the Guardian to reveal global spying program

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Batman

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#288724 19-Jul-2021 07:03

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/18/huge-data-leak-shatters-lie-innocent-need-not-fear-surveillance

https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/18/what-is-pegasus-spyware-and-how-does-it-hack-phones

Our investigation shows how repressive regimes can buy and use the kind of spying tools Edward Snowden warned us about

Paul Lewis Head of investigations @PaulLewis Sun 18 Jul 2021 19.53 BST

Billions of people are inseparable from their phones. Their devices are within reach – and earshot – for almost every daily experience, from the most mundane to the most intimate.

Few pause to think that their phones can be transformed into surveillance devices, with someone thousands of miles away silently extracting their messages, photos and location, activating their microphone to record them in real time.

Such are the capabilities of Pegasus, the spyware manufactured by NSO Group, the Israeli purveyor of weapons of mass surveillance.

NSO rejects this label. It insists only carefully vetted government intelligence and law enforcement agencies can use Pegasus, and only to penetrate the phones of “legitimate criminal or terror group targets”.

Yet in the coming days the Guardian will be revealing the identities of many innocent people who have been identified as candidates for possible surveillance by NSO clients in a massive leak of data.

While there is nothing to suggest that governments seek to infiltrate each of these people with NSO software, the presence of their names on this list indicates the lengths to which governments may go to spy on people whose interests do not align with theres or who disagree with their views or are critical of them.

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#2746397 19-Jul-2021 08:01

It insists only carefully vetted government intelligence and law enforcement agencies can use Pegasus,

Vetting consists of a careful comparison of their bank balance before and after sending an invoice, before providing the software, I assume.

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#2746402 19-Jul-2021 08:10

If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

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#2746403 19-Jul-2021 08:20

Dingbatt:

If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

Although those who understand how technology works know that all those things send data off into the ether because that's how they work, you still have a reasonable expectation that anything you say to Alexa, for example, goes to Amazon and stops there. It is reasonable for Amazon to process it; it is reasonable for Amazon to keep it for some time to use as a corpus to improve the ML algorithms.

It is not reasonable for a government to swoop in and secretly slurp it up.

It is reasonable for your cellular network provider to track your location, because that's how it knows where to send your data packets or phone calls. It is reasonable for the provider to keep records of that information to use in network planning.

It is not reasonable for a government to swoop in and secretly slurp it up.

Nothing in the Snowden leaks was a big surprise anyone in the industry. We are well aware that spies are gonna spy, and we know how we would do it if that was what we wanted to do. But that doesn't mean it is right for them to go unchallenged. After all, the only public account of our own GCSB we have is the Kitteridge report which found that the GCSB didn't understand their own legal rules, perhaps willfully so given that they actively resisted her every step of the way, and despite that she still found 80+ verifiable instances of them spying unlawfully. How much more could she not prove, or never suspect?

And despite all that, they still managed to have no clue about the biggest mass shooting ever in New Zealand until it was in progress.

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#2746405 19-Jul-2021 08:23

Not defending it by any means. Just not surprised.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#2746406 19-Jul-2021 08:29

Dingbatt:

If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

I personally believe this is an awful argument for spying!

"Just because you buy a device and you accept the Terms and Conditions which outline they may listen to your calls you also allow others to do it without your permission"?

No, just because I allow an Alexa device, or use Siri does not grant other companies the right to spy on me without my permission.

Consent is still consent.

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#2746410 19-Jul-2021 08:37

tehgerbil:

Dingbatt:

If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

I personally believe this is an awful argument for spying!

See my response above your post.

“We’ve arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. Carl Sagan 1996

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#2746443 19-Jul-2021 10:00

SaltyNZ:

Dingbatt:

If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

It is not reasonable for a government to swoop in and secretly slurp it up.

... and the article isn't about that level of surveillance which you'd almost be able to say is at least partly "overt", but use of covert spyware claimed by the maker to be only sold to "legitimate" government agencies. Yet seems to be used to spy on people who aren't "security" threats. The "agencies" are either doing dirty stuff for political purposes, and/or the maker of the spyware is lying - and they're selling their product/service to illegitimate users.

