Comment by breppp
6 months ago
It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline
While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country
But I guess news sites needs them clicks
6 months ago
It's amazing that US and Israel are the only countries mentioned in the headline
While the story itself is about Italy spying on a journalist in another EU country
But I guess news sites needs them clicks
Per the article there isn't actually any hard evidence that Italy was spying on this journalist. In fact the relevant Italian parliamentary oversight committee (COPASIR) investigated and said while there were activists surveilled by Italy, legally and with government authorization, a journalist (Cancellato) specifically was not.
Oh, the irony of the person shrieking about a headline being clickbait, when, had the information been included in title, they'd be shrieking that the title was clickbait for including poorly supported information.
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Why is this a dupe of the parent?
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However at the same time Paragon offered the Italian Intelligence a way to determine whether their software was used against the journalist, but they rejected the offer and that feels very suspicious.
Why would COPASIR accept such an offer. Third party forensics shows the fox got in the hen house. You wanna let the fox back in just to confess?
Headlines are written by the publisher not the author. They’re written to maximize readership. The fact that spying happened in italy by italians is mostly only interesting to italians. The fact that the US backs an israeli company that sells spying tools is interesting to many more people. You can see the selling clicks, but because they’re not twisting the truth or saying something misleading - in this case I mostly see getting info to the people who care about it.
However, the fact that companies sell offensive cyber warfare software to governments is not new, and that specific company isn't either.
There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia. And fighting terror or crime using software is valid. The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists, and what I'd like to know from this article was what was their motivation
It is absolutely wrong to sell that software. It is mostly used to harass journalists and people advocating against dictatorial regimes. That is why there are endless headlines and articles about it being used against orgs like greenpeace, or people criticizing a govt. The claim was always we want to be able to use it against terrorists or real criminals - but at the least we know it is very frequently used to try to stop critics of governments.
It is immoral. I'd never hire someone who worked on such software or for one of those firms. We should have a movement that declares this.
An incredible self awareness for you to write “There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia”.
I wonder how Iran or Zambia feel about the west? The overthrow of their democracy. The colonial exploitations. Are those legit grievances in your eyes? Or are you a “take up the white mans burden” kind of person?
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If it was for no good reason, would that update your “nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government?” I do think western governments are generally better, but spying on journalists is bad.
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>There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia
It's not like Iran or Zambia precisely to the degree it doesn't use such tools.
The spy companies sells to non western companies also like UAE and Saudi Arabia, with the approval of Israeli government.
And Israeli company selling software to spy on journalist tells you everything you need to know about the whole “western” concept. It’s a mirage of morality.
> There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government
i emphatically beg to differ with this statement
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> fighting terror using software is valid
Only if you want to live in an Israeli-type society where a certain group is inherently suspicious and have no rights. Americans should be repulsed by that.
That's why I don't buy the judeo-christian propaganda about how our values are the same. The western values are justice and due process and "all men are created equal", zionist values are "we are god's chosen", no holds barred "war on terror" with no due process, invoking religous amalek to commit genocide. These are the values of an ancient desert tribe not western civilization. Zionist values have been forced onto the west over the last 30 years as Israel tries to rope us into more middle eastern wars, but they don't derive from western enlightenment philosophy.
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but friendly countries hacking friendies is also not new. so in your view then it should not be written at all?
remember belgacom?
western governments are also in the war of information and minds. if they wouldnt wage it, we'd already have lost.
sadly, this results in this kind of weirdness. and its incredibly hard or impossible to find their true motives or intent. especially if for example an investigation didnt turn up what they needed, an so seems like a random hack on a random person.
it doesnt happen only to journalists. but when they are targeted its easier discovered because they might expect it more and look for it more. and when it does, because its related to press, everyones 'freedom of press' button is tripped and they get offended, sad, angry, whatever the button releases.
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Their motivation is they are fascists. Like not in an “anything I don’t like is fascism” kinda way - literal fascists.
If you’d like to know more about them, an article in the AP isn’t the right place to find more. But it is a good way to let people know what the US is funding in the world.
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> However, the fact that companies sell offensive cyber warfare software to governments is not new
Good thing the story is not about the companies or governments, but the journalists.
The "this is not new" / "everyone knew about this" middlebrow dismissal adds nothing to any conversation, and falsely equates all hacking incidents, but the real story is about the clients, their motivations and the victims who are always different.
