There should be no difference with usual botnet owner/ransomware gangs and such companies. Management should go to prison for good 20-30 years for that and being extradited worldwide. Considering that ransomware gangs are probably less harmful to the society than guys who hack journalists and politicians, putting their lifes at literal risks, not just their pockets.
There should be no "legal" hacking of someone's devices apart from extraction of data from already convicted people in public court with the right to defend themselves
Its not like this is that different than traditional "weapons" (i hate the "cyberweapons" analogy, but if the shoe fits).
Sell guns to governments, even unsavoury ones, it is very rare anything will happen to you except in pretty extreme cases. Sell guns to street gangs, well that is a different story. Like i don't think this situation is different because it is "hacking".
The NSO created/ran cloud instances for each client country and reviewed and approved every target. The didn’t sell weapons like in your analogy. They were effectively assassins for hire.
The problem with selling exploits is you want to maintain “ownership” of the exploit details, lest your customer just take the exploit and sell/use it without paying more or use it to attack you or your friends. This means you end up with veto power. I.e. culpability.
Kind of like the CIA importing heroin and cocaine. The laws cover this scenario but we have a problem with especially poor enforcement when the crimes are committed by parts of the government.
And meanwhile, if the government sells guns to cartels... no big deal. Rarely throw a fall guy under the bus. Or often not even that.
Trying to remember the quote I last heard, something to the tune of "we don't want to punish, we want to educate", which was about "educating" LEOs and entire police departments they shouldn't be selling fun switch guns illegally to gangs and private buyers.
(And do I even have to mention "fast and furious?" Hah! Feds get it the easiest.)
Also by now the number of people killed in Gaza by Netanyahu is very close to the number of Ukrainian people killed by Putin. Did anyone suggest sanctions against Israel for that genocide? Nope, they enjoy their full immunity and keep going forward with a massacre that has the same exact motivation as the Russian invasion: rob other people of their territory and resources.
Two war criminals, two rogue terrorist states, yet two completely different weights.
Flip that statement on it's head. What respectable nation would fire upon a suspect in a press jacket without actually knowing who it is first? Who orders artillery and airstrikes on known press positions? Soviet doctrine? Countries with WWII logistics?
Seems clear to me that this is a deliberate campaign of terror constructed by the IDF to deter any form of independent journalism in Gaza. No different than hasbara or the Hannibal Directive - orders passed down from the top get obeyed, even if it costs the truth or innocent lives.
> Hamas also has a nasty habit of calling certain veterans "journalists".
Ah, kinda like how Israel has a nasty habit of calling their military reservists "innocent civilians" when they're attacked? Or is it more like when they call the Golan Heights colonists "citizens" of a universally unrecognized occupation?
Lot of complex vocabulary here. I invite you to link as many cases of falsely-identified journalist deaths as you can find though. It sounds like a big issue, judging from your tone.
> When they do die, Al Jazeera makes a hue and cry out of it because it serves their agenda and resonates very well with their audience
It could also be that killing civilians is a bad thing, and when Israel ignores the directly communicated press positions it exposes their indifference to collateral damage.
The second part though doesn't make sense. If the US president can send drones to kill terrorists without taking them to court, surely he can order hacking their phones. If you think that there's no case where the latter is ok you shouldn't you fight against the former first?
The part that you miss is, are they only killing "terrorists" extrajudicially? To take that propaganda at its face value is to ask, what else could they be killing brown people for, if not terrorism?
I didn't say if I think that drone killing is justified or not, since I have no opinion on that - I don't know enough to form an opinion. I only say that since the government have the right to send killing drone it doesn't make sense to raise pitchforks against phone hacking
The thing is, extrajudicial murder justified by labeling the victim “terrorist” is illegal and should not be accepted in a free and open society.
The ‘terrorist’ label was invented as a means of abrogating human rights by governments who felt they were encumbered by the obligation to protect human rights. “Terrorist” labeling is a totalitarian-authoritarian apparatus to avoid culpability for its actions when a government decides the easiest solution to its problem is outright murder.
