UK to host spyware firm accused of aiding human rights abuses | Hacker News Reader

UK to host spyware firm accused of aiding human rights abuses

theguardian.com

75 pointsBender27 comments

I sort of guessed that it's definitely an Israeli company. Otherwise which country and it's Companies get every legal permission after breaking every possible law?

Er just about every nation, ever? As nations develop legal & regulatory systems, the means of corruption changes, but the corruption stays.

In India companies directly pay politicians to skirt regulations. Here in Australia that's rarer, but the corporations via lobbyists simply write the regulations that they then largely conform to. Same deal. Different means.

I guess GP means state sanctioned support. But I don't agree that this is an Israeli only thing, Hacking Team are Italian and do the same thing.

Sure - as it happens my nation (Australia) has far fewer of the kind of entanglements that prompt this particular activity, compared to Israel. But you can entirely sure that if we did, we'd allow tech spying lobbyists to write the necessary laws to cover them.

Australia is about 100x better at hiding its entanglements than Israel, which has had an overt show of force policy for decades.

Australia, on the other hand, has so many layers and levels of secrecy around its state-run operations of this nature, that its impossible, truly, to really ever know.

Australia leads the way when it comes to repressing free speech and the public right of knowledge over what is being done in their name by the ADF, and has even taught Israel a few things or two about keeping its internal populations at heel when something nasty inevitably leaks out.

And then there is that whole secret court, secret prison, secret prisoner thing.

You've also got Germany (FinFisher), Italy (Hacking Group), and the USA for sure. Probably more.

https://buggedplanet.info/index.php?title=Main_Page

Not to mention that the UK is "extremely friendly" to Israel. Johnson after winning the elections gave a ministry to Priti Patel, who had been removed from a previous May government for having secret meetings with Israeli officials during her tenure. One of Johnson's first acts was to propose a law to ban BDS, the movement promoting boycotting and sanctioning Israel.

> In the last four years they have included countries whose human rights records have been criticised such as Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the UAE, Oman, Qatar and Hong Kong.

A perfect party to sell stuff for those whose other hand is operating a bone saw

fwiw, using the prominent example of DarkMatter they're staffed mainly by Europeans, Americans, Indians. Nobody critics these people who voluntarily go there to work and instead we all pretend "Technology is Neutral".

Really?

well yes. quickest way to verify my claim is to check LinkedIn for who works at DarkMatter:

https://www.linkedin.com/search/results/people/?facetCurrent...

This is a good read too:

https://theintercept.com/2016/10/24/darkmatter-united-arab-e...

Since they started they have become more careful about compartmentalization and making efforts to conceil their activities by shell'ing out (pun intended) by using new companies/structures for sensitive ops that can effect how they are perceived on the market. As an American who works there once told me: "we have a good thing going here." (this was just a few weeks after this happened: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19308430)

I don't want to sound snarky but I would have assumed from your many excellent / on-point comments here over the years that you're well read and informed on them ;)

Edit: it's very hard to say no to 0 income tax.

I know who works at DarkMatter, it’s this part I was picking up on:

>Nobody critics these people who voluntarily go there to work and instead we all pretend "Technology is Neutral".

This really doesn’t match my experiences. Maybe we hang out in rather different circles though?

OTOH, unsurprisingly the people making their living in the state-sponsored offsec space aren’t going to complain about DarkMatter & co.

TL;DR: its the NSO Group

These are the same guys who were outright permabanned from Facebook for hacking the whatsapp of about 1400 diplomats, government officials, human-rights activists, lawyers, and journalists scattered across the world.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/10/30/nso_facebook_employ...

If a shady government wants you gone (and doesnt have the resources for black site rendition like the US) then NSO is basically their starting point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSO_Group#Pegasus_spyware

By "shady government", does this not include the UK government itself at this point? And we don't yet know which other governments will be represented, but we can apparently expect around 60, as per the article. That's a lot of potential shadiness.

Yes, though perhaps 'shady population' is more like it. When I lived in Coventry many years ago, several of my neighbours worked for a local firm on manufacturing lines churning out torture equipment. It was no great secret, and no-one had a problem with it.

What were they making?

Leg irons & electrocution gear were the two items I specifically remember.

Might be a bit of a stretch to call everyone in the UK shady based on your experiences of one single city.

Perhaps. But there have been repeated exposes of the UK's torture exports, with less public reaction than you'd get for a bad football ref decision.

Plus, the people are responsible for the actions of their government. So yeah, too bad if it hurts everyones feelings, but the UK is a pretty hard-core country when it comes to repression.

The extent to which the people are responsible for the actions of their government varies significantly between countries, even among developed democracies. The UK constitution (like those of several other developed democracies, but unlike others) promotes minority control, voter apathy, and polarisation.

Any population which gains life advantages as a result of its physical presence in a region governed by an entity, minority or otherwise, is responsible for the state - whether they were democratically 'allowed' to select their rulers, or otherwise.

Even in totalitarian dictatorships, still rather a thing in the modern world, the population are responsible for those dictatorships.

You can't govern the unwilling. Eventually, the unwilling will either be tacitly allied with the mechanics of the society, or they will be demoted to terrorist enemies, should they attempt to change that society without, alas, the approval of the ruling minority.

You choose to stay in a country which represses minorities. You don't have it forced on you.

You make a fair point, but there are nevertheless people in the UK not responsible for their government's actions. For some, leaving isn't a realistic option. Anyway, leaving means not being around to campaign for change.

Leaving is the only possible change.

Shady is a distraction, every government with the resources has been doing this sort of thing. The line where we could truthfully claim that only the bad guys support groups like NSO was passed years ago. The modern reality is that if you're not expanding your capabilities then someone is probably expanding their capabilities over you.

Url changed from https://www.zdnet.com/article/uk-government-rolls-out-the-re..., which points to this.

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