I was reading about this the other day on Wikipedia.
IIRC, he also used this to locate his two estranged daughters, who were on a boat belonging to the Indian government, and sent helicopters filled with UAE special forces in full battle rattle to kidnap/abduct them.
Definitely living in an age where being estranged from somebody rich and powerful is something you very much do not want to be.
(Oh no, I'm shadowbanned :(
spent my controversial post-ability karma a little too quickly I guess...)
How would they have found her if she followed basic op sec(basic for professionals, not basic for random individuals), maybe just not having a cellphone and using communication relays?
They'd track her friends instead. She'd need to live like an isolated hermit and avoid contact with anybody who carried a phone, which is everybody.
Short of hermitage; at the very least she'd need to adopt a new identity and ghost everybody she ever knew for the rest of her life. Not an easy task; I've heard that most people placed in witness protection have a very difficult time never contacting any of their old friends or relatives again.
>The latest judgments will increase scrutiny on Britain’s relationship with the UAE
Pressuring NSO's customers is well and good, but I fear this madness will continue until America and Israel's other allies find the political will to sanction Israel for permitting the criminal organization known as NSO to operate with impunity. So... no end in sight.
They work under a weapon exporter license. Which means the Israeli government knows very well each and every user, and decides who is allowed to buy the weapon and who isn't
It's not exactly permitting, the government is part of the deal
I'm sure some of these deals were part of the background when it came to Arab nations and Israel becoming closer over the years (and the Abraham Accords as a result)
I'd highly recommend Darknet Diaries [0] to get a bit more colour on the NSO group for those that are interested. The relevant episodes are #99 & #100.
It seems like a lot of the NSO group's customers (a lot of which are authoritarian/corrupt governments) abuse the system and there's no real check on that power. The host mentions that officially the company has said that there have been 'only 3 instances' of abuse of its systems that they've detected and he goes on to expose how blatantly false that is. Anyways this is now all third hand info - I'd highly recommend checking out the podcast (not affiliated, just a fan).
I'm wondering what kind of check would be good enough. Who decides which governments are corrupt? Even if you limit the customer base to democratically elected governments, who is the final authority on which elections are genuine?
If there's an election in [country] and [politician] decisively wins, and [opposition group] says the election was fraudulent and has some weak evidence and a bunch of protests, who decides if they're legitimate? This describes the 2020 Belarus election, but it also describes the 2020 US election.
Munitions suppliers operate in pretty much every country in the world, producing everything from rifles to nuclear bombs for use by that country's government. If all of that is okay, why are hacking tools going too far?
In EP 47 of Darknet Diaries the author cites an interview in which they said to have an ethics board which makes such decisions based on a variety of factors. They might find a country having issues with corruption, but still would like to help them catch them so called terrorists.
I can’t speak to Belarus but we have a straight answer in the US: Congress.
Feeding that answer is the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is appointed by the 50 State legislatures and the District of Columbia.
The voters tell them who to select.
In an absolute worst case scenario where the results can’t be certified, we even have a Constitutional fallback: the House elects a President and the Senate elects a Vice President.
For all the noise around what happened in January, the actual lawful process is extremely cut and dry. The former President’s lawyers brought their best legal arguments to bear in jurisdictions across the country, and even the Judges he himself appointed, even the ones that were most forgiving and way more than fair basically laughed them out of the courtroom.
Our election system is solid. It’s messy, it’s debatable, it’s possible to dispute, but it is reliable, lawful and legitimate and we elect the mooks we deserve, not necessarily the ones we would like.
We elect the politicians “we deserve” from a ballot consisting of a selection made by the few thousand richest people in the country - the ones fund the candidates.
Not to mention how primary results become conveniently bungled (one party in particular comes to mind) when they favor candidates which are not particularly well liked by the establishment. The fact that the national political committees are private corporations doesn't instill much faith in the fairness of their electoral processes.
I’ll just put this out here: if the RNC and DNC reverted to a closed primary in every State for all candidates, not only would I not shed any tears but I would be cautiously optimistic that this would be an improvement in our overall electoral politics because I am not a fan of the various flavors of populists that are beginning to realize power.
