Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News: spyware

Showing posts with label spyware. Show all posts

Sunday, February 11, 2024

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 the misuse of commercial spyware from traveling to the U.S., the official added.

The timing of this announcement sure seems to indicate that this is another US salvo against Israel.

As Haaretz reports:

The new U.S. policy may also expose Israelis active in the field to new sanctions, even if they have been acting with the approval of Israeli authorities.
Sources in the Israeli cybersecurity technology ...claimed that the American decision is an attempt by the Biden administration to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in connection with the current war in Gaza.
Though the decision is a continuation of an existing policy that began with the placing of Israeli spyware manufacturers like NSO and later Intelexa on a Biden administration blacklist, the timing of the new decision – during the war in Gaza – is "disturbing," senior industry sources say.
A number of leading figures in Israeli cyber intelligence firms all agreed that the announcement had less to do with spyware and more with sending a message to Netanyahu: "Precisely like the reports on [United States] withholding ammunition, like sanctions on [extremist Jewish] settlers, this is another case of the U.S. trying to create leverage on Israel and pressure the Netanyahu government to agree to American terms," a senior Israeli cybertechnology executive told Haaretz.

We've seen since the spyware stories started coming out in 2021 that the overwhelming amount of attention was paid to Israeli spyware companies and the fact that that they are linked to Israel, even though there are similar companies throughout Europe.

And guess what? The US doesn't ban spyware use by the US government!

The Biden administration has not banned all uses of spyware within the U.S. government — the ban only covers use cases involving companies the administration deems a threat to national security, such as Cytrox, NSO Group and others.

When the decision as to who will be sanctioned is made on a "case by case basis" that means there are no rules and no consistency in applying them. This makes this policy ripe for abuse for political purposes. In fact, politics seems to be the entire reason for this policy change right now.

This isn't a national security policy, and not a policy against all spyware as a potential vector for human rights abuses. Just like the recent anti-"settler" executive order, it is a policy to send messages of displeasure to Israel, and uses spyware as a convenient excuse.

The messages are getting louder and clearer.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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. But those agreements, known as the Abraham Accords, are the diplomatic end result of an arms deal in which Israel would provide nearly all signatories with licenses to its powerful cybersurveillance technology Pegasus, as an investigation in this magazine revealed last year. “He made use of knowledge and technologies to get closer to dictators,” a former senior defense official told me.

According to this article, the Abraham Accords are just a cover for a cyber-arms deal that enriched a private Israeli firm.

This is an insane perspective. Even though written by a Tel Aviv based Jewish writer, it plays into classic antisemitic tropes. After all, she is saying that the most consequential peace deal in the region in four decades is really about Jewish greed and disregard for human rights.

The Abraham Accords deal resulted in the US selling $23 billion of arms to the UAE. Can you imagine the New York Times claiming that the US only brokered the deal our of greed to enrich US defense contractors?

Every negotiation involves give and take in an attempt to find results that benefit both parties. The Obama-brokered Iran nuclear deal gave Iran the ability to refine uranium after a time period in exchange for short-term pause (that they ignored anyway) If there is a Saudi peace agreement, the US would be giving the Saudis access to nuclear technology which is just as dual-use as spyware is, but on a quite larger scale. The downsides in both cases are merely nuclear weapons in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists facilitated by the US.

And every Western, democratic country makes compromises to their own human rights standards in order to maintain relationships with countries whose own human rights records are less than stellar.

But only for Israel are negotiations viewed through such a bizarre lens of how Israeli greed and disregard for human rights is what drives its desire to reach peace agreements with other Middle Eastern countries - countries that all happen to be repressive Muslim and Arab dictatorships to begin with.

And there are more articles in the media against Israel for allowing cyberweapons to be sold than against the regimes that abuse them.

Pegasus is a tool, like a hammer. It has legitimate uses but it also can be abused to attack dissidents, just like bullets or surveillance drones. The New York Times, though, seems to regard spyware as an exclusively Israeli, magical tool. As I noted earlier this week, when similar spyware tools to Pegasus were misused by Greece and Egypt, the New York Times didn't mention that newly blacklisted spyware developers came out of Greece, Hungary, Ireland and North Macedonia - but highlighted that two of them were headed by a former Israeli general.

The hypocrisy doesn't end there. When Israel does put restrictions on dual-use items to be transferred - meaning, when it stops items at the Gaza border that could be used to build missiles and other weapons aimed at Israeli civilians - Israel is blamed by the NYT for unfairly hurting Palestinians for no good reason.

