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.
Klart angrep på demokratiet: Hemmelig overvåking av opposisjonen. Nå også i Europa ... angis det ... av den sittende regjering i Polen:
The Verge 27.12.2021 "Spyware scandal rocks Polish government" "Researchers find new evidence of Pegasus spyware targeting opposition leaders."
Og den israelske avsien Haaretz peker på Netanyahu:
Haaretz 3.1.2022: "Poland Purchased NSO's Pegasus After Netanyahu Meeting, Report Says" "A string of reports published two weeks ago reveal that at least three prominent Polish opposition figures had their phones hacked using NSO's Pegasus in recent years."
Da er spionasjone på politiske motstandere kommet til Europa. Hva bør følgene være for de ansvarlige i Polen og Israel?
EDIT: 28. januar 2022 Og nå på telefonene til finske diplomater: "Finnish diplomats targeted with Pegasus spyware - ministry" (Reuters)
Økende søkelys mot selskaper som selger dataverktøy for data-spionasje:
The Guardian 16. desember 2021: "Facebook bans seven ‘cyber mercenary’ companies from its platforms" "Company will also send warnings to 48,000 people believed to be targeted by malicious activity after investigation."
Haaretz 21. desember 2021: "‘Cyber Mercenaries’: Israel’s Spyware Industry Is Getting Slammed Around the World "U.S. blacklisting and scathing reports by Google and Facebook-owner Meta are only some of the steps being taken against Israeli firms that are not being properly supervised by agencies at home."
................................
To selskaper svartelistet i USA av myndighetene der. Og nå melding til 48.000 FB-brukere at de må sjekke om 7 navngitte selskaper har infisert datautstyret deres. Samtidig som tusenvis av falske kontoer disse selskapene har benyttet er fjernet av Facebook.
Målgruppen for spionasje er bl.a.. journalister og menneskerettighets-forkjempere i land med diktatorisk styre.
Dette er begynnelsen på en nødvendig opprydding.
Der USA går foran.
Men flere land må følge opp. Og forsterkes med nødvendig lovgivning slik at ulovlig aktivitet kan straffeforfølges
"Israel, Spyware and Corruption: NSO Ties to Netanyahu, Bennett and Other Politicians"
"NSO's story is a political one which begins with Israel's prime minister, seeps down to other ministers and reaches the very heart of the culture and the actions of the government". (Haaretz 15.11.2021)
"Israel, spionasje og korrupsjon". Den ene etter den andre av ledende israelske politikere knyttes til saken. Der NSO/Israel er blitt en leverandør til udemokratiske og undertrykkende regimer verden rundt. Så disse kan overvåke og fengsle ... ja drepe regimemotstandere.
Dette er så graverende at mer søkelys må settes på. USA har gått foran ... men flere land må følge opp med svartelisting.
Dette må ikke minst kreves av de som kaller seg "Israels Venner."
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
18. juli 2021 En analyse kalt "The Pegasus Project" har funnet at det israelske spionsystemet "Pegasus" fra leverandøren NSO har vist omfattende misbruk mot journalister verden rundt:
"NSO's Pegasus: The Israeli Cyber Weapon Oppressive Regimes Used Against 180 Journalists"
Undertrykkende regimer har her fått et verktøy til å spionere på kritiske røster.
Og som kjnet gikk Saudi Arabia så langt at de drepte og parterte Khashoggi i Tyrkia
Her følger noen tidligere hendelser relatert til NSO:
14. jan 2020 Amnesty
Israel: Stop NSO Group exporting spyware to human rights abusers
16. jan 2020
Sak i Israel om NSO Groups eksporttillatelse ... lukkes selv om Amnesty ønsker den åpen
University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab has linked NSO’s cellphone hacking
software, Pegasus, to tracking human rights activists in Saudi Arabis,
Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
In
October, Facebook, through its WhatsApp subsidiary, sued NSO in a US
federal court in California, alleging it illegally hacked the phones of
around 1,400 users on four continents.
.............................................
Konklusjon:
Presset mot leverandøren NSO Group må økes.
Og mot de israelske myndighetene som godkjenner salgene til undertrykkende regimer.
