The U.S. was willing to look the other way when NSO was selling its crap to e.g. the UAE, an American ally.
In my opinion, NSO fucked up twice: first, by selling to America police departments, thereby putting it on one side of a partisan issue. Second, by helping subvert democracy in India, thereby pissing off its allies in State. The first mistake made them persona non grata. The second removed the protection their being Israeli granted.
Hereafter, why not, they're already blacklisted (in the US) anyway
Edit: I apparently didn't read closely enough
That's essentially everything. Including mainstream x86 and ARM implementations. And Linux. And Windows. and iOS. And most foreign software, since nearly everything includes various libraries, which have Americans writing code for them.
This is the same list Huawei was added to.
Practically speaking, it also means they and their affiliates will have a difficult time maintaining bank accounts and getting financing.
toothless is toothless no matter if it is wrapped in state level dressings.
Implementing IT with no access to US vendors would be a PITA. No Microsoft Windows or Office, no Google Apps, no Red Hat, no Apple .... How could that be done? Will some flavor of Linux suffice? Would it be in compliance with their license?
Is that how they are? Seriously, I wonder about their organizational culture. Many security firms are very corporate. Many such firms in Israel come out of their military, which suggests a different culture. Some are a bunch of hackers, but it would be hard to be effective in selling to and retaining large institutional customers, or even running your own organization from day to day. And how large are they?
> You really think they won't be able to aquire what they need?
They expose themselves to lawsuits - they are trying to operate in the legal business domain. And again, acquisition is only a fraction of IT (see the GP).
https://prospect.org/world/barack-obamas-legacy-is-narendra-...
Forgot about that. Almost certainly.
I doubt it was an explicit deal. NSO was protected, to a degree, because State didn't want to piss off Israel. (I don't think the IC ever came to bat for them.) But systematically screwing with American allies, democracies at that, and then getting undeniably caught, makes one difficult to defend. The French part not only contributed to this erosion of their defensibility, but may have made throwing them under the bus diplomatically advantageous.
Source: https://twitter.com/BarakRavid/status/1455178005500805120
The U.S. government doesn't care about anything. The people who join, make it to and remain at the Foreign Service, the 13,000-odd professionals who make up the bulk of the State Department, tend to care deeply about it. That doesn't trump national interest. And at the end of the day, a political appointee is in charge. But it's a human factor that can tip issues on the knife's edge.
> The U.S. government doesn't care about anything.
An essential point. Below excerpts a great article that addresses it, by Jeremy Shapiro of the State Department, Brookings, and elsewhere:
http://mideast.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013/12/05/how_the_us...
People often talk about the government as if it were a human being. It 'thinks,' it 'believes,' and sometimes it even 'knows' -- or 'should know.' Critics frequently demand that the government should understand and learn certain key facts or lessons of history. But of course the government is not an individual. It is rather a vast constellation of people and institutions, and as such it learns information and processes knowledge quite differently than do individuals. Most importantly, government 'knowledge' about foreign policy issues is not learned or deduced. Rather, it is formed through a process of bureaucratic or political compromise between often conflicting theories or goals.
The result is that the government does not think and learn in clear and consistent ways. First, the government often lacks logical consistency. As a collection of people and institutions, the government is much more capable than individuals of holding deeply inconsistent beliefs. If, as F. Scott Fitzgerald said, '[t]he test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function,' then the government is a genius. The U.S. government can 'know,' for example, that it is simultaneously both the leading global advocate for Internet freedom and the leading violator of privacy on the Internet.
Second, the government often relies on old information or disproven ideas. Changes in conditions on the ground or new academic insights are less likely to affect government thinking than personnel changes or domestic political developments. The U.S. government can therefore continue to know that nuclear weapons threaten to spread like a virus even if it has continually over-predicted the spread of such weapons.
Third, the government often lacks forward thinking. An important rule of governance holds that once agreement is reached on step one of the policy process, stop arguing over future questions until they are posed. This means even deep divisions over next moves are papered over until they become immediately relevant, often causing inconsistent behavior or long delays to work through internal disputes. Accordingly, the U.S. government can decide to invade Iraq without really discussing whether the goal is democratization or simple regime change.
Freedom and privacy are orthogonal.
You can have Freedom without privacy.
Like, yeah, I want nuclear weapons to be abolished. But if NSO were selling briefcase nukes to everyone interested, I wouldn’t say, “but what about the SAC?”
