"In 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided he needed to jump-start his country’s cyberindustry, unrolling a series of measures to allow veterans of Israel’s version of the National Security Agency, known as Unit 8200, to create private businesses."
Ms. Weinberger, I am afraid that you are not really aware of certain realities.
Israeli veterans are civilians (even if they still do reserve duty). They can open whatever businesses they want, as long as their pursuit is not criminal. Veterans of 8200 were in high tech since the 1990s, such as Gil Shwed, founder of Check Point and billionaire. He was on the cover of Forbes in 2002 (!). He is and was not alone. All legal, all public and above board.
There are alumni associations for veterans of 8200. They network, publicly. Check them out on FB.
One alumnae association for instance is for young women:
https://www.w2w8200.com/
This mentors women veterans from 8200 in high tech, business, industry and much more. All out in the open.
The special task force you refer to is linked to the FB page of the Prime Minister, big secret and read why it was established.
You can see conspiracy where you will but your reference cited above is way off mark.
5
Ah...9-11.
The Patriot Act, at the time, seemed a matter of closing the barn door after the calves had escaped: an exaggerated response to a rear view mirror event. I had not counted on the corporate world where a disdain for human dignity combined with a sacred duty to maximize profit keeps wrecking havoc on humanity.
9
Wow, just wow. This article really puts it all out there. Big Brother, here, there, everywhere.
7
Yes privacy can be regained. Look at 1940's Germany. They got is back and so will we.
1
This is called "supply and demand" and it is as old as the hills. If Americans and the Israelis don't do it, then the Russians, Iranians, Chinese, and North Koreans will.
Personally, I'd rather that we be at the forefront of such activity -- and reap all the political and intelligence benefits from such activity -- than our enemies.
1
I would side on the side of Mr. Snowden. He did this world a great service by providing the information to us as to what is really going on in the use of technology and its abusive uses.
Perhaps the US Government should hire Mr. Snowden to fix the problems, instead of demonizing him
This cat has already been let out of the bag. Is it realistic to think we can put it back in?
9
Eisenhower had it right. The military-industrial complex in all its manifestations will be the death of us all. From arms-dealing profits, to surveillance industry profits, to oil industry profits, the tentacles reach around and into many sectors of our economy and throughout our government. I don't know how we stop this march of greed and destruction.
12
"But Ms. Galperin still believes the legal system offers one of the best tools for holding people and governments accountable for spying." Given the observed behaviors of AG Barr, Acosta of Epstein fame, and many others in the legal system why should anybody think that money and power would not create work-rounds in the DoJ or courts for those who break cyber spying laws.
Regular people see what the press exposes when it comes to how money and power bend and shape the rule of law in favor of the wealthy and powerful. Two cases in point, both reported by the NYTs:
1. Don Trump Jr. could have been charge with a felony by NYC DA Cyrus Vance Jr. but he was not. It appears a legal bribe, aka campaign contribution, was made and poof no charges.
2. Don Trump Jr. could be charged with a felony for his involvement in a campaign finance scheme orchestrated by the President, and poof no charges. Who knows why Jr. was not charged; however, the likely explanation is that AG Barr put his hand on the scales of justice.
Honest staffers and Congresspeople work hard to write enforceable laws; however, the 1% and wealthy corporations can use our system of legalized bribery, recently enhanced by the Robert's Court, to ensure Congress does a poor job of passing enforceable laws. Therefore, any cyber spying law that congress may pass will be nothing more than a fig leaf and it will be business as usual for the wealthy and powerful.
"We have met the enemy and he is us." Pogo
8
@old soldier
Re regular people and wealthy people:One recalls then Director Comes announcing the decision not to indict then Sec of State Clinton, stating (I paraphrase) "This decision is not to be taken as indication that other citizens engaged in similar actions and circumstances would not be prosecuted."
Corporations have no loyalty to our country or our people. Oh, they will wrap themselves in the flag to get government contracts or to support Trump or to get bailed out or get tax breaks but the truth is their loyalty is to profit. Any CEO whose corporation sells these products to any country but the USA should go to jail. This should also apply to any government official who collided with them to do so including the PRESIDENT!