There are no limits to the double standards Israel is subjected to by the New York Times.

(h/t Yisrael Medad)

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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 Google’s Threat Analysis Group prompted Apple to rush out operating system updates for iPhones, iPads, Mac computers and Apple Watches to patch the associated vulnerabilities.

Citizen Lab said in a blog post that attempts beginning in August to hack former Egpytian lawmaker Ahmed Altantawy involved configuring his phone’s connection to the Vodaphone Egypt mobile network to automatically infect it with Predator spyware if he visited certain websites not using the secure HTTPS protocol.

Prior to that, Citizen Lab said, attempts were made beginning in May to hack Altantawy’s phone with Predator via links in SMS and WhatsApp messages that he would have had to click on to become infected.

Once infected, the Predator spyware turns a smartphone into a remote eavesdropping device and lets the attacker siphon off data.

Given that Egypt is a known customer of Predator’s maker, Cytrox, and the spyware was delivered via network injection from Egyptian soil, Citizen Lab said it had “high confidence” Egypt’s government was behind the attack.

Notice anything missing?

Whenever the media reports on spyware from an Israeli company, they always prominently mention Israel. But when the spyware comes from a different country - in this case, North Macedonia and Hungary - no one says a word.

When Ken Roth was criticized for always mentioning Israel in connection to Pegasus spyware, when it is a private company, he justified that by saying that Israeli export laws allowed the spyware to be sold to countries that are less than paradigms of freedom and democracy. But when it comes to these other companies, the countries that allow them to sell their wares to places like Egypt are not even mentioned in the articles, or by Roth.

Earlier this year, the US Department of Commerce announced they were blacklisting four spyware firms:

Today, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) added four entities, Intellexa S.A. in Greece, Cytrox Holdings Crt in Hungary, Intellexa Limited in Ireland, and Cytrox AD in North Macedonia to the Entity List for trafficking in cyber exploits used to gain access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.

Where were all the anguished articles about how Greece and Hungary and Ireland and North Macedonia were peddling tools to repressive governments to target dissidents?

They were never written. But the New York Times did cover part of this story - by highlighting not the countries that allowed these exports, but the Israeli connection to two of the four companies.

If spyware doesn't come from Israel, or is not connected to Israel, the media's interest in the stories plummets to practically nothing.

This is the textbook definition of media bias.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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 people who are actually using it illegally.

As the NYT notes, Pegasus helped bring down El Chapo, and the Mexican authorities have been using it to take down other major Mexican drug cartels. This is the intended use of the spyware, and in all probability it is still being used for that purpose in Mexico.

But the Mexican government has also been using it in illegal ways using it to spy on political opponentsand other human rights abuses.

NSO Group is a business. While Israel's Defense Ministry must approve any exports of spyware, refusing to sell it to a country that uses it for both valid and invalid purpose is not a clear cut decision - refusal could create an international incident. It would be the exact equivalent of the US not allowing Mexico to buy any firearms from American manufacturers.

In fact, weapons from the US have not only been linked to Mexican security forces human rights abuses, but also to the murderous drug cartels themselves.

What is the moral difference between Mexico buying spyware from an Israeli company and Mexican human rights abusers and criminals buying weapons from US manufacturers?

By any yardstick, selling weapons is worse. Spyware cannot kill anyone.

So why has the world been obsessed with Israel's responsibility to block spyware sales to countries like Mexico but there are only sporadic articles about actual weapons sales to both Mexico and countries that are far worse?

While the New York Times article castigates Mexican authorities for their illegal use of spyware, it also prominently features Israel's very indirect role in those abuses nearly as much. In fact, the featured photo at the top of the article doesn't show the Mexican abusers or victims of the spyware - but the Israeli headquarters of NSO Group.

Can you imagine a news story about a person murdered with a Glock pistol featuring a photo of the factory in Austria that manufactured it? That is what the New York Times is doing here.

In yet more evidence that former Human Rights Watch head Ken Roth prioritizes attacking Israel over combating actual human rights abuses, his tweet about this article only blames Israel for Mexican crimes:

I'm not saying that Israel is blameless. One can argue that selling to Mexico is immoral - but one can easily argue the opposite, since NSO gets signed pledges from its buyers that they would not do what Mexico is indeed doing and Mexico is also using the spyware to save countless lives from drugs. Demanding that a nation that exports tools that can be used for both good and evil should proactively distrust and police countries it has diplomatic relationships with is quite an ask, and lightyears beyond what is expected in any other context.