Regardless of how we get our nominees though, the quality of our elections and the integrity of the outcome is unquestionable. You’re free to disagree with the qualities of the processes we use, but the process is written down in advance and followed.
I mean, they abuse the system like dictators "abuse" guns to kill people.
If you have a company selling a weapon, it's pretty obvious it's going to be used to harm. That's by design.
And just like we were never able to prevent the guns to arrive in the hand of the wrong people, or make sure people using guns respect any kind of rules, why would we expect NSO clients to be well filtered and behaved?
If you are a 40 year old, inactive person, try defending yourself against a knife or a club, especially against a younger person who has had experience using it.
>a lot of which are authoritarian/corrupt governments
The son of my Brazil's authoritarian and corrupt president is a customer. The son himself is a politician and I have zero doubt that privacy was/is going to be abused.
> The ruler of Dubai hacked the phone of his ex-wife Princess Haya using NSO Group’s controversial Pegasus spyware in an unlawful abuse of power and trust, a senior high court judge has ruled.
Illegal under British law. However, under Dubai law, I doubt this is illegal because it is the ruler doing it. Thus the question comes down ultimately to, is the UAE worth having as an ally in the Middle East or not. I think the calculus for the US, Israel, and UK is that it is. Given the political and cultural climate of the Middle East, any other regime is likely to be worse in a lot of dimensions.
The Federal Supreme Court (which is basically controlled by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi) can convict a monarch for a criminal violation in theory. Obviously depending on who's being tried, the verdicts will vary. For example, in the case of a cousin of the Sheikh of Ras Al Khaimah who nearly executed a coup, the verdict was pretty harsh. For a half-brother of Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince who was accused of castrating and beating up an Afghan trader, the verdict was a joke.
I assume if this were to end up in Federal Court, it would be a joke verdict since the current rulers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are on solid terms. That being said, if Abu Dhabi and Dubai's rulers were on bad terms (not going to happen soon anyways), Abu Dhabi has been increasingly moving on a path towards centralization, so this would be a very convenient way for them to accomplish that.
If there was no pushback from MBS literally murdering a dissident in their embassy in a foreign country, why would anyone care about someone hacking his daughter's cell phone?
Separately, the ruler also hacked his daughter with the same Pegasus toolkit, as part of his plot to kidnap her. This surprisingly isn't mentioned in the article (though it does reference the kidnapping).
>"But there was one threat she hadn’t planned for: The spyware tool Pegasus, which her father’s government was known to have used to secretly hack and track people’s phones. Leaked data shows that by the time armed commandos stormed the yacht, eight days into her escape, operatives had entered the numbers of her closest friends and allies into a system that had also been used for selecting Pegasus surveillance targets."
"“Shoot me here. Don’t take me back,” she’d screamed as soldiers dragged her off the boat, roughly 30 miles from the shore, according to a fact-finding judgment by the United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice. Then she disappeared."
Maybe that is just his love language. If you love your dog and it runs away, you might drag it off the streets where it may prefer to be in order to live with you.
That is a nice Western view point you have there. Do you think this is a universal view? Also, some people think dogs can't be owned, and can only have carers.
I'm suggesting there is a place where women are seen as property. Didn't realize this was a particularly controversial fact. Otherwise, I'd love an explanation for kidnapping hundreds of schoolgirls, or disallowing women from traveling alone, or honor killings, etc.
I'm not sure if I'm the only one here but when i read "Dubai ruler hacked ex-wife" I thought hacked referred to chopped into pieces. I don't think my first thought of "hacked" has ever gone to chopping for any other post/person.
40 comments
[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 86.9 ms ] threadIIRC, he also used this to locate his two estranged daughters, who were on a boat belonging to the Indian government, and sent helicopters filled with UAE special forces in full battle rattle to kidnap/abduct them.
Definitely living in an age where being estranged from somebody rich and powerful is something you very much do not want to be.
(Oh no, I'm shadowbanned :( spent my controversial post-ability karma a little too quickly I guess...)
Since other people have cited sources to back this claim up, I've gone ahead and vouched and upvoted it.