Let’s face it we the tax payers pay for most of the development of these military grade technologies but we get nothing in return not even taxes!
3
@Justice Holmes
Happy to endorse your sentient, but as I read the article, all the nefarious actions and manipulations described happened another another president's term of office. Needn't you be more expansive in your presidential ire and retribution desires? (I did not vote for DT, did vote for BO.)
3
I'm 67 years old now and in all my life, I've never thought about setting anyone on fire. Until Epstein.
3
It’s a weapon? The NRA will argue any regulation is prohibited under the 2nd Amendment.
3
I recently bought a new DVR to accommodate a higher-resolution CCTV camera (5mp) I wanted to install on my front gate. Going through the setup menus, I was surprised to see a new feature "VCA Menu", which offers these options:
Behavior Search
FaceSearch
Plate Search
People Counter
Heat Map
The DVR is from HikVision, a huge Chinese company that pretty much owns middle-high end CCTV market. None of those features is useful to me and some require special cameras but as a consumer-level buyer I was surprised to see these options.
4
Until the leaders of both political parties have stopped paying fealty to the companies whose technology is intrinsically antidemocratic and grotesquely invasive, I will practice commercial disobedience.
My commercial disobedience takes several forms:
I have never owned a smartphone (and I ultimately abandoned my old flipphone as well). I also will no longer talk to anyone on their smartphone. I only send personal email from a European based service which offers end to end encryption. I won't send email to people who use services like Gmail or Hotmail. I browse the internet from behind one or more virtual private networks. I block all identifiable surveillance companies (e.g., Amazon, Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Verizon, etc.) at both my router and my computer. I run the NoScript add on to insure that I only run JavaScripts (often used for browser finger printing) that are sourced to trusted vendors. Even this comment (which required surrendering information about my digital identity by way of Google's authentication protocol) is being submitted from behind a VPN on a sandboxed guest account on a secondary computer.
As someone who spent the entire second half of the nineties immersed in the exciting possibilities inherent in the early days of the internet, these were incredibly difficult choices for me to make. But it's the only way I know to show other people how serious the stakes are and, more importantly, how close we are to reaching a point of no return.
9
Sometimes it is helpful to ignore the tactics and techniques of a particular threat to our privacy and to our national security. We need to focus on the impact of the threat and consider how we have dealt with similar impacts in the past.
If, instead of cyberattacks and email hacking, a foreign power or a private company working for that power planted agents in the United States to follow us, intercept our mail and search our homes while we were out, we would call the police. They might call the Postal Service or the F.B.I. to investigate.
There is a good chance that our local and federal agents would track down, arrest, prosecute and imprison the thieves and extortionists. Then, our Department of Justice or State Department would formally protest to the sponsoring foreign power and probably impose sanctions.
We are not helpless. Even if, in the case of cyberattacks, the identities of the individual persons carrying out the wishes of the foreign government are never discovered, all our leaders need is the political will to protect us.
"He heard that the business went to an Israeli firm"
It would seem unlikely that Israel would want to deal with a country like this.
It could be they did but planted something in the equipment that fed information back to them. I do wonder at times how these international sales can ever be on the up and up with so many competing interests.
I can remember pre cell phone era and finding a pay phone to answer pages. People now ask which cell phone I like better (I phone, Android, etc.). my reply is always it is not the phone. the first question should be to answer who is it you want collecting data about you. whose privacy policy or collection policy can you tolerate.
5
When toll booths started to offer EZpass, I passed on it. Sure, I could save a few pennies, but at the expense of 1. job loss for toll booth operators and 2. my privacy. With EZpass, insurance companies would be able to buy where I was going and at what speed. Sorry, that information belongs to me. I don't have to be breaking the law for my information to be an open book. I also not have to pay for the pleasure of that.
I cannot stop it, particularly with the present corporate capture of government; but I don't have to volunteer.