Do you not think that terrorism exists, that the label has been co-opted for other purposes, that terrorists cannot be treated as combatants, that non-declared-war conflicts should not have deliberate strikes or something else?
It seems to me like terrorism has a pretty plain definition: Using violence against civilians/non-combatants to further a ideological goal, primarily via fear.
It's often misused as an excuse, but there are actual terrorists, the word has a meaning and we should not let it be watered down by either the people wanting to use it as an excuse or the people trying to shroud terrorism in something else.
Every single nation state in the context of this discussion has murdered civilians/non-combatants to further an ideological goal and are thus guilty of acts of terrorism - in the case of the US, for example, terrorism is official doctrine used for regime change across the world. The US literally funds, arms and supports terrorist groups whenever its ruling military determine that their domestic population has no stomach for outright war - in most cases, in fact, terrorism is how the US gets its regime change designs implemented.
As citizens of nations which use terrorism as a tool for their political purposes, it is long since past the point we let ourselves be bullied by terminology and started instead to enforce the legislation required to rid our own ranks of war criminals - who are factually terrorists.
I don't get what's happening in this thread. This is a pretty clear statement: hacking isn't worse than the killing that the government is already allowed to do. It's a pretty straightforward argument which for some reason seems to be being misunderstood.
I'll gently push on the premise though: hacking isn't worse for the victims than death, obviously, but I think it's possible weaponizing of exploits does more total damage. Both collateral, due to the manufacturing of exploits which ultimately leak and harm a bunch of unrelated actors, and because the marginal hacking is lower cost, practically and politically. So a given attack is likely to be used against groups we'd recognize less clearly as "terrorists" / deserving of the harm / etc.
Thanks for the understanding.
I'll say that because of that we should make the price for using the device much higher. For example using it should require authorization by process that will involve a stiff political price/barrier. Maybe a bi-partisan committee. Something of that sort.
It is not hypothetical, the fact is that killing drones are used in practice, and it just doesn't make sense to oppose lesser measures that are being used without judgement when killing is allowed.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Ok is a value judgment which I didn't state. Allowed is a fact. Are you arguing with what I'm saying or with an opponent in your mind?
If the US president can send drones to kill terrorists without taking them to court, surely he can order hacking their phones. If you think that there's no case where the latter is ok you shouldn't you fight against the former first?"
Pretty clear from your rhetoric what your position is. Folks here are not dumb.
> Ok is a value judgment ... Allowed is a fact
Factually, genocidaries are worse than terrorists.
L O L. No Israelis are ever extradited to the US for anything even though the US essentially financially bankrolls that entire country. It's basically a place we allow to go gloves off to militarily threaten our enemies, so we can sit back and maintain the "rights-based world order" without catching flak for our own deeds.
WASHINGTON - Stanislav Nazarov, 46, a dual citizen of Israel and Russia, has been extradited from Israel to face charges in an indictment accusing him of taking part in an international money laundering scheme.
Israel is quite financially independent these days, and has been so for decades. The US does not simply "bankroll the entire country" by any stretch.
But hey, it's a free planet, and you can believe whatever you want to belive. I certainly wouldn't want to get between you and one of your pet narratives.
You're very aware what I'm saying is true on a general scale. Sure, exceptions exist. You also know that the aid the US gives is significant and if it hadn't been given every year for decades, Israel would be nothing like what it is right now, it may not even exist.
Try refuting all the Israeli newspapers above which talk about how difficult it is to extradite obvious criminals from Israel. Apologies that you took my comment starting with "L O L" as if I literally meant no person ever in history has ever been extradited. Only a shockingly large portion have not been and will not be, enough to attract attention in the Israeli and foreign press.
There should be no "legal" hacking of someone's devices apart from extraction of data from already convicted people in public court with the right to defend themselves