It is increasingly bizarre in my opinion how this company (and others like Toka) can run active terrorist operations, that if anyone else smaller was doing some of the same hacks they would be in prison for a very long time.
People have lost their lives due to these pariahs!
Israel already has a massive PR issue with other countries, it would do them well to reign in these offensive front arms of their government/'companies.'
Citizen Labs is really a great thing for civilization. There are not enough altruistic organizations.
The basic issue is that every nation is actively buying and using zero-days and doesn't want to stop. And companies like NSO aren't really (so they say at least) hacking anybody. They just develop and license hacking tools to governments to use for "lawful" law enforcement purposes. So nobody wants to ban the zero-day market because every country is a huge buyer of zero-days themselves and it is hard to ban selling zero-days to sovereign governments who are using them in accordance with their own laws (even if the regimes in question are terrible and using them to violate their citizens basic human rights). After all, it would be a bit awkward for the US to demand that the NSO Group stop selling it's hacking tools to Saudi Arabia while we have a multi-billion dollar defense industry selling the Saudis all sorts of advanced weaponry.
> Israel already has a massive PR issue with other countries,
But for these middle eastern countries Israel selling them exploits which allow them to spy on dissidents may actually improve relations by helping out regimes which would otherwise be sworn enemies of theirs…
People have lost their lives due to these pariahs!
Israel already has a massive PR issue with other countries, it would do them well to reign in these offensive front arms of their government/'companies.'
Citizen Labs is really a great thing for civilization. There are not enough altruistic organizations.