Privacy may seem like a small price to pay for convenience, but once it is gone it won't come back without a fight to the death.
I am not your product.
31
@nora m
Doesn't matter they photograph your license plate. The jobs were eliminated anyway as technology advanced.
2
That's mostly a pointless gesture at the codt of ypur convenience, there are still license plate readers everywhere. You can't opt out of mass surveillance. (NYC already has platw readers at all of the bridges and tunnels into the city)
4
Given the pervasive and expanding availability of surveillance technology, it would only be prudent to assume that the major intelligence/counterintelligence agencies of the major military & economic powers are expanding their capabilities as rapidly as the need for secrecy allows. The national and corporate organizations with the best intentions are compelled by the need to defend their citizens and investors against the hostile and unethical initiatives of their adversaries. These operators are inevitably functioning at the edge of the moral and political acceptability under the best of circumstances. Without a doubt, democracies and the rule of law are subject to vigorous attack by the authoritarians, both internal and external, that strive to expand their power. As the Technology of Repression gains the upper hand over democracy, our future is in danger of evolving without any of the freedoms that we all cherish.
19
I've been following the excellent articles comprising The Privacy Project, and I think one of the most surprising, and frightening, aspects of the series is the low number of comments some of these articles have gotten. This excellent article, to date, has 48 comments. Unbelievable. This says a lot about our culture, what we value, and what we don't. Alarming.
31
@David--As with politics,most people are so busy trying to keep body and soul together, that they don't have time to pay attention to this, or most other, issues that should be extremely important to them. This is the main reason for our corporate-owned government to keep people struggling for their lives, and keep them uninformed about the threats to their freedom, that are growing in our country, and across the world.
16
@ChesBay
And to keep us all "entertained"--occupying our minds with games, cat videos, reality TV, NetFlix, FB, Twitter spats, etc. Reading and absorbing investigative reporting like the Privacy Project requires focus and effort. So we spend most of our time working soul-crushing jobs at subsistence wages, return home exhausted and demoralized, and then numb out on the drug of entertainment. Anyone still trying to question corporate authority is easily detected by analyzing the data collected by Alexa, SimpliSafe and other 24-hour spies we pay to install in our homes.
5
Capitalists don't care about consequences. Profit is the only concern.
16
@Vinson but the rub is that systems other than capitalism require government controls. And this article makes it clear that both private and public entities have agendas that don't really prioritize individual liberty.
3
Patrica J, all economic systems require government control.
Don’t agree?
Go to an auto lot, take a car for test drive, and just keep it. See what happens.
Or see what happens if you break a confidentiality agreement with an employer.
Go to a hot dog stand, order a hot dog, take it, and don’t pay.
I think you will find that our capitalist government has a lot of government control over what you do, at least so long as it involves protecting business interests.
1
I recall when Lockheed Martin contracted with city and county municipalities to have their technology, the red-light camera, a ticketing scheme that would snap photos of unsuspecting drivers caught in the middle of intersections. Sometimes the YELLOW light would have a shortened time cycle, thus a red light would pop-up quicker. Most of the time, they were located in very large, and/or confusing intersections. They would snap photos in rapid secession from more than one angle.
You might see a flash go off and wonder “what was that?” Then get a citation delivered to the registered owner of the vehicle. They would ask you to identify who was driving if it wasn’t you. One time my father in-law dropped us off at the airport and he got caught in one of those intersections and they asked that I give him up or I would have to pay the fine. I went to court and the judge dropped the charge. They would prompt you to pay some huge fine, witch LM would get a cut from the municipality when the collected the fines.
It appears many fire departments clustered around other community centers of local governments are ideally suited for monitoring, and maybe even controlling activity, traffic lights, tracking cameras, maybe even license plate reading software to spy, record, and identify the public trying to go about their business.
Is that an appropriate use of taxpayers’ money...?
I only hope that the jig is up on this form of surveillance.
