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Comment by motohagiography | Hacker News Reader

Arguably, this is the real use case Pegasus was designed for. A government (Uganda) that does not have a large and mature civil service that would support a G7 level technical domestic intelligence agency went to market for the tools of one (NSO), so they can keep tabs on foreign intelligence agents (state department staff) in their country. I am not a fan of NSO at all, but this case sounds like they're providing sovereignty or statecraft as a service to a government that prefers to buy instead of build their security capability.

When the game is defined as a competition for how to break its rules in the most unexpected ways and with the fewest consequences, Uganda appears to have joined in with aplomb. To me it's the first time an NSO story doesn't seem like a scandal.

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Kind of? It seems like the main use case isn't a country that needs the tools of state-on-state spying; it's a country that needs the tools of Chinese-style domestic surveillance of the political opposition. In most cases where US persons have been targeted with NSO software, it's as part of operations against domestic dissidents, including in this case, where most of the usage was against Ugandan protesters.

If you are a state, NSO is what you get when you don't have Stingrays, PRISM, and a pipeline into domestic enforcement for paralell construction. Imo, in this specific case, it's equivalent.

The "oh, but everyone is doing it!" argument. I don't for a second believe that other countries install spyware on foreign diplomats and other peoples phones. What NSO and the Israeli government is doing is rotten to the core and unless you have evidence of the contrary you cannot assert that other actors are doing the same thing.

I know you're joking but for anyone that's not in on the joke:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24690055

Wow! You found one instance of the US spying on a friendly government. That totally justifies NSO leasing spyware to authoritarian third world regimes! Carry on folks, nothing to see here.

Wait, you were actually being serious? How about this one: https://www.theguardian.com/world/us-embassy-cables-document... / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spying_on_United_Nations_leade...

Please state which of these examples involve spyware or cut the snark.

Do you think they asked UN dignitaries nicely for their passwords?

It doesn't justify it, but if we're going to take a stance against spyware, we have to take a stance against all spyware. That includes the home-rolled stuff that the NSA pushes out to Apple and Google.

No, we don’t.

Totally agree. There is a difference still between totalitarian countries against its own people with no theoretical way out even, vs USA that still have some way out.

Dude, the "state department" is blaming Israel because they're just embarassed your guys got owned by Uganda.

What makes that kind of hypocrisy okay?

It seems if Israel is receiving money from the US government and Israel controls the usage of NSO group weapons that are being targeted at the American government then there are problems yea?

It's a catch-22. Telling other countries not to spy on us while we happily spy on others is a double standard.

You’re taking this all too literally. It’s politics, it’s all a performance.

When France was “angry” about Australia buying US nuclear subs and canceling their French contract do you really think that was real?

It’s all for show, just like being “angry” at another country spying on you. You do something like “kick out their embassy employees”, then turn around and let new ones come in.

Yeah I think France was pretty pissed actually.

There was no need to just do this for show. Most members of the public don't care about submarine deals. It doesn't make their government more popular.

Nahh… from what I’ve read, Australia had made it abundantly clear they were pulling out of the French deal. Maybe France was pissed they were excluded, but the “angry” was entirely for show.

The public may not care about submarine deals but France certainly cares about how they are perceived on the world stage.

What alternative do you propose? Give up? Naively hope every other world leaders (all sociopaths by nature, with intelligence agencies managed by yet more sociopaths) will understand and hold up their end of a deal they don’t even know exists? This is geopolitics, you take every advantage you can get, every time, forever. Spying is how you prevent wars by avoiding misunderstandings and miscalculations.

Presumably no bigger problems than arose when the US wiretapped the Israeli prime minister’s phone…

Politics is not about fairness or the truth, it all about getting people to buy the ideas your selling.

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