Israeli government raids NSO Group offices | Hacker News Reader

Israeli government raids NSO Group offices

therecord.media

50 pointsarkadiyt13 comments

"Look, we're serious, we did a raid!" (even though we personally review and approve each sale that NSO Group does to foreign governments and have one of the best surveillance systems and spy networks in the world, we really don't know what NSO Group is really doing. I mean, we know everything Iran is doing with their nuclear program and have been able to thwart it for decades and boy, was Olympic Games a tough one to get through, but we really don't have a clue what our own corporations are doing on our own soil)

To be fair, much of what they "know" about Iran's nuclear program are just lies or exaggerations.

Doesn’t seem like any sort of refutation. What they know-know and what they say are not the same thing.

Knowing everything about a public/nonexistent nuclear program isn't really tough.

There has been a change of government and the new one probably suspects corrupt dealings on Netanyahu’s part, not unreasonably so. Furthermore French President Emmanuel Macron has threatened withdrawing intelligence cooperation with Israel, and he won’t be placated by mere appearances.

I'm imagining them wandering in and shouting the Hebrew equivalent of "I'm shocked, SHOCKED, to find there's gambling going on here!"

hands Israeli government NSO-collected data "Your winnings, sir."

Calling a meeting with members of the oversight board a "raid" seems a bit extreme. The description makes it sound more like they organized their denial than ransacked the place for evidence.

I felt calling it a "raid" 10 times in the article was odd too, especially since they don't have references that use that same language

Given the ties between key Israeli government members and the NSO Group, what's the likelihood this is simply a sham investigation?

All major tech companies are part of the state. Frankly, they are too important and useful not to be.

More than anything, this will be used by NSO to sell more services to unsuspecting and naive governments/political actors/orgs around the world. "See, we are neutral. We were even investigated by the Israeli government! How can we be part of the israeli government's spying operation when the israeli government 'raided' us? So you can trust us..".

The Hebrew message doesn't really translate to "raid"

The correct (and less dramatic) translation appears in a grey box in the article

Suggest changing 'raid' to 'inspect' in the title since it seems that the NSO Group was not forced to comply with a thorough search as would be implied by a 'raid'.

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