17
All of this surveillance technology becomes a public health hazard when it causes the public to become paranoid. The most vulnerable are the first to succumb to it. You get an idea of how it affects them by looking at some of the (many, many) gang stalking videos on YouTube. A normal person doesn't see anything special in these films, but the people making them often live an impoverished life.
5
You’re right. But IMO, the majority of the gang-stalked blaming U.S. and Western governments are likely playacting paranoia with deliberately bazaar You Tube conspiracy videos and comments. Russian trolls, Right wing Alex Jones types, individuals making their living off fake news and YT and the private psy-war groups mentioned in the article who get very active around election time. The MO? Degrade social net platforms, reverse the flow of info, manufacture doubt, undermine politics and people’s reality.
All the usual right wing suspects: QAnon, alt-right, 4-Chan, neo-Nazis sites (collectively yelling Deep State, Pizzagate, Antifa). Along with Alex Jones’ InfoWars, David Icke, Russian troll channels, fake recorded YT call-in radio shows, and other conspiracy internet forums.
Which is unprovable and invites, “are they all conspiring together?” Years ago a few of the DSM crew claimed it was all the product of the mentally ill communicating their view of the world to others like themselves. Back before Russian troll factories. Before people made their living from YT, before private firms were hired to troll and hack.
6
@Jerry H
I agree that conspiracy sites are also aggravating the problem. In terms of influencing the paranoid among us, conspiracy theories have been doing that since time began (e.g. before the internet, most were dispensed through short-wave radio programs and small publishing houses).
In terms of 'for-pay' surveillance, the most egregious problem happens when surveillance turns into manipulation. There are a number of good examples of this where surveillance is used to induce paranoia. Some well-documented (non conspiracy) examples include the use of FBI bumper-locking on Dr. Steven Hatfill, the intimidation of Ralph Nadar by GM (after he published Unsafe at Any Speed), and the COINTELPRO program of the 1960s. This is all standard fare when living in a police state, or in the presence of a secret police. Paranoia inducing behavior is probably the best way to define a secret police.
8
@W
A "normal person" does not believe that helicopters flying overhead are watching him / her; that a buzzing sound on their computer is evidence that the are being bugged; that a car parked out front of their home is evidence that they are being watched.
YouTube is replete with videos uploaded by people with mental illness. Its sad.
2
I use a highly-rated VPN with 256-bit encryption along with real-time anti-malware, anti-spyware, anti-ransomware software that also has an anti-key logging function and ad blocking (sorry NYT). For more security, I’ll use the Tor browser. Of course, I can’t stream movies from Amazon Prime because they can’t track me, but I still get free shipping. Am I still digitally vulnerable?
6
@BlueMountainMan
I don't know exactly what you consider 'digitally vulnerable' but I do know (thanks, Ed Snowden) that just by using Tor the NSA considers you a terrorist risk and therefore is more interested in your actions.
12
@BlueMountainMan
The recent hack of Russian intelligence showed they have a Tor de-anonymizing project. And if they have one, so do we.
The computer I am typing on now has spyware planted by the Russians, China and American Evangelical Christians, and maybe the NYT, most certainly the American government. I was an employee with a security clearance, so that is a given that they monitor me. Everything I write is essentially broadcast to the world. These spyware programs aren't detected by commercial anti-spyware products. Ordinary people have been able to buy such keyloggers for many years and they aren't detectable with anything sold to consumers. I don't do anything important on my computers and I don't let the computer "remember" any important passwords. I conduct my correspondence as if I am using only post cards.
11
Huawei is a company that the Chinese government will and has used to achieve anything it wants. The Chinese government is behind huge and unrelenting hacking of our government and private industry. There is no separation between private and public surveillance in China. It is waging economic war with the U.S. and its allies, but denies it. America and American businesses - just wake up, the dragon is not a panda.
Watch what it is doing in and to Taiwan leading up to the January presidential election. Watch closely what is has done in Australia. These are acts or criminal aggression and espionage carried out by malign state actors in China dressed as private companies.
10
@Jake
You should beware of Amazon, Facebook and Twitter.
