Selv tidligere Mossad-sjef er rystet over dagens Mossad:
"Ex-Mossad chief ‘disappointed’ over alleged threats against ICC prosecutor"
"Tamir Pardo says alleged campaign under his successor ‘sounds like Cosa Nostra-style blackmail’ "
"A former head of the Mossad has described his disbelief and disappointment at allegations that his successor at the Israeli intelligence agency threatened a chief prosecutor of the international criminal court (ICC), likening the conduct to mafia-like tactics."
Politisk oppvask i Hellas. Opposisjonspolitikere og journalister er hemmelig overvåket med spionvare:
"Greek intelligence service admits spying on journalist - sources"
(Reuters 3. august 2022)
"One more Greek lawmaker files complaint over attempted phone hacking" (Reuters 9. september 2022)
"Criminal Allegations Against Israeli-linked Spyware, Ex-intel Commander in Greek Hacking Scandal" "Investigative journalist Thanasis Koukakis was under surveillance by Greece. Now he’s decided to take Intellexa, the firm behind the Predator spyware allegedly used against him, and its owners to court." (Haaretz 6. oktober 2022)
........................
Nå også i demokratiets vugge. Det er skremmende hvordan spionvare brer seg i noen politiske miljøer.
I Was Targeted by NSO Spyware. Here's How Israel Is Helping Modi Undermine India's Democracy
Swati Chaturvedi
July 25, 2021From
trolls to NSO: India's ruling party already uses troll farms to shut up
critics, to threaten rape and death, to incite against the Muslim
community. But for PM Modi, that clearly wasn't enough Adnan Abidi/
REUTERS
India loves to describe herself as the world’s largest democracy, and
Israel as the only democracy in the Middle East. Yet opaque officials
and executives in both countries have come together in a dark dance
against democracy.
Indian journalists, top political leaders, judges and civil servants sworn to protect our constitution were subjected
to an intrusive surveillance campaign, a "hijacking" of our phones, by
military grade surveillance spyware sold by the Israeli company NSO.
I am an investigative journalist, and for two years, I was one of the targets
of that invasive Pegasus spyware. In other words, for two years, aided
by Israeli technology, my own government was snooping on me.
The spyware called Pegasus is marketed for use against terrorists and
drug lords. It is so powerful and intrusive that it is sold only to
governments, according to NSO, and every sale requires a sign off from
the government of Israel itself. And according to Forbidden Stories,
the not-for-profit media organization that, in partnership with a
consortium of global publications, broke the story about the reach and
misuse of the spyware, once the spyware was deployed our phones were, in
effect, weaponized against us.
So why did the Modi government decide to treat me like the head of a crime syndicate, or a bloodthirsty terrorist?
Swati
Chaturvedi: I'm an independent journalist with no institutional
security. I put my my loved ones in danger each time I expose wrongdoing
in India’s elite. And the Modi government is unforgivingSwati
Chaturvedi
Since Narendra Modi came to power in 2014 he, like many strongman
leaders around the world, has treated the free press with disdain
bordering on contempt. During the seven years Modi has been in power
(he’s now in his second term) he has never once held a press conference.
This is a first in the history of India's democracy: all prime ministers before him made themselves available for scrutiny by the free press.
In many ways, Modi was a trendsetter in using social media, bypassing
traditional media, to reach out to voters and control the political
narrative, first as the state of Gujarat’s Chief Minister and later as
candidate for the premiership. Yet the same pioneering spirit led to a
deeply problematic usage of Twitter which has outsize political
influence in India, with a user base and reach estimated at between 18 million and 100 million.
Starting in 2014, I and other journalists were savagely trolled for
asking question (our job) about the government’s policies and behavior.
Women journalists in particular were targeted: we were sent rape
threats, pornographic pictures and subjected to vile slander about
"affairs" with opposition leaders. Our "rates" as prostitutes were
discussed.
