Item — HN Reader

> The truth is that strongly encrypted platforms are often used by pedophile rings, drug kingpins, and terrorists to shield their criminal activity.

> Without sophisticated technologies, the law enforcement agencies meant to keep us all safe face insurmountable hurdles.

> NSO's technologies provide proportionate, lawful solutions to this issue.

Funny how the same technologies meant to protect children are also being used to intimidate researchers and kill dissidents and journalists. Nobody could possibly have foreseen this!

4 comments

Let's not forget, totalitarian governments are way, way more dangerous for its citizens than any kind of criminals.

This should be upvoted. While the net deaths from murders, drug overdoses, and manslaughter of various cases might be a really high number, they are not even close to what a single government can do in a year or a nuclear-armed government can do in a few minutes.

In regards to the whole NSO thing, I’m completely baffled how their principals and employees are not on a sanctions list and don’t have arrest warrants out for them. Consider how much trouble non-malicious hackers have gotten in for pointing out security holes publicly. What we have here is a company actively conducting espionage against some of the most valuable public companies in the United States. Even more egregious, they are targeting those companies’ customers, illegally.

>>>In regards to the whole NSO thing, I’m completely baffled how their principals and employees are not on a sanctions list and don’t have arrest warrants out for them.

Lemme see if I can communicate this without committing karmic suicide like the other responder.... putting an Israeli cybersecurity firm on a sanctions list, or issuing arrest warrants, is simply a political non-starter in the US. It would be career suicide for most Congresspeople to take such a position.

> I’m completely baffled how their principals and employees are not on a sanctions list and don’t have arrest warrants out for them.

The parties responsible with sanctions and warrants are their clients.

all fighter jet principals and employees should have arrest warrants out for them. those damn fighter jets makers, killing people around the world with their jets. I mean, what did they think they are making a fighter jet for, they chose to work there and should have known the risks of being in the jet fighter business.

Also funny that it's not so hard to find pedophile material, drugs and people associated with terrorism _outside of the strong encrypted platforms_.

Yeah, that's the part that seems to get dropped in the discourse. Even when these vices had well-known places to gather - like the Silk Road, for example - they still leaked through into the world. But, after some of the most prominent platforms got busted, they're now scattered, so of course, some will try to get on encrypted platforms.

It's the same as a social media platform dying. Kik's recent demise undoubtedly brought a bunch of teens onto similar apps while some maybe reverted back to Facebook.

Funny how most of those could easily be eliminated by other means... drug kingpins by legalizing drugs, and terrorists (to a large extent) by stronger KYC requirements (which are already being implemented). But, of course, those measures don't provide ability to spy on your political opponents and dissidents / journalists.

This shouldn't be such a big surprise to those who inform themselves about the war business and its criminal usurpation of democracy in the West.

The same legal machinations that are used to suppress free speech in the West, especially regarding Western military failures, are also being used to suppress reporting on Julian Assange's torture in Bellmarsh today.

We have well and truly slipped.