8
@Jake
Quick question, NYT readers:
Huawei is to China as X is to America. What is X?
a) Google
b) Microsoft
c) Facebook
d) Apple
e) all of the above
6
@Al King But do remember, you do not physically disappear in America for challenging those US companies, as many tech employees increasingly do so. Can you same the same for China?
1
It is not only too late for Jamal Khashoggi; it is far, far too late; not only him, but his family and friends. The Saudis are gutless cowards for doing what they did to him (and others, I would bet). Most likely, the US and most other major countries are doing similar things. The only real question I have is "who are the targets".
12
@Easy Goer
..and the second question is: when they die, will it be a 'car accident', 'suicide', or something else misatributed?
4
@Al King Not, just watch the Waco footage from April 19, 1993. In Living Color, with US government approval....the buck stopped nowhere.
“... biggest brother's watching bigger brother watching big brother watch you” - Aesop Rock, Freeze, 2003
8
When it comes to the time that we need automatic encryption fo all internet communication (allow “blind” purchase and delivery of goods, store purchases ...etc., it will probably too late. Besides government, internet sales will know is by our unique history on the net of all is, our friends, and their friends. Buy data storage stock.
5
It strikes me as somewhat ironic that the activities, capabilities, and utilization statistics of these surveillance organizations is so opaque. What is it they say about having nothing to fear if one has nothing to hide?
11
@ROC
Would you prefer these companies release the security exploits they discover on day one, so that any criminal with a laptop can utilize them until they are patched?
3
@Justaguy
Oh! I thought that was their business model.
For most anyone with a core understanding of how digital information and communication works, none of this seems surprising. If anything, it's so easy to accomplish, most have assumed its been going on. We just now have had some of those assumptions confirmed.
2
It isn't a matter of too late to merely reign in surveillance. A better question may be, is it too late to change the public mind? The security state gets its authority and "currency" from 2001 and the Patriot Act, and a hundred secondary legislative acts. The ideological concept of "terror" has been deeply embedded in public consciousness, and thereby flourishes in Congress, and in corporate culture, in the policy of our allies (the UK, Israel, Canada, India and others) and in our "enemies" policy (China, Russia, N. Korea) and thereby in defense and security spending, in sub-contracting and a vast sprawling network of civilian suppliers. It's all about business. Big business. But it all rests on one of the biggest frauds ever perpetrated on the American consciousness, and it eats away at not only US resources including our young generation's future, but effectively the rest of the world. Is it too late to save that world?
28
So all that's required to snoop on pretty much anyone is cash, the right technology, and a malign intent. Interesting that software for invasion of privacy is readily available, but tools to protect ourselves is not.
39
@Dave
What tools to protect ourselves Dave? The technology used to snoop is based on analyzing the fundamental parts of how digital networks work, information people willing give to these networks.
The only real tool is knowledge of how these "internet doohickies" we use 24 hours a day actually work. But no one seems to have any interest in that, too complicated. Let's just get mad at the user agreement we clicked and didn't read.
Unless we change how global communications networks work, it should just be assumed, if you are using a connected device, you are being tracked. There is no escaping it.
16
"The American defense consultant...believed that the technology he was marketing would help keep Uzbekistan safe."
Sure he did.
52
None of this is particularly surprising, but none of it seems lethal either. Sure, an authoritarian government can decide someone's a dissident and have them executed, Russia does this all the time for example, but they're not executing them by means of surveillance. And the wanton slaying of civilians has always been a component of authoritarian nations.
Another thing that always gets overlooked in articles about this subject is that most of this spying is electronic. If people don't type their secrets into a computer or phone, electronic surveillance has no way to access them. If people really want to keep communications secret, they can use cryptography and handwritten notes.
As for me, if people are spying on my phone and computer, and discovering that I despise Trump, support marijuana legalization, or aim to lose twenty pounds, I really don't care. Luckily I don't live in Uzbekistan, so there's really no chance of me being boiled alive for constantly slinging insults about Trump. But if our nation got a lot more fascist, which is certainly possible, I'd stop typing my opinions into computers, and probably plan to emigrate.
