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Comment by bawolff | Hacker News Reader

Well, do you have anything interesting to say about the political implications?

Because i'm not sure what they are.

If we knew who was responsible, we could talk about motive and implications of that, but we don't.

I guess we could consider the broader picture of if this represents an increase on spying on civil society leaders (a bad thing, certainly), but without a base rate to compare with, it seems like conjecture on this is pointless. Does this represent something new, or is it just a continuation of the age old practise of keeping an eye on your enemies? I have no idea. I suppose there is something to be said that hacking a modern cell phone is much more invasive than watergate-style survelience, but that is not exactly a new observation.

So what are the political implications we should be talking about?

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1. That the legislative stranglehold on the eu and other bodies by this country is so strong that they do next to nothing to criticise/sanction israel despite literally being hacked by them? Post-pegasus as well.

2. This states lack of care and oftentimes facilitation of these groups, and their close ties to its military

3. The sense of neo mccarthyism that this creates with the idea of constant surveilance through these types of vulnerabilities.

I'm full of ideas tonight

Same problem, but different lens and conception, and the circumstances and differences are >very< worth disucssing

Seriously, let's start talking about those points in this thread

The article talks about a German MEP who was most likely targeted by Hungarian intelligence [0] due to his very vocal anti-Orban stance and how he was recently pushing against Hungary and Orban after his recent visits to Russia.

The perpetrator was most likely Hungarian intelligence who used a product they bought from an Israeli company.

Imo, the bigger question is why Hungary, Poland, Spain, Greece, and Cyprus (all countries part of the recent EU Spyware Scandal) [1] continue to allow their Interior Ministries to attack the phones of both domestic and foreign opponents.

[0] - https://www.politico.eu/newsletter/brussels-playbook/orban-c...

[1] - https://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-defense-subcommit...

Or alternatively, there isn't really any evidence that the Israeli government was involved in this, which is probably why its not getting very much flak for this.

Maybe you could make the argument there should be better export restrictions on private companies to treat so called "cyber-weapons" like real weapons. There are a bunch of efforts on this front. You kind of have to have the treaties in place before you can start exerting diplomatic pressure in regards to them. There are plenty of people working on that, but the wheels of the UN move slowly. Anyways, this particular incident doesn't change much in that regard.

For 3, i dont really think this incident (a failed hacking attempt of a type that is pretty typical) really changes or says anything about constant surveilence. We are already way into the era of constant surveilence.

>Maybe you could make the argument there should be better export restrictions on private companies to treat so called "cyber-weapons" like real weapons.

As far as what is known with NSO group, Israel does categorize and control the cyber weapons as weapons, and have restrictions in place. But those restrictions are not based on any ethical code, rather only if the said client is not against or subservient to the interests of the State of Israel. Just like it does with IMI exports.

The political implications are that the politicians in the EU are disliking Israel because it is commercially profiting from spying them.

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