As an investigative journalist, the only way I could to retaliate
against this daily, horrific abuse was to investigate it. I delved into
the Bharatiya Janata Party’s social media operations for two years,
turned an abusive troll into a source, and discovered that the party in
power was paying to have dissenting citizens targeted for abusive and
concerted pile-ons.
Congress
workers in Kolkata shout slogans during a protest against Indian Prime
Minister Narendra Modi and the Pegasus spyware scandal last
weekDIBYANGSHU SARKAR - AFP
The result of my work was a book, "I am a Troll: Inside the BJP’s
Secret Digital Army," which established incontrovertibly that
BJP-directed trolls, called yodhas (warriors) attacked all critics of Modi in a synchronized fashion, and that the ruling party used troll farms to shut up critics.
The trolls pushed rape and death threats, as well as communal
incitement against India’s Muslim community to incite riots. From
inflaming rioters using fake news to organizing boycott campaigns
against Bollywood movie actors like Aamir Khan (who, together with his
wife, Kiran Rao, had expressed alarm at rising intolerance in India, and was then accused by the BJP of participating in a "political conspiracy to defame India"), the trolls did it all.
Modi even outplayed Donald Trump’s worst Twitter excesses: he openly
followed the trolls responsible for threatening violence and rape and
participated in incitement too. One troll followed by Modi celebrated
the cold-blooded murder of journalist Gauri Lankesh in September 2107 by
tweeting: "A bitch has died and her puppies are crying." Despite the
justified outrage, Modi has yet to unfollow a single abusive Twitter
account.
Perhaps it was my book, which won a Reporters without Borders prize
for courage, triggered the Modi government’s decision to hack my phone.
Perhaps it was the investigative stories about disturbing conflicts of
interests in his party and government, or the reporting on allegations of corruption relating to the multibillion dollar deal for French Rafale fighter jets, which made the government decide I should be treated like a terrorist.
I would love to say that, having won a prize for courageous
reporting, I indeed have indomitable courage in my everyday life. But I
am an independent journalist, without any institutional security. I put
my family, my loved ones, even my dogs at risk every time I expose a
wrong doing connected to India’s power centers.
The Modi government is unforgiving. I have had job offers dry up, my
government accreditation withdrawn, a talk I was to give in a foreign
embassy canceled, repeated ad unfounded harassment by the tax
authorities, and a social media profile contaminated by slander and
defamation.
Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) supporters wear masks depicting Prime Minister
Narendra Modi at a rally addressed by Modi ahead of West Bengal state
elections in Kolkata, India earlier this yearBikas Das,AP
I am passionate about my job but I did not sign up for this kind of
intimidation – or this kind of intrusive surveillance. When my phone’s
microphone and camera could be remotely controlled to invade my own
privacy and that of my loved ones; where I have to consider the
grotesque idea that even the privacy of my own bedroom could have become
gratuitous viewing for those spying on me.
I still get chills thinking about the independent forensic analysis
which revealed that an earlier phone of mine was infected with Pegasus,
and my current phone also showed infected logs. The outrage, the
incredible hurt, that your own country did this to you, hits you each
day afresh. I broke down and cried when I told my father about the
surveillance. I wanted to be comforted for what had been done to me.
I will never give up being an investigative journalist. And I think
only cowards, drunk on such absolute power, act in such paranoid ways. I
also wonder what on earth has happened to my own country’s national
security priorities. Surely China, which has intruded into our sovereign territory, would have been a worthy target for my government, not me.
The abuse of spyware has gone viral in the Indian government. It is
perpetrator, judge and jury. Forensic investigation has revealed that
malware was planted in activists’ computers, which then became the
evidence to hold them in jail without bail under draconian anti-terror
laws. I still get nightmares thinking the government could have used
Pegasus to plant such malware in my phone and put me in prison, and I
would have had no recourse.