16
@Concerned Citizen
We are all 100% free to attack the President, just as McConnell, Ryan and Boehner did when they attacked Obama when he was President.
It is called freedom of Speech, not "hard left".
3
With no "justice" system anymore nothing matters we as a free country are over and this spy business will bring us down much faster thanks to run away greed with no legal system for the rich.
10
So, to avoid infringing the rights of the merchants of this technology, we should allow them to engage in surveillance of us. Profit over people and human rights essentially advocated in the pages of the NYTs, what a surprise.
15
"The genesis of this global spy bazaar can be traced back to the frenetic weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks, when Congress rushed through the Patriot Act, a law that vastly expanded the American government’s wiretapping authorities. In the process, lawmakers inadvertently created a market for companies interested in providing services and technologies to collect and analyze the new trove of data."
Are we SURE that it was "inadvertently" created? Seems mighty deliberate to me. The vile GOP was at its most subtly evil at the time (where now it's at it's most *boldly* evil), and also snuck in the RealCreepyID horror that'll make even THAT act seem quaint once RFID'ed-passport tracking of dissidents and abortion-seekers (but I repeat myself, under this regime) picks up. But at least those pesky Huawei guys will be stopped from spying, so our own country won't spy us even harder innit?
Ring cameras share your front-door view with a fake AI of Ukrainian staff. Remember that while you keep knocking Ocasio for (NOT) stopping Bezos from bringing jobs here.
Have fun!
13
Thirty years ago I served at the US Embassy in Bucharest, Romania wile dictator Nicolai Ceaucescu was in power. He used his infamous Securitate to monitor and control the Romanian people. Ceaucescu had a saying that he had a "perfect democracy" thorough his Securitate surveillance apparatus: He know what everyone was thinking at any one time and acted accordingly!
2
Cyber warfare and cyber snooping is a real threat. This practice is not just targeted at nation-states, but individuals as well.
In fact, I’d venture to guess that the practice will expand exponentially against individuals because nation-states have much more resources to combat against it.
And it is becoming harder and harder to detect and track.
Take for example a recent ArsTechnia article about the Israeli firm AdClarity and its insipid relationship with an ad tracking service known as Nacho Analytics.
Nacho scoops up public and private URLs and hands this information off to AdClarity. That’s all it does. But scooping up URLs is very invasive.
Do you want every website that you visit tracked, analyzed and sold? What if it’s porn? Maybe it’s child porn? What if it’s behind a corporate firewall and you are spying on a competitor?
Privacy on the Internet is a lost cause. Get ready to defend your lifestyle or your actions as it will someday be used against you.
9
We can thank our vile Patriot Act for all of this. Btw I wish the Times would cover the Patriot Act's neglect of requiring the tracking real estate sales where the terrorists are parking their money.
16
@joe Hall the so called "patriot's act" was already written up and approved by tea party type/republican politicians. They just couldn't figure out a way to dump it on us. Then, nine eleven, and the package was ready to go and no one was willing to even read it, much less object to it. That has always made me wonder, besides other things, if the attack was coordinated in some way with the republicans, to their advantage.
Is there any feature of the "weapons" the author describes that is not consistent with the normal business practices of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, etc? Eva Galperin of the EFF observes, correctly, that your smartphone gives these companies "a map of essentially the inside of your brain," except it's a living map, updated second by second as you move through your day."
The Uzbek government wants to "control" its citizens so that they won't oppose the government, and that control in extreme cases takes the form of murder. It's true that Google doesn't want to kill us. But it wants to control us, for its own commercial purposes, in a far more sweeping way than 3rd world dictators. It wants, in effect, to be whispering in our ear from moment to moment, directing us down paths that suit its commercial interests, and doing so on the basis of a total knowledge base of what we're thinking, feeling, hoping, fearing.
