Hacker News
points by sentientlaserbe 2 days ago | 0 comments
No, Israel is definitely the world leader in spying. They have a wonderful relationship with the American political class, enabling access to what the US has, and with asymmetry protecting Israelis over Americans, plus their own clandestine spying against influential Americans, and their operations all over the world. Their part among the players doesn't detract from grievances against Israel - it adds to it.
[–] tptacek 2 days ago
There are dozens of firms in NATO countries and especially the US that do this kind of signals intelligence and surveillance work. I see no evidence at all that the US IC uses Israel for any kind of cover; we have native firms enabling sigint at the highest levels. "Cover" only makes sense if you're using it exclusively, but most CNE enablement work in NATO is done by NATO firms.
[–] gruez 2 days ago
>There are dozens of firms in NATO countries and especially the US that do this kind of signals intelligence and surveillance work.

List them? I asked AI for a list of mercenary hacking firms and it turned up:

NSO Group (Israel)

Intellexa Consortium (a bunch of countries including Israel, and the founder is Israeli)

Candiru (Israel)

Paragon Solutions (Israel)

RCS Lab (Italy)

[–] alsetmusic 2 days ago
> "Cover" only makes sense if you're using it exclusively, but most CNE enablement work in NATO is done by NATO firms.

Cover is behaving horribly out in the open and having half of US politicians run cover for you by demonizing your detractors as anti-Semitic. The US has been shielding them for decades, though not exclusively. That time is waning.

[–] jackb4040 2 days ago
> half

They own the careers of all but a tiny handful of US politicians

[–] newspaper1 2 days ago
Israel stands alone in its cyber crime though. I'm not aware of any other country that has committed an act of mass terrorism by blowing up consumer devices.
[–] kats 2 days ago
Mossad director Yossi Cohen said that they have implemented 'manipulated equipment' across "virtually every potential theatre of operation," and “in all the countries that you can imagine".

https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2462875/

[–] newspaper1 2 days ago
Wow, well that's to be expected but also terrifying. Thank you for pointing this out, I actually just submitted it here as more people should see this.

Edit: So this hit the front-page almost immediately and has 20 comments but also got instantly flagged. I really wish the mods would put in some kind of protection against flagging Israel stories like this, they're very important.

[–] cowlevel 2 days ago
There are armies of bots on HN.
[–] pcthrowaway 2 days ago
In terms of number of people spied on to number of people involved in spying, sure. China and U.S. are probably the world leaders in spying; its just a smaller percentage of the economies of both