New US anti-spyware policy appears to be motivated by animus towards Israel

Axios reported last week:The State Department will start restricting visas Monday for people who are believed to be linked to misuses of commercial spyware.The State Department plans to decide who would fall under this category on a case-by-case basis, a senior administration official told reporters.The visa restrictions would prevent those who have profited from or facilitated...

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At the @NYTimes, things that are normal for every other country become nefarious when Israel does them

In a long New York Times Magazine profile of Benjamin Netanyahu by Ruth Margalit, we see this:Admirers credit Netanyahu with “changing the paradigm” around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Boaz Bismuth, a Likud lawmaker, told me. Netanyahu did so by effectively bypassing the Palestinians and signing normalization agreements with other Arab countries in the region....

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Reporting on spyware shows the underlying anti-Israel bias of the media

From AP:BOSTON (AP) — A leading Egyptian opposition politician was targeted with spyware multiple times after announcing a presidential bid — including with malware that automatically infects smartphones, security researchers have found. They say Egyptian authorities were likely behind the attempted hacks.Discovery of the malware last week by researchers at Citizen Lab and...

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The latest Pegasus story shows yet again the double standards applied to Israel

The New York Times published an investigative report into how Mexico has been using the powerful spyware tool Pegasus against its political opponents. Pegasus is a tool. Like a hammer, a gun or a woodchipper,  it can be used legally or illegally. But its Israeli origins have made people make it sound like Israel is more responsible for its illegal use than the...

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The hypocrisy around NSO

The New York Times Magazine is publishing a long report on NSO and spyware this weekend. it shows how the FBI had shown interest in the tool and how the CIA paid for NSO to sell the spyware to Djibouti. The major issues with NSO Pegasus is that the spyware can and has been used for human rights abuses. It has also been used by governments to crack terrorism and drug rings. The...

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The context that reporters are not bothering to mention in the NSO story

From the New York Times:In a remarkable breach with Israel over one of its most successful technology companies, the Biden administration on Wednesday blacklisted the NSO Group, saying the company knowingly supplied spyware that has been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and others.The firm, and...

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