‘If You’re Not a Criminal, Don’t Be Afraid’– NSO CEO says | Hacker News Reader

‘If You’re Not a Criminal, Don’t Be Afraid’– NSO CEO says

forbes.com

103 points925dk48 comments

That's like people who say, "I don't have anything to hide, I've done nothing wrong." to which I reply, "Ok. Take your clothes off right now. Remove the curtains from your bedroom window and the door off of your bathroom." The look on their face is that of incredulity.

People have an expectation of privacy and need the ability to hide perfectly benign things in their lives. Most importantly, they should have the freedom to do so, even with electronic devices where they're conducting their lives in an ever increasing manner.

Shalev Hulio's argument is so bad that it actually makes me trust his company even less than I did before.

Almost 10 years go, Moxie Marlinspike published a great rebuttal to the "If you have nothing to hide" and "if your not a criminal" defenses of these kind of systems.

Still one of the better rebuttals

https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-i-have-nothing-to-hide-is-...

I'm cold. I'd wake up with sunlight. It's unsightly.

Let your phone number and your address here then.

I wouldn't do that to avoid prank calls or harassing, not due to privacy.

> "I wouldn't do that [give up my privacy] to avoid prank calls or harassing, not due to privacy."

Do you see how contradictory that is? It is precisely due to privacy. You value your privacy, in order to avoid those things.

Not to mention that since he says the NSO doesn't have anything to do with how their system is used, he can't possibly assure anyone that if they aren't a criminal then they have nothing to fear.

The amount of obvious deception and doubletalk coming from them goes a long way to confirming that the NSO are not good guys.

Another simple test is to ask them to put their phone number somewhere public. The fact that people aren't even comfortable doing that which was considered normal and expected 25 years ago really destroys the credibility of the "nothing to hide" folks' arguments.

I have a lot of things to hide from criminals and little to hide from the police. I fear your metaphor is a fallacy...

If people dont want to be naked in public it s because they expect onlookers to abuse of their image to exploit it, there s an argument to say that the police isn't at risk of doing so.

I'm not saying you re wrong in principle, just that your easy fallacy is just that.

It's reasonable to expect the police not to abuse nude photos of you. But they've done so time and again:

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/10/cops-st...

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/08/us/lauren-mccluskey-utah-...

I don't want want anyone to know what I had for dinner last night. It doesn't mean it was something illegal or even out of the ordinary. It is just not anybody's business to know that.

> I have a lot of things to hide from criminals and little to hide from the police

I fear your assumption that these groups are disjoint is a fallacy.

Including the crime of running from your tyrannical father...

https://thewire.in/world/dubai-princess-sheikh-latifa-pegasu...

One problem is that dissent can be criminalized to intentionally break the information feedback loops which preserve liberty.

Another problem I have with it is civil rights (I believe in them).

Even a cursory look at the abuses of NSO spyware reported by CitizenLab reveals misuse by the thuggish governments it courts as clients. Journalists, activists and dissidents have all been targeted. In Mexico health activists advocating against the over consumption of sugary pop were targeted!

> ‘If You’re Not a Criminal, Don’t Be Afraid’– NSO CEO says

What a psychopath. So, that means we have not stolen anything then - we should leave all the doors of our homes open.

To be fair, your door is basically open to your government. If it wants to be in your house, it can be. If it wants to observe you unnoticed, it can. There is no winning against corrupt governments - other than getting rid of them. That being said, I want my government to help others to get rid of corrupt governments, and that should include actions against NSO.

The point is that it is indeed a criminally corrupt government that would enter your house without just probable cause. Concerning oneself with the implementation and maintenance of such principles of justice is wise even if you have “nothing to hide”. Pointing out that the government could barge through your door via heavily armed police or military is beside the point.

> NSO itself claims that it works with governments to help catch the most serious and dangerous criminals - terrorists, gangsters, and pedophiles

Like clockwork.

What they really do is provide the means for governments to assassinate journalists and dissidents.

Sure, let's start with the NSO CEO first! I'm sure there's nothing wrong with asking him to drop all his phone data, private messages, calls, to any state actor, right?

Completely agree. Every time someone says "I got nothing to hide" they should have to prove it by doxxing themselves. The argument will be over when they refuse to do it.

Problem is everyone is a criminal. Can anyone in the world truthfully say they've never broken a law?

Yeah, that may be right when you live in a first word country, but why don't you try living in a third world country under the rule of the military where the law is only used to incriminate innocent people because they spoke up against the tyranny and corruption.

Here in Algeria, there are 200 [0] innocent people in prisons because they shared their opinions on the Interwebs. Being a criminal is no longer an excuse, dictators will do anything to stay in power, they don't care if what you're doing is illegal or not, they will silence any individual who stands in their way and you're providing them the means to do so.

[0] https://www.algerian-detainees.org/

‘If You’re Not a Criminal, Don’t Be Afraid’

So should Netanyahu be afraid ?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Netanyahu#Criminal_in...

(so yeah, criminal investigation, so he's not a criminal until proven to be one, but anyway...)

"it is insufficient to protect ourselves with laws; we need to protect ourselves with mathematics." -- Bruce Schneier

Tell that to Khashoggi...

Khashoggi... or is that an intentional portmanteau?

Thanks, corrected. I blame mobile text input.

He should have said "If I'm not a criminal, don't be afraid"

A few years later, this kind of business will be outlawed. It's basically theft that's currently legal by taking advantage of the legal vacuum. In the name of pedofilia and terrorism the constant surveillance has become so pervasive that it won't be long before people will stop caring about those things , because living as a farmed animal gets really old after a while.

The problem is there are so many regulations that just about everybody breaks the law everyday.

That, and laws can change fast. In Germany, we know.

"Show me the man, I'll show you the crime." - Lavrentiy Beria, chief of the Soviet secret police

The problem is our legal system has become something where everyone is violating some law somehow all the time. So everyone is a possible criminal.

> smartphone hacks of high-profile journalists and world leaders

As someone who relies on my head of state to not be compromised by foreign actors and journalists to help me hold my politicians accountable, I do, in fact, need to be afraid of the toolset NSO is selling.

I’m not a criminal, but I’m afraid. Afraid that my information is going to be used to make decisions about me which I have no control over, or worse, given/shared with/leaked to private companies to do the same.

This is so stupid on so many levels. I hope this is just hypocrisy and lies to cover his ass, because if he actually believes that then he's the dumbest son of a bitch on the planet.

Tell that to Khashoggi. oh wait, you can't.

That’s great, except most of the targets’ “crime” was simply being a thorn in the side of powerful politicians in their country.

In other words: "Be Afraid"

Says a manager of a wildly secretive company, who barely speaks in public

If you're not a criminal, don't be afraid, obey and survive.

or journalist, or activist, or civil rights lawyer, or politician..

Those sound like fancy synonyms for criminals.

*criminal defined as anyone monied interests enemy

Who determines if you're a criminal?

That’s what the Big Brother would say …

Rarely in the last couple years have I had the displeasure of reading so much utterly dishonest bullshit in a single piece of interview text. This guy is either so utterly sociopathic that he can't even perceive how obviously false his claims sound, or he just has so much contempt for the public that he doesn't give a shit. Grotesque.

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