A
man walks past the logo of Israeli cyber firm NSO Group at one of its
branches in the Arava desert, southern Israel AMIR COHEN/ REUTERS
And I am angry at the Israeli government for licensing
such a reckless sale of spyware that so obviously invites weaponization
and abuse by a government in India that can fairly be described as
embracing digital authoritarianism. Why is Israel’s NSO group allowed to
get away with, allegedly, offering its clients around the world the
possibility of targeting more than 50,000 phones, including 300 in
India?
The truth is very different from the high-minded talk coming from
NSO, that its advanced spyware is a path for progress against drastic
national security threats and crime.
The toxic cyberweapon they sell, and the shadowy, implausible process
they, and the Israeli government, follow to ensure it is not abused,
have created for authoritarian leaders a vector for surveillance, the
invasion of privacy, the intimidation and prosecution of the free press
and even, in the wrong hands, murder.
For the sake of its relations with the democracy camp in India and
around the world, Israel needs to shut down NSO and companies like it.
Swati Chaturvedi is an award-winning print and broadcast
journalist. She regularly contributes investigative stories and analysis
to NDTV.com and Gulf News, and is a frequent political commentator on television. She is the author of "I am a Troll: Inside the BJP’s Secret Digital Army" (2016). Twitter: @bainjal
Korona gir unntakstilstand.
I ALLE land trenger regjeringen der handlingsrom.
I Norge fikk vi en løsning der Stortinget ivaretok sin rolle ... og til og med et mindretall fikk rettigheter. Og der unntaksordninger er tidsbegrenset og må eventuelt fornyes.
I noen andre land er det helt annerledes.
I Israel har Høyesterett måttet gripe inn for å få nye Knesset-medlemmer på plass.
Og i Ungarn har det gått helt galt.
Viktor Orban har fått en fullmaktslov som er utrolig ... han har så å si fått alle fullmakter på ubestemt tid ... begrunnet av korona.
Da er GRUNN-trekkene i demokratiet satt ut av spill.
Men der er også en utviklig mot "krypende" unntakstillstand på gang.
Og da INNENFOR de demokratiske plattformene man har.
Det dreier seg bl.a. om overvåking på personnivå ... systemer og metodikk for dette.
Stikkord: Mobiltelefon- posisjon ... og noen steder fjesgjenkjenning
Det er betryggende at Norge fikk en unntakslovgivning som var balansert.
Det er tankevekkende at det var opposisjonen på Stortinget som måtte rydde i regjeringens forslag.
Men det er på sin plass å følge dette saksområdet videre med årvåkent blikk.
Og spesielt hva systemer for individovervåking KAN bli brukt til.
- Når Storebror ser deg ....
PST har fått påpakning av EOS-utvalget på Stortinget.
Årsaken er at PST registrerte stortingsrepresentanter som var med i "vennskapsgrupper".
PST har opplyst til utvalget at registreringene ikke hadde bakgrunn i stortingsrepresentantenes politiske oppfatninger, men at grunnlaget var fremmed etterretnings særlige interesse for vennskapsgruppene på Stortinget og at registreringene var en del av det forebyggende arbeidet.
"Fremmed etterretnings særlige interesse for vennskapsgrupper".
Et litt skremmende utsagn.
Hvor langt skal PST gå?
Skal stortingsrepresentanter være unntatt .... eller ministre?
I UK i 2017 var det utviklingsminister Priti Patel som "glemte seg ut".
Hun måtte gå av etter at hun hadde reist til Israel og der privat hatt møter som intet offisielt var registrert fra:
.... "she failed to be candid with May about 14 unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a senior lobbyist." (The Guardian 8. november 2017).
På denne reisen i Israel skal Pratel hatt følge:
"She was accompanied by Lord Polak, honorary president of Conservative Friends of Israel (CFI)".
Skulle britisk etterretning hatt en profil på Pratel og Polak?
Og fulgt bedre med da det gjaldt?
Det er kanskje slik PST har tenkt.
Men i Norge må man tilpasse aktsomheten ... og ressursbruken ... til norske forhold.
