This isn't good, but it's not uncommon. My concern is if this behavior has led the European Union into the digital ID fiasco. All of this data monitoring can be used to manipulate politicians into supporting.
This saga has been going on for a couple years now [0]. A number of CEE and Southern European countries like Spain, Greece, Hungary, Poland, Czechia, Romania, and others heavily leverage this kind of tooling [1] and continue to have extremely strong interior ministries and weak democratic controls.
It's also helped create a boom in the cybersecurity industry, and helped build the hiring pipeline most American and Israeli cybersecurity firms are using in the CEE today.
I don’t doubt this is the case in modern times but I doubt they have spied on the poor since the beginning of time since there was little reason to spy on powerless illiterates. They spied on known enemies or rivals sure but not on the masses since there was little reason to do so. It was also costly to do so.
I agree with a sibling poster that it's not necessarily about wealth. I think it's about power.
Those who attain power are corrupted enough to seek to hold on to it; and spying on those you govern is one of the ways to hold on to that power. “What are they up to? Scheming? Against me?”
It's ironic because if politicians do a good job, and don't have much to hide, we'll trust them more and re-elect them.
Lets get rid of Microsoft abos/subscriptions directly financing spyware! Away with all the shitty Outlook and MS Teams! Yes! Finally! Oh wait ... That's not what the article is about ...
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 45.7 ms ] thread"Gee, dat dere shore is a nice marriage ya gots dere. It'd shore be a shame, if da wifey wuz t' find out about ya mistress..."
That was pretty much how J. Edgar Hoover was able to grab Congress by the short hairs for years.
Please don't sneer, including at the rest of the community.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
It's also helped create a boom in the cybersecurity industry, and helped build the hiring pipeline most American and Israeli cybersecurity firms are using in the CEE today.
[0] - https://www.politico.eu/article/parliament-defense-subcommit...
[1] - https://vsquare.org/pegasus-spyware-poland-hungary-slovakia-...
If that passes that's not just EU funds being misused but the EU directly mandating spyware on a continental scale!
They are exempt, but exemption won't help if they get hit by spyware.
Those who attain power are corrupted enough to seek to hold on to it; and spying on those you govern is one of the ways to hold on to that power. “What are they up to? Scheming? Against me?”
It's ironic because if politicians do a good job, and don't have much to hide, we'll trust them more and re-elect them.