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#2746457 19-Jul-2021 10:24

Dingbatt:
If you have invited Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri or Bixby (only kidding) into your home, or live your life on social media, why would you be surprised if you are being surveilled?

No this is a program that allows rogue people with money to "pay per spy".

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#2746458 19-Jul-2021 10:26

Dingbatt:
Not defending it by any means. Just not surprised.

Yup. We all knew it was happening.

When Saudi journalist got hit inside a secret embassy, the Turks and the Americans had audio recordings of the entire ordeal.

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#2746462 19-Jul-2021 10:33

Batman:
Dingbatt:
Not defending it by any means. Just not surprised.

Yup. We all knew it was happening.

When Saudi journalist got hit inside a secret embassy, the Turks and the Americans had audio recordings of the entire ordeal.

One only needs to read "Spycatcher" by Peter Wright to know that sort of surveillance has been going on for a very long time.

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#2746482 19-Jul-2021 10:59

Was only a matter of time till something/someone broke and this was made public.

TIp of the iceberg - this is mostly about the mobile/IoT devices but data comes from everywhere - whenever you interact with an organisaion or business there's something tracked and it's linked up wherever possible..

The fact that this happens isn't surprising - what would be much scarier to most people is that this sort of data is shared around in intelligence co-operation agreements. Doesn't matter who you are or whether you're a criminal or have nothing to hide - to a greater or lesser extent you are being surveilled and your data is being shared with several other country's spy agencies.

Mostly this is passive - i.e. no ones really interested in that data, until they are, and you're added to a list for one reason or another and then it's more active - and many of the capabilities you see in movies are very much reality - tracking your location by phone, following financial transactions etc.

Take for example whenever an intelligence spokesperson says 'our agency is focused internationally only, we do not spy on our own citizens'.

Then remember that said agencies share intelligence data with one another. So even just in the '5 i's/eyes' countries that means that whilst NZ based intelligence agencies aren't spying on you - four other countries - the US/Canada/UK/Australia all are - and their intelligence apparatus is far better funded, scaled and technologically advanced than anything in this country.

And then, those countries share that data with NZ agencies.

So NZ agencies can, on the surface state that they don't spy on NZ citizens - but that doesn't mean they don't 'co-operate' with other agencies about 'persons of interest'. And to be a 'person of interest' there's no court involved - no warrant - nothing official at all.

This is simply how it is - in some senses I would think intelligence agencies wouldn't be doing their jobs if they didn't do it - but to expect that this is not happening is rather naive in this day and age. Hell a simple google search can bring up tons of info about people and that isn't all the data just Google has... just what they want to show you...

1101

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#2746494 19-Jul-2021 11:21

We used to look at the Communist states and think, thank god we dont have our govt spying on its citizens .

Yet no one blinked when NZ passed a law requiring NZ email hosting services to keep copies of all emails so the authorities could get easy access to them.

To be honest , 90% of the population really dont care . If we cared we'd delete all our social media a/c's , burn our cellphones
even TV's have been caught recording conversations & sending that to 3rd parties. No one cared. No one blinked
A very famous company was caught driving around cities & slurping up private data it found on insure wifi , no one cared . If I did that Id be arrested in most countries .

Even your printer is spying on you . (sort of)
The horse has bolted, the cat is out of the bag .

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#2746502 19-Jul-2021 11:41

This explains the Huawei scepticism perfectly. The CIA knew everything. Of course they do. And Snowden. And now we do too.

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#2746505 19-Jul-2021 11:44

1101:

Yet no one blinked when NZ passed a law requiring NZ email hosting services to keep copies of all emails so the authorities could get easy access to them.

There were massive protests against the GCSB and TICSA bills in 2013. The government simply didn't care.

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#2746572 19-Jul-2021 12:11

SaltyNZ:

1101:

Yet no one blinked when NZ passed a law requiring NZ email hosting services to keep copies of all emails so the authorities could get easy access to them.

There were massive protests against the GCSB and TICSA bills in 2013. The government simply didn't care.

And 6 years later when something / someone really was a threat, the agencies completely failed to pick up on it, and 51 people were slaughtered.

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