> I'd like to know from this article was what was their motivation
Wouldn't we all? Meloni's office had no comment, but the article gave enough breadcrumbs about the reporting of the victims that one can make an educated guess.
> There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government, Italy is not Iran or Zambia.
Yes, because Western ones are the good governments (looking at Meloni).
> And fighting terror or crime using software is valid. The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists, and what I'd like to know from this article was what was their motivation
Huh, it’s surprising that Western governments would spy on journalists. But they are the good guys? What was their motivation.
>"There's also nothing inherently wrong with selling intelligence tools to a western government"
The king can do no wrong. What a pinnacle of arrogance.
>"The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists"
Welcome to a real world
are you... serious?
no I'm genuinely curious - because no matter who you sell it to it will be used against its own populace - look at bloody PRISM(mass data collection of internet traffic in US by NSA in case you weren't aware), Echelon(older project targeted at radio transmissions), 5eyes(US, UK, AUS, NZ, CN asking each other to spy on their own citizens as a loophole) .. or any other scandal in EU when it leaked that such spyware was used against journalists investigating government corruption. Or in Mexico, or anywhere else.
How you are surprised that "western government" might attack journalists when there has been proof of them doing that for years?!
Fighting crime, for example by spying on a WaPo columnist and then strangling him at a consular mission in Turkey and chopping up his body, to then dissolve it in acid.
That's what this company's software is used for.
Good luck to them shifting focus to the bad actors they choose to do business with.
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> The only thing that surprises me is that a western government might attack journalists
You might want to look up Karen Silkwood, who was likely murdered by either her employer or US government agents, while driving to meet with a reporter and her boyfriend.
If you think the US government hasn't murdered any journalists in the last 70 years or so, I have a bridge I'd like to sell you.
Actually, there is a lot wrong with selling intelligence tools to western governments. They are doing some of the most evil shit in the world and are complicit in genocide at the moment.
No one should be buying Israeli consumer goods, let alone weapons or security tools as part of Boycotts, Divestment, and Sanctions.
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> They’re written to maximize readership.
And to shape narrative!
TFA says that this story is relevant for USA because there exists an executive order which "prohibits federal government departments and agencies from acquiring commercial spyware that has been misused by foreign governments" and at this moment there are contracts between Paragon and DHS and other US government institutions.
So, in theory, these contracts with Paragon should be canceled, unless Trump decides to repeal that executive order, because it is a remnant of the previous administration.
It's the AP. It's writing is not to 'maximize readership'. It is pushing an agenda to a select audience.
Nobody who knows what the AP is would describe them that way. It's a non-profit news wire, they write up the national/international stories so that smaller newsrooms don't have to redo this work. The person who listens to newsradio, and the person who gets their local news from the Internet (Facebook/Twitter/Reddit posts of articles or whatever) have very little in common with how they stay informed but unless your radio station is sending war reporters to the Middle East are people are part of the AP audience.
It's like producing weapons versus using them. Just instead of "weapons" we have "spyware tools".
(1) Headlines are necessarily lossy due to the limited character count.
(2) It says US-backed, which suggests to me that US investors helped fund it.
(3) It says Israeli tech, which rhymes with 2 previous spyware companies which have been torn to shreds in the public media and US courts for their lack of controls/oversight of how their customers used their software (violating the spyware vendor’s policies, the Israeli government export license, and the ToS of the software the spyware software exploited).
(4) the US-backed + “targeted a journalist” combined is an attack on the foundation of US as a country (on the assumption that the journalist wasn’t engaging in something like terrorism).
I’m bored by people who attack headlines. We all know that they aren’t accurate and can’t be 100% descriptive. And it’s not even clear that you could be appeased by any other formulation of the headline.
When you hear an art piece was stolen from a museum, do you ever hear about the buyer?
No, you hear about where it was, who stole it and where it was found.
The article itself contains a lot of text about the company. There isn’t much about Italy.
Are arms dealers immune from responsibility, in your view?
Most of the time the country of the creator is named if it’s about spyware.
The misuse of such tools outweighs the legitimate use cases, so people want to know who is so reckless to sell these programs
I don't understand what's the difference if Italy develops its own or buys it from somewhere else.
Comparably, phone tapping equipment is being sold world wide for almost a century and is used similarly
The fact that some countries that gets these tools starts listening to journalists is concerning, but at least I want to believe it happens less in functioning countries
But I don't see any issue with taking remote control of a drug dealer, terrorist or mafia phone
>I don't understand what's the difference if Italy develops its own or buys it from somewhere else.
because the one who sold it quite likely also gets a hold of all information captured by it's user.