Short of hermitage; at the very least she'd need to adopt a new identity and ghost everybody she ever knew for the rest of her life. Not an easy task; I've heard that most people placed in witness protection have a very difficult time never contacting any of their old friends or relatives again.
Pressuring NSO's customers is well and good, but I fear this madness will continue until America and Israel's other allies find the political will to sanction Israel for permitting the criminal organization known as NSO to operate with impunity. So... no end in sight.
It's not exactly permitting, the government is part of the deal
I'm sure some of these deals were part of the background when it came to Arab nations and Israel becoming closer over the years (and the Abraham Accords as a result)
It seems like a lot of the NSO group's customers (a lot of which are authoritarian/corrupt governments) abuse the system and there's no real check on that power. The host mentions that officially the company has said that there have been 'only 3 instances' of abuse of its systems that they've detected and he goes on to expose how blatantly false that is. Anyways this is now all third hand info - I'd highly recommend checking out the podcast (not affiliated, just a fan).
[0] https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/
If there's an election in [country] and [politician] decisively wins, and [opposition group] says the election was fraudulent and has some weak evidence and a bunch of protests, who decides if they're legitimate? This describes the 2020 Belarus election, but it also describes the 2020 US election.
Munitions suppliers operate in pretty much every country in the world, producing everything from rifles to nuclear bombs for use by that country's government. If all of that is okay, why are hacking tools going too far?
Feeding that answer is the Electoral College.
The Electoral College is appointed by the 50 State legislatures and the District of Columbia.
The voters tell them who to select.
In an absolute worst case scenario where the results can’t be certified, we even have a Constitutional fallback: the House elects a President and the Senate elects a Vice President.
For all the noise around what happened in January, the actual lawful process is extremely cut and dry. The former President’s lawyers brought their best legal arguments to bear in jurisdictions across the country, and even the Judges he himself appointed, even the ones that were most forgiving and way more than fair basically laughed them out of the courtroom.
Our election system is solid. It’s messy, it’s debatable, it’s possible to dispute, but it is reliable, lawful and legitimate and we elect the mooks we deserve, not necessarily the ones we would like.
https://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_...
Regardless of how we get our nominees though, the quality of our elections and the integrity of the outcome is unquestionable. You’re free to disagree with the qualities of the processes we use, but the process is written down in advance and followed.
If you have a company selling a weapon, it's pretty obvious it's going to be used to harm. That's by design.
And just like we were never able to prevent the guns to arrive in the hand of the wrong people, or make sure people using guns respect any kind of rules, why would we expect NSO clients to be well filtered and behaved?
If you are a 40 year old, inactive person, try defending yourself against a knife or a club, especially against a younger person who has had experience using it.
"Harm" is a loaded word.
The son of my Brazil's authoritarian and corrupt president is a customer. The son himself is a politician and I have zero doubt that privacy was/is going to be abused.
Illegal under British law. However, under Dubai law, I doubt this is illegal because it is the ruler doing it. Thus the question comes down ultimately to, is the UAE worth having as an ally in the Middle East or not. I think the calculus for the US, Israel, and UK is that it is. Given the political and cultural climate of the Middle East, any other regime is likely to be worse in a lot of dimensions.
UAE supreme court can, in theory, try a monarch of a constituent emirate.
I assume if this were to end up in Federal Court, it would be a joke verdict since the current rulers in Abu Dhabi and Dubai are on solid terms. That being said, if Abu Dhabi and Dubai's rulers were on bad terms (not going to happen soon anyways), Abu Dhabi has been increasingly moving on a path towards centralization, so this would be a very convenient way for them to accomplish that.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/21/dubai-prince...
>"But there was one threat she hadn’t planned for: The spyware tool Pegasus, which her father’s government was known to have used to secretly hack and track people’s phones. Leaked data shows that by the time armed commandos stormed the yacht, eight days into her escape, operatives had entered the numbers of her closest friends and allies into a system that had also been used for selecting Pegasus surveillance targets."
"“Shoot me here. Don’t take me back,” she’d screamed as soldiers dragged her off the boat, roughly 30 miles from the shore, according to a fact-finding judgment by the United Kingdom’s High Court of Justice. Then she disappeared."