It is more subtle that that. Patent holders who contributed to the 3G/4G/5G standards agree to make their standards essential patents available under FRAND terms. However, this does not apply to patent holders who have not contributed to the 3G/4G/5G standards (because they are not part of any agreement about patent licensing terms for the standard).
It would be interesting if everybody just pulled an Elon and when Wapo asked for comment they would just say something like "Tell Jeff we say hi". It completely takes the moral high ground from the journalists.
NSO Group is dead at this point. They fucked with the wrong people. Hacking human rights advocates is fine but when Presidents and PMs start getting their phones hacked I am sure they will implement legislation to outlaw this type of software.
It’s an Israeli weapon, subject to arms control legislation. But that legislation can only be authored by Israel itself. So it doesn’t matter what other countries outlaw, Israel will continue to authorise NSO to sell the software to state actors around the world.
Israel could always do with an extra friend or two and providing this software gains them a friend while costing them nothing.
It really doesn't cost them nothing - it makes them the target to offensive operations of other states. I'd be very, very surprised if NSO itself isn't hacked.
Um, they kind of are? Or at least think they are? Any sort of international pressure is met with cries of 'anti-semitism' which quickly shuts down anyone. It is used to combat the BDS movement, which itself is intended to put pressure on Israel over the occupation of Palestine. A non-violent option similar to what happened with South Africa.
The only overtly pro-nomatterwhat-Israel government is the United States so at most 1 of the 193 countries in the United Nations would avoid regulating NSO on international relations grounds.
Allies are allies because of strategic positioning, and many of Israel's proximal allies are authoritarian nations who have interest in this kind of technology. Israel's strategic value hardly shifted at all from this slate of embarrassing news.
I'd guess that those same presidents will call them up and buy. They'd rather be a customer than try and change a behemoth with political power like these guys.
Unlikely. If anything this is good PR: look we have this great tool that can hack anything and we will totally sell it to shit countries run by tin pot dictators.
The only way this backfires is if somebody sends men with guns after them.
What evidence is there that a PM has been hacked? Their number was on the list but haven't seen anything about Pegasus having been found on their devices.
On the contrary, a rejection rate that low implies rubber-stamping, prima facie. You would need positive evidence to support your assertion, e.g. that FISA submissions are unusually high-quality. The actual case is, I am sure, that the system was constructed to make allowing the warrant to be easy, rejecting it hard, and the people involved are just responding to incentives. Namely, since it's all secret they are only accountable to each other, so why give each other a hard time?
>a rejection rate that low implies rubber-stamping, prima facie. You would need positive evidence to support your assertion
I've deftly avoided ever taking a class in statistics, but I have gathered there are two schools - Bayesians, who are honest about having priors, and everyone else.
Their biggest customers are middle eastern governments according to the WaPo article. US certainly has bought the software but it's mostly Saudi, UAE, Qatar, etc. US has NSA so they don't really need some software. Middle eastern powers dont have the same type of technical expertise to develop their own in-house.
> So should we considered the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization
This statement needs the "we" defined to be meaningful.
If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state. If "we"` is e.g. China, probably no, because words have meanings and the arms of recognized foreign states don't conduct terrorism, they do espionage and they do war. If "we" is a freshman dorm room, then, of course, the NSA is a terrorist organization alongside the student government.
> > So should we considered the NSA a terrorism-aiding organization
> If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state.
Its perhaps worth noting that “terrorism” originally exclusively denoted action by the State against its own subjects, though it was within a few years expanded to include other activities.
> “terrorism” originally exclusively denoted action by the State against its own subjects
Correct, in the French Revolution, I believe. There are a variety of definitions of terrorism. The common elements seem to be the (a) peacetime use (b) of violence (c) against non-combatants (d) as a political tool. There also seems to be an unspoken requirement that it occurred after the formation of modern states (otherwise almost all of the preceding human history was terrorism and the word gets normalized); the French Revolution is a useful line.
The NSA targets non-combatants (c) in peacetime (a). It does not use violence (b), though it does enable it (⅓b). It does not do so for domestic political aims (to any proven degree); the degree to which it does so abroad depends on where one draws the line between politics and geopolitics. (The CIA, in contrast, engages in all four overseas.)
When an organization that has done terrorism becomes a terrorist organization is another question.
> If it is the U.S., then obviously no, the NSA is an arm of the state.
Some here in the states don't exactly feel like the people running the USG have the people's best interests at heart. Common folk across countries probably have more in common with each other than with the ruling elite.
State-sponsored terrorism is a thing - and has been for a LONG time. And US citizens are targets as well as non-citizens.
There is a community on reddit called "self-aware wolves" that narrowly identifies a much broader phenomenon: there are many elements of modern society which are generally tolerated but not morally permissible. This is a representative instance.
There would need to be some actual violence involved to constitute terrorism. If you spy on some journalist and then us that info to catch him and cut him in pieces while he's still alive, then the dismemberment may be considered terrorism and the spying was aiding that terrorism; if you spy on many people and the end result is just that some officers laugh about their naked photos or deny them jobs or disallow crossing borders, then that's just "ordinary" mass surveillance with no relationship to terrorism.
The NSA does not illegally spy. Congress has given them large authorizations to collect data and they need FISA approval before tapping Americans. 99.9% of the good work that NSA does will never be seen by the public.
1. There are many, many more Western countries other than the US.
2. Even if they develop their own tools and research their exploits, using NSO provides a layer of plausible deniability and hiding behind someone else's fingerprint (think about the command and control servers, for example).
3. Even if they develop their own stuff, most governments have multiple arms which can use these tools (think about FBI, CIA, NSA, various military intelligence branches), and they tend not to share between them. This makes smaller government branches which don't have the resources and expertise of the others (think DEA, ATF...) buy from 3rd parties.
4. Zero days are a scarce resource, if I ran an agency I'd rather use someone else's every day and keep my own just for the special stuff.
In summary, it's exceedingly appealing for bodies like the Dutch police to use NSO tools and NSO's association with the Saudis and other provides a convenient masking to their operations.
In addition you are comparing somebody who has insurance (slovenia) to somebody who theoretically doesn't 'US'. Most people in the US get their health insurance through their employer and would pay nothing out of pocket, and if you are uninsuranced the drug companies will often times just give the drug away to you for free.
Even if you have really good health insurance, you often pay out of pocket.
> if you are uninsuranced the drug companies will often times just give the drug away to you for free.
This is horribly incorrect. People die for lack of insulin in the US all the time, and it's not because they just didn't bother to ask for their free insulin.
