of life in order to further propel the revolving door.
I see this kind of cyber weaponry as a simple subset of the above complex.
This is exactly my point. I think that NSO should be just as responsible for the outcomes as any other arms manufacturer.
And I'm not waving away the government's responsibilities. Just the opposite - cyber weaponry is equivalent to other types of weaponry and should be treated as such.
This is why I feel that the discussion around NSO itself misses the point. It's like discussing Colt's responsibility whenever a government uses an M-16 to shoot a human rights activists. Colt may be responsible in some cases, but the important question is who bought the weapon and why did they use them against that specific target. Also, should the buyer be sanctioned and forbidden from purchasing such weapons in the future.
Going after one perpetrator, building a precedence, seems to have had more lasting effect than going for the abstract.
Yes.
Should Colt be blamed if a foreign government uses an M-16 to shoot a journalist?
My position is that I don't think we should be making tools designed for killing people.
Can we push the number of violent criminals to 0? Maybe not, but we could greatly reduce the numbers with more intelligent social policies (in the US or Canada, say). The wild-west mentally and the fact that it has been co-opted by certain political groups actually leads to more crime and more fear (which sells guns and regressive politics).
What if no one lived in a state or neighbourhood so shitty that they felt the need to arm up? What if they had not been indoctrinated since birth with a wild-west mentality that linked gun-ownership to freedom?
The "only criminals will have weapons" argument is a really low-quality surface-level distraction from getting to grips with problems we could actually solve.
As a particularly interesting example: Japan has almost no gun crime at all: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-38365729
> In 2014 there were just six gun deaths, compared to 33,599 in the US.
Sales, whether direct or through indirectly supported wink-wink business and other organizational structures, to entities who have well documented cases of abuse -- that's a different matter. If Colt is found doing that, I would definitely find them culpable and guilty.
For NSO, Candiru and their ilk, my belief is that they are in a wink-wink, nudge-nudge relationship with the user's of the tools (usually oppressive governments) as well as Israel's intelligence complex (they are the ones clearing the sales).
Can I prove this in a court, no. Does not stop me from forming informed opinions though.
One is a multinational corporation with untold influence which hoards exploits for black box software and hardware.
The other is a producer of physical weapons, which are subject to laws to protect civilians - although of course where these laws apply is hypocritical, since the West's weapons have been used to kill many civilians during all the 'peacekeeping' missions by the US (read: interventionism).
To me, it's hard to justify why they are not responsible.
You could say the same about a knife though, or a brick.
I think you're underestimating the power of the spyware that is being used today to blackmail and control those in power.
(However, if you do sell a "Throat-cutting knife" for cutting people's throats, and someone buys it and cuts somebody's throat, then hell yes you are responsible for that.)
Interesting thought. I can't find an example in law. I'm not so sure the seller is responsible on any level once sold, even with that murdering tagline. Guns are sold as lethal force and users are fully responsible post sale.
colt? or nso? not clear from the comment…
So not only is this a reasonable position, it is the law in several countries, e.g. Heckler&Koch is a German gun manufacturer and has to obey such laws.
If they were in the businesses of selling weapons of war and caught instead selling covert weapons with no legitimate use in open warfare to countries that disclose illegal acts of war to them, I think they belong in the Hague being tried for war crimes.
(After that, I suppose they can be referred to human rights courts as a defacto part of each government that had violations. Since they were active participants in the use of the weapon as shown by the phone list, they have no argument that they were not active members of every conspiracy involving their service.)
If they were doing that, I agree.
But these weapons have legitimate uses in law enforcement and why do you think that the client government disclose their illegal acts to NSO?
Don't make the mistake of conflating North Korea with any other state. The people in charge of the intelligence organisations have very similar opinions on the efficacy of these tools no matter where they come from. It's been shown many times that the heads of the relevant agencies in the 5 eyes, let alone the rest of the international intelligence community, aren't very concerned about the legality of their activities.
Two ways to prevent the misuse of this software are 1: ban it and convict those who peddle it, and 2: have independent oversight and transparency over every use of this software. Who it's sold to, who it's used on, what it's capabilities are.
Unfortunately, I don't see either of these as realistic, so basically we're up shit creek without a paddle.
But with regards to NSO in particular, there definitely is some linkage, even if it’s not necessarily malicious. According to this Bloomberg columnist[1], (linked article has further hyperlinks to sources)
> How much of this technology is being developed in the U.S., including by U.S. government agencies, and making its way to illiberal autocrats? NSO’s founders are, according to multiple reports, thought to be alumni of Israel’s signals intelligence division, Unit 8200. And we know — including through the Edward Snowden leak — that the U.S. National Security Agency provides Israeli intelligence “controlled access to advanced U.S. technology and equipment.”
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-07-19/pegasu...
No... no they don't. It's not normal at all.
What a waste of human resources!