"We know where you are. We know where you've been. We can more or less know what you're thinking about." That was Eric Schmidt of Google in 2010. Call it soft totalitarianism.
20
@TMSquared: most Americans (and people worldwide) hand off this info HAPPILY and daily, for the dubious privilege of free social media and convenience of smartphones.
3
@Concerned Citizen
I don't know about HAPPILY. Maybe "happily." So I take that as a friendly amendment: soft, happy totalitarianism.
Me: "Ok, Google, should I be unhappy that you've more or less taken over my life?"
Google: "Of course not, TM. You're happy that I'm here! And you'll be even happier after you turn into this store here and buy that thing you didn't know you wanted until I just told you."
That kind of happy.
1
This also highlights how easy it is to inflate the need for these "defense consulting companies". They sell a product to a known authoritarian regime and years later we are fighting some sort of proxy war, battling the very technology and weapons we went them in the first place. Making money both times.
15
The EU "right to be forgotten" on the internet should be the rule in the U.S. as well. Every citizen should have a right to their privacy unless your are a public figure.
41
@Bill Even in Europe "public figures" have enhanced privacy!
1
And, I presume, incriminating materials could also be added to our devices for other spooks to find. How did we forget that violation of privacy is about bribery, extortion, compromise, and, more generally, the ability to exert power over others?
55
Efforts to suppress such "spies" will be as unsuccessful as trying to suppress run-of-the-mill hackers and mercenaries. The technologies developed by governments and private companies will always be available for a price, even if such use by private individuals is illegal. As always, money talks.
18
If a technology exists, it will be used. That is axiomatic. All you can do is to employ tactics or other technologies to thwart or counteract it as best you can.
25
The term "lawful interception" refers to law enforcement interception of communications as authorized by a court order. It presumes the existence of the rule of law. In the US, telecommunications companies are required to comply with a lawful order of a court, obtained by due process.
It is incorrect to apply the term to the actions of a group that does not follow the rule of law, whether governmental or private, no matter the reason.
Companies that sell these technologies should not sell them to countries that do not follow the rule of law and should never sell them to private parties.
59
@Bob Dedrick
'The term "lawful interception" refers to law enforcement interception of communications as authorized by a court order.'
That is sounding strangley anachronistic. Google "intercepts" every communication you make on an Android phone, and a lot more than just that (dwell times, voice prints, etc etc) and creates a digital record of it. Those records become Google's privately held "data assets" which they run through machine learning and AI programs to create predictions of your behavior, and tools for modifying your behavior, which Google then sells on the extremely lucrative 3rd-party market.
The intrusion of Google (Facebook etc) into our private lives is nearly total, and their exploitation of the results of that intrusion is ever more pervasive and powerful. They have become non-state entities with vastly more intrusive powers than states, which have to come begging, court order in hand, to learn what's in Google's troves of "data assets."
The rule of law governing the explosive growth of these data giants is sketchy and thin. To a great extent they have been able to keep their innovations well in front of any legal efforts to understand and regulate them. They are largely lawless, or laws unto themselves.
10
Using my legal rights to criticize my own government could thus be used by a questionable tho formally elected official to spy on me and pressure me? So such hidden spyware will not be outlawed?
Could be used by a hostile foreign nation to manipulate a questionable but formally elected official in power to pressure him? What could possibly go wrong.
45
There is an additional rub. Can Israel or US or Saudi Arabia use a third country as an intercept platform ?
20
@Suburban Cowboy
You mean as they did for torture in the Iraq war? You bet they will, whether or not they “can.”
@Suburban Cowboy See Five Eyes/Ears program.
1
This is terrible. I am sure people's enemies can hire freelancers to dig for dirt and blackmail or smear. Privacy no longer exists. At this point, it might be easier just to air out everyone's dirty laundry. I would not want to be a celebrity, politician, or any significant public figure. There are too many creeps out there to get me.
16
@Gregory Ziegler: Harvey Weinstein did exactly that when hiring an Israeli company to dig up dirt on his accusers. See www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/harvey-weinsteins-army-of-spies
6