Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife using NSO Pegasus spyware, high court judge finds
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/21/dubai-prince...
>"But there was one threat she hadn’t planned for: The spyware tool Pegasus, which her father’s government was known to have used to secretly hack and track people’s phones. Leaked data shows that by the time armed commandos stormed the yacht, eight days into her escape, operatives had entered the numbers of her closest friends and allies into a system that had also been used for selecting Pegasus surveillance targets."
"“Shoot me here. Don’t take me back,” she’d screamed as soldiers dragged her off the boat, roughly 30 miles from the shore, according to a fact-finding judgment by the United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice. Then she disappeared."
It seems like a lot of the NSO group's customers (a lot of which are authoritarian/corrupt governments) abuse the system and there's no real check on that power. The host mentions that officially the company has said that there have been 'only 3 instances' of abuse of its systems that they've detected and he goes on to expose how blatantly false that is. Anyways this is now all third hand info - I'd highly recommend checking out the podcast (not affiliated, just a fan).
If there's an election in [country] and [politician] decisively wins, and [opposition group] says the election was fraudulent and has some weak evidence and a bunch of protests, who decides if they're legitimate? This describes the 2020 Belarus election, but it also describes the 2020 US election.
Munitions suppliers operate in pretty much every country in the world, producing everything from rifles to nuclear bombs for use by that country's government. If all of that is okay, why are hacking tools going too far?
Feeding that answer is the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is appointed by the 50 State legislatures and the District of Columbia.
The voters tell them who to select.
In an absolute worst case scenario where the results can’t be certified, we even have a Constitutional fallback: the House elects a President and the Senate elects a Vice President.
For all the noise around what happened in January, the actual lawful process is extremely cut and dry. The former President’s lawyers brought their best legal arguments to bear in jurisdictions across the country, and even the Judges he himself appointed, even the ones that were most forgiving and way more than fair basically laughed them out of the courtroom.
Our election system is solid. It’s messy, it’s debatable, it’s possible to dispute, but it is reliable, lawful and legitimate and we elect the mooks we deserve, not necessarily the ones we would like.
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...
Regardless of how we get our nominees though, the quality of our elections and the integrity of the outcome is unquestionable. You’re free to disagree with the qualities of the processes we use, but the process is written down in advance and followed.
If you have a company selling a weapon, it's pretty obvious it's going to be used to harm. That's by design.
And just like we were never able to prevent the guns to arrive in the hand of the wrong people, or make sure people using guns respect any kind of rules, why would we expect NSO clients to be well filtered and behaved?
If you are a 40 year old, inactive person, try defending yourself against a knife or a club, especially against a younger person who has had experience using it.
"Harm" is a loaded word.
The son of my Brazil's authoritarian and corrupt president is a customer. The son himself is a politician and I have zero doubt that privacy was/is going to be abused.
Pressuring NSO's customers is well and good, but I fear this madness will continue until America and Israel's other allies find the political will to sanction Israel for permitting the criminal organization known as NSO to operate with impunity. So... no end in sight.
It's not exactly permitting, the government is part of the deal
I'm sure some of these deals were part of the background when it came to Arab nations and Israel becoming closer over the years (and the Abraham Accords as a result)
Illegal under British law. However, under Dubai law, I doubt this is illegal because it is the ruler doing it. Thus the question comes down ultimately to, is the UAE worth having as an ally in the Middle East or not. I think the calculus for the US, Israel, and UK is that it is. Given the political and cultural climate of the Middle East, any other regime is likely to be worse in a lot of dimensions.
UAE supreme court can, in theory, try a monarch of a constituent emirate.
I assume if this were to end up in Federal Court, it would be a joke verdict since the current rulers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are on solid terms. That being said, if Abu Dhabi and Dubai's rulers were on bad terms (not going to happen soon anyways), Abu Dhabi has been increasingly moving on a path towards centralization, so this would be a very convenient way for them to accomplish that.
IIRC, he also used this to locate his two estranged daughters, who were on a boat belonging to the Indian government, and sent helicopters filled with UAE special forces in full battle rattle to kidnap/abduct them.
Definitely living in an age where being estranged from somebody rich and powerful is something you very much do not want to be.
(Oh no, I'm shadowbanned :( spent my controversial post-ability karma a little too quickly I guess...)
Since other people have cited sources to back this claim up, I've gone ahead and vouched and upvoted it.
Short of hermitage; at the very least she'd need to adopt a new identity and ghost everybody she ever knew for the rest of her life. Not an easy task; I've heard that most people placed in witness protection have a very difficult time never contacting any of their old friends or relatives again.