Check your other posts for examples of ongoing mass public surveillance programs.
Some spyware like Pegasus is notorious.
It’s always shady if someone uses it because of its high misuse potential.
It’s the computer equivalent of a ABC weapon.
a functioning country can become dysfunctional with one election
> The misuse of such tools outweighs the legitimate use cases, so people want to know who is so reckless to sell these programs
Do you have any evidence of this?
Cause my guess is the misuse is the stuff you hear about because it eventually makes the news. But the thousands or millions of legitimate use cases in which it prevented terror attacks or just, y'know, helped solved crimes, are just routine and don't get a mention.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECHELON
5eyes(spying agreement between US, UK, CAN, NZ, AU) utilizing a loophole to spy on each other's citizens.
Tons of cases with PEGASUS being used to target activists and journalists, usually ones investigating government corruption(EU, Mexico from top of my head).
You know what would also help solve crimes? if every action that everyone did was always observed and recorded. Would you be willing to live in such world? i would rather not.
It's simple math.
What happens more often terror attacks which aren't easy to plan and do or journalists and activists do something the people in power don't like.
And how often are tools that were promised to be used only to combat serious crimes such as terrorism and child abuse used for the worst of all crimes: Copyright piracy
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Or agenda.. Who knows?!
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Goodness me where oh where could that anti US bias come from? Couldn't be the illegal bombing of Cambodia and Laos during the Vietnam War, couldn't be arming the Guatamalans who carried out the silent Holocaust, couldn't be arming the Turks while they were slaughtering Kurds, couldn't be the illegal invasion of Iraq, killing up to a million people, and torturing others without due process, ultimately leading to violent blowback from Islamic extremists in Europe in the form of terrorist attacks. Couldn't be providing billions of dollars in weapons for Israel to carry out its genocide, likely leading to even more blowback across the globe. No, surely it's because they're _ungrateful_.
All of that was for freedoms though /s
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Attacking countries because of non existent WMDs, torturing people in black sites, sanctioning investigators of the ICC, spying on all internet traffic, enforcing their sanctions on third parties.
I think their are reasons for that anti-US bias.
And if the US ensured freedom it was because it benefited them. If war would habe been the better option they would habe ensured that.
the current regime has shown hostility to keeping europe peaceful, what do you want?
How so? By asking Europe to pay for the defense of Europe?
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Regardless, it seems to be helpful to others to point out what one finds worthy of discussion; that is actually the point of the comments, after all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-communist_mass_killings
Ensuring peace by violently crushing social democratic organizing and unions is like ensuring a fun time by beating anyone who complains.
It’s not an anti-US bias to hold the US accountable for their actions. Funding a for-profit spyware company that’ll sell to anyone, including italian fascists, is bad. The US should be held accountable for that.
Your comment is extremely disingenuous. Much of the world, including Europe, has become dramatically more unsettled and dangerous as a direct consequence of US foreign policies and military adventures over the last quarter-century. Do you expect to be thanked?
I don’t expect anything from you or anyone else. I’m just glad I don’t have to worry about what other people think anymore. If anything, I wish the US would pull out of NATO altogether and focus on fixing our problems at home, since our contributions clearly aren’t wanted.
> US contributions to ensuring peace in Europe
Name the contributions after 1945.
Do they not teach about the Marshall Plan in schools anymore?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan
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That bias is earned, especially over actions the US has committed covertly in Europe over the last 50 years.
Such as?
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People want the US to ensure peace. The problem is that the US has in recent months turned away from that and is instead promoting unrest, both home and abroad.
What has the US done in recent months to promote unrest abroad?
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The ADL has a HN account?
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Then explain all the news about Musk and Trump.
I mean, in a broad sense this is true. But do you really think Sam Altman wouldn’t be in the news if he wasn’t Jewish? What about SBF? Or go back further, do you think people know about Einstein or Karl Marx only because they were Jewish?
Like it or not, Jews have been involved at a high level in a lot of pivotal developments in the west.
I don't think that "No Jews No News" hints that Altman is in the news only because he's Jewish. It means that people care about _bad things_ more when they're done by Jews. The fact that Einstein is Einstein and Marx is Marx is only relevant if you're claiming that the reason people like blaming Jews is due to jealously of their relative success.
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