Comment by gnfargbl
4 years ago
You're extremely correct, of course, but what I'm really proposing here is something much more boring than actually solving the technical problem(s). How about a dose of good old-fashioned bureaucracy? If you want to sell exploits, in a Western country, then yeah sure you can, but first you should have to go through an approval process and fill in a form for every customer and have them vetted, yada yada.
This wouldn't do anything to stop companies who base themselves in places like Russia. It wouldn't even really do anything to stop those who base themselves in the Seychelles. But, you want to base yourself in a real bona-fide country, like the USA or France or Israel or Singapore? Then you should have to play by some rules.
If you make people fill out paperwork to sell exploits in Israel, Germany, and the United States, they will sell exploits in Kuala Lumpur, Manila, and Kigali. I'm not saying you're expressing it at all, but there is a lot of chauvinism built into the most popular ideas for regulating exploits.
Yes, they certainly will. I'm not naive, or colonial, about that. But what more can we do than live out the standards that we want to see upheld in the world?
I'd be surprised if Israel didn't already regulate who NSO does business with.