EDIT:
3. november 2021:
USA svartelister NSO.
28. januar 2022:
Artikkel i NY Times og Haaretz. Netanyahu har personlig gjenåpnet NSO-lisensen til Saudi-Arabia (lisensen var inndradd etter likvideringen av Khashoggi).
Skudeneshavn 18. juli 2021 / 3. november 2021 / 28. januar 2022
App'en "ToTok" kom på markedert for bare noen måneder siden.
Og er blitt lastet ned av millioner av brukere ... som en gratis chatte-app.
I virkeligheten er det en SPION-app utviklet av de hemmelige tjenester i UAE - De Forente Arabiske Emirater.
En arikkel i NY Times 23. desember angir hvor lett man har kunnet utvikle appen.
Tidligere måtte man gå via kjøpte spionløsninger som israelske "Pegasus" fra NSO Group.
Nå kan man utvikle dette selv.
I oktober 2019 ble det meldt at UAE-selskapet "Dark Matter" hadde hyret inn israelske eksperter ... veteraner fra den israelske spionenheten Unit 82000 og gitt disse millionlønninger ... i dollar:
"Mysterious UAE Cyber Firm Luring ex-Israeli Intel Officers With Astronomical Salaries"
(Haaretz 16. oktober 2019)
Nå er tydeligvis produktet ferdig: ToTok.
Hensikten med ToTok er i utgangspunktet å overvåke UAE-borgere ... deres gjøren og laden ... hvor de er ... og hvem de kontakter. I virkeligheten får man informasjon fra ALLE bruker av appen ... verden rundt.
ToTok-appen har vært tilgjengelig både via Apple og Google.
Det vil det bli slutt på.
Og alle brukere av ToTok må slette den.
Ellers vet de Forente Arabiske Emirater alt om deg.
Israelsk telefon-avlyttingsutstyr .... misbrukes det av av Saudi-Arabia?
Så påstås det i en NY Times artikkel 3. desember 2018.
En venn i Canada av den myrdede Khashoggi påstår hans telefon er avlyttet av Saudi-Arabia.
Dermed har man fått adgang til hans utvekslinger med Khashoggi.
Og besluttet å "ta ham".
Resten av Khashoggi-historien kjenner vi.
Systemet Saudi-Arabia har brukt er kjøpt av det israelske firmaet NSO Group.
Det er utviklet i Israel ... for å avsløre terror.
Og så selges det til utlandet... og kan tydeligvis brukes OVER landegrensene.
Og tydeligvis til å overvåke dem man vil.
Den store saken akkurat nå i USA er:
- Hvem overvåket Jeff Bezos? ... Amazon-eieren og verdens rikeste mann ...
Og fikk tak i tekst og bilder av hans sidesprang. Bezos selv peker mot "a foreign government".
Og hvem bestilte overvåkingen? ... Noen piler peker via det amerikanske sladderbladet "National Enquirer" mot Donald Trump.
Tilbake til israelske NSO Group.
Firmaet har solgt systemet til Saudi-Arabia for 55 mill dollar: "NSO’s “Pegasus” spyware permits users to listen to calls; read messages
and internet activity; and record subjects through their phone camera
and microphone." (JPost 3.12.2018).
Salget er godkjent av israelske myndigheter, men Amnesty International protesterer: “Amnesty International will not stand idly by as companies such as NSO
Group profit from selling their invasive Pegasus software to repressive
states around the world,” said Danna Ingleton, deputy director of
Amnesty International Tech. (JPost 3.12.2018).
Så spørs det vel hvilke andre regimer "Pegasus" er solgt til.
Og hva det eventuelt misbrukes til der også ...
Kanskje israelske myndigheter skulle orientere hvilke land/regimer de har gitt eksportlisens til?
Ellers husker vi "Stuxnet" fra 2010... der USA og Israel med cyber-angrep slo fysisk ut iranske atomkraftanlegg.
Og så har vi skjønt at systemverktøyet "WannaCry" fra 2017 som utløste "løsepenger- hacker-angrep" ... det er lekket ut fra USAs sikkerhetsmyndigheter.
Men egentlig er det vel Huawei vi skal være obs på?