The fact of the matter is, given the way the world works, you probably don't want to piss off the US Treasury Department.
Certainly NSO can't complain about being victims of unfairness and government abuse.
What's that saying? "Better late than never."? Or how about "Never let perfect be the enemy of good."?
Obviously the US intelligence agencies knew about this well before the public did... and while I'm not quite ready to put this all on the goodwill of the Biden administration, it's also a reminder that civilian leadership changes do effect change, despite all the "Deep State" nonsense going on these days.
And taking the most favorable view of the Biden administration on this move, "Biden punishes foreign private competitor to US intelligence agencies" wouldn't be a sign of him addressing US intelligence.
You believe it is nonsense? I figured it was just generally understood that the President is more or less powerless really at this point, This is not new under Trump, hell this really was that way before 9/11 but accelerated ALOT after.
NSA, CIA, FBI, etc do not really answer to elected officials, I am surprised people still believe they do
The USA system was designed to balance powers between the three branches of government.
Turns out there is a fourth branch: Bureaucracy
yes that is also known as the Deep State, which the grand parent claims is "nonsense"
"Deep State" implies more than acknowledging the bureaucracy. It's the claim that the bureaucracy is unresponsive to, or even controlling over, our elected leaders. (And presumably, the courts, though I don't tend to see that part addressed in common tellings.)
If you don't believe the latter bit, using the term "deep state" unnecessarily tarnishes the credibility of your argument. (Federal bureaucracy is a more neutral term.)
It's like if you pulled someone random off the street and made them CEO of a Fortune 500. Do you think the entire org would just turn on a dime and listen to them? No chance.
So sure it may not be outright insubordination, but the result is the same
They can also use other levers to ensure any they dislike fails, etc....
This is the deep state, where if the bureaucracy does not like a policy they can and do resist it.
As for simply installing uneducated people in the bureaucracy instead, that's how you end up with the Soviet Union.
Also I resist the idea that attaining a degree, any degree, qualifies as "educated" and anyone that has not attained a degree is "uneducated" that type of credentialism leads to all kinds of negative outcomes, and false assumptions. Which is the metric the media uses to label the electorate is "educated" or "uneducated". There are a huge number of people that have high levels of informal education, and there are people that have degree's that one can objectively argue are uneducated by any reasonable measure.
So over all I reject completely on different levels the entire premise of your comment
In fact, the US people specifically don't want and prevent a monarchy, as you say ...
> The USA system was designed to balance powers between the three branches of government.
> Turns out there is a fourth branch: Bureaucracy
Bureaucracy isn't a fourth branch, it's the laws made by prior governments. You don't get to start fresh; you are the steward of an ongoing institution. The American people, through representatives, made laws that define what the executive branch must, can, and cannot do. Bureaucracy is, in a sense, the execution of those laws. A new president may not like those laws, but that's the job - to carry out the will of the people.
No the US Congress in their political cowardliness passes objectives they wish to see, they then empower unconstitutionally the executive branch to create numerous "administrative laws" to achieve those objectives.
The Supreme Court refuses to strike down these vague laws as unconstitutional, which over the decades has grown the bureaucracy exponentially until we have at present what is in effect a 4th branch of government not answerable to any of the 3 official branch, not with out wide reaching reform, and upending of governmental structure.
>>You don't get to start fresh;
This is where the I wish Jefferson would have gotten his way.. "The question Whether one generation of men has a right to bind another, seems never to have been started either on this or our side of the water… (But) between society and society, or generation and generation there is no municipal obligation, no umpire but the law of nature. We seem not to have perceived that, by the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation to another… On similar ground it may be proved that no society can make a perpetual constitution, or even a perpetual law. The earth belongs always to the living generation… Every constitution, then, and every law, naturally expires at the end of 19. years. If it be enforced longer, it is an act of force and not of right." -- Thomas Jefferson...
We should start fresh every 19 years
Those are just indicators. The rest of the comment could still be great, but I can't read everything.
Instead they give the executive branch broad "goals" to achieve to be achieve by means and methods to be determined by the unelected administrative state
This unchecked power is also not an democratic ideal.
I know that in this case puts the whole thing in a bad light, but still as a principle assumed innocence is worth preserving IMHO.
Isn't this black listing a shot across the bow?