This story's focus, and Ken Roth's takeaway from it, proves that no nation on Earth is expected to be as responsible for their actions - even the unintended, indirect results of their actions - as Israel is.

Which is as blatant a double standard as can be.

Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism today at Amazon!

Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.

Read all about it here!

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 article shows that Israel made some decisions on who Pegasus can be exported to based on diplomatic considerations. From Panama to Mexico to the UAE and Saudi Arabia, although there was rarely an explicit quid pro quo, Israel reaped major benefits from allowing potential allies to use the tool. The article even says that Saudi Arabia opening its airspace to Israeli planes last year was a response to NSO renewing its license with the monarchy.

Every country makes decisions based primarily its own best interests, above human rights issues. That is the way it has always been and the way it will always be.

Cyberweapons, like all weapons, are tools than can be used for good or ill. Pegasus has helped nations do great things - and horrible things.

Who makes the decision as to where to draw the line? When critics of Israel like Human Rights Watch spend time and effort to only go after Israel's diplomatic use of NSO, and ignores the fact that every nation does the exact same thing with their own assets, it is showing that human rights isn't its main focus. One can argue with Israel's decisions - and one can be sure that those arguments already were hashed out inside Israel itself.

The one who uses the tool is the one who has the responsibility for how it is used. Mexico can use Pegasus against drug cartels and against critics of the government, to blame Israel for Mexico's decision is simply another manifestation of antisemitism. One can argue that Israel should make different choices, but where are HRW's tweets against Mexico without mentioning Israel for how they use spyware? There aren't any.

NSO is in talks to be sold to a US company. Does anyone think that the US wouldn't use the tool as a means of diplomacy the way every other tool and weapon is today? Every nation weighs the costs and benefits of these decisions.

More nations are at peace with Israel today because of Pegasus - even though they haven't the greatest human rights records. Is a state of war better than peace because a tool can be misused? Every nation has to make their own decisions as to what is best for their own people. That should be obvious.

Only when Israel uses tools like this for diplomatic reasons does it become a "human rights" issue. And when Israel is singled out for doing what everyone else does, that is antisemitism.

(h/t Yoel)

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 another Israeli company, Candiru, acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States,” the Commerce Department said, a striking accusation against a business that operates under the direct supervision of the Israeli government.

It is definitely newsworthy to say that two Israeli companies are sanctioned for marketing spyware. Yet as I pointed out months ago, there are plenty of other companies that do the same thing worldwide, and no one seems to have a problem with them.

Twenty paragraphs into the article concentrating on NSO, we read:

NSO was one of four companies that were blacklisted on Wednesday.

Candiru, another Israeli firm, was sanctioned based on evidence that it supplied spyware to foreign governments. Positive Technologies of Russia, which was targeted with sanctions last April for its work with Russian intelligence, and Computer Security Initiative Consultancy of Singapore were added to the list for trafficking in hacking tools, according to the Commerce Department’s announcement.

I didn't see anyone make a big deal over a Singapore company being sanctioned for selling hacking tools (besides in Singapore itself.). Most articles didn't mention that at all.

Giving the other two companies more attention would lessen the goal of associating Israel with spyware, so the Times ignores putting things in context,

The NYT also praises President Biden, saying "The ban is the strongest step an American president has taken to curb abuses in the global market for spyware, which has gone largely unregulated. "

The Commerce Department announcement itself doesn't mention Biden. It only mentions one president whose orders allowed them to make this move:

Export Control Reform Act of 2018
On August 13, 2018, the President signed into law the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2019, which included the Export Control Reform Act of 2018 (ECRA) (50 U.S.C. 4801-4852). ECRA provides the legal basis for BIS’s principal authorities and serves as the authority under which BIS issues this rule.

Who was president in 2018 again?

Context.

Now, a reporter might wonder, how many companies are on the US Department of Commerce Entity List for potentially selling items that might compromise national security?

Just joking. No reporter asked that question. But if they did, they would find a document that is 475 pages long that lists over 1700 companies.

As you might expect, hundreds of them are Chinese. But you might be surprised to see that over 35 of them are based in the UK, 20 in Germany and 24 in Canada.

11 of them are Israeli.

Has anyone darkly accused Canada, Britain or Germany of being enemies of the US because they host so many companies on the Commerce Department list?

No. Only Israel is singled out for such scrutiny.

Even though there is a bustling cyber-arms industry worldwide - here's one headquartered in Italy and one in England, for example - no one accuses their host countries of being complicit in how the software is are used.

Only Israel gets such reporting.

The lack of context in stories like this is irresponsible and it betrays the antipathy that the media has against Israel.