Apple is the latest in a string of firms and governments to go after the hacking tool firm.

Controlled opposition. People should really learn to identify this stuff. Even the Facebook Papers was controlled opposition, and Pegasus simply managed to highlight USA’s funding of cyberwar capabilities of their vassal state Israel. USA is looking bad publicly, so they will cull one of their sheeps NSO Group. Cellebrite, Candiru and others are still very active.

vassal state Israel

I’m not saying you’re wrong suggesting USA and Israel (and France and some others) work hand-in-hand, but Israel is not exactly a vassal state. It’s got political autonomy, a strong military industrial complex of its own, and of course its own colonies.

Maybe you have a point if we were to get all nerdy. Idk really, to me Israel looks like a vassal state considering how you see USA’s control over Middle East plays out. Israel and Saudi Arabia have a very similar kind of relationship with USA, just differing in terms of mutual cyberwar and oil trade benefits respectively. Both also misuse their military, both of which also work closely with USA.

We can find nuances all day, but we do have a rough estimate of how they work, and in all it is really horrible for the world.

Jedrax
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Agree with all those statements, but none of those exclusively nor as a combination make Israel a vassal state. What you just described is an ally state.

Israel derives a lot of its threatening power not by itself, but by USA’s proxy might. Remember when USA backed out during the recent Israel-Palestine conflict, and Russia threatened Israel to stop bombing Palestinians? Israel sat quiet quickly.

Governments should see NSO as a national security thread and act on them but they are their clients :D

Jedrax
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I was gonna say, gov’t is what uses them!

@pingveno@lemmy.ml
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Smaller governments use them. The big boys have their own department that far outstrip what the NSO is doing.

Jedrax
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No doubt.

@sibachian@lemmy.ml
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I know people give Apple a lot of shit (and they deserve it, all big companies should be public property). But as far as capitalists go, they’re the only megacorp that isn’t entirely evil from the ground up. They could choose to do none of these stunts, and they’d still make billions, yet here we are.

i have to strongly disagree. they do a lot of stuff that would be regarded as evil: making their devices as hard to repair as possible, fucking over independent developers, pushing their subscriptions inside of iOS (“get Apple Arcade/Music/TV Free for 3 Months!” with hopes that you forget about them charging your card). the bottom line is that privacy (or rather the perception of privacy) is their brand so they have to do things that reinforce it in minds of their users.

@stopit@lemmy.ml
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I dunno. It’s a publicity stunt. I don’t think they care about privacy as much as they pretend to. Their brand is wrapping up free code in a shiny package and over charging cool kids - I’m sorry if this law suit doesn’t make me think of them as less evil. But, that’s my two cents.

does it matter if it’s a publicity stunt if it helps all of us?

no…if it helps, I just don’t think much better of apple is all.

Dessalines
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They’ve made privacy part of their brand, so they do a lot of stunts like this to get some cred. If they didn’t do these stunts, they’d risk having as bad a reputation on privacy as facebook or microsoft, which they’re actively trying to avoid.

In reality tho they were one of the first to sign up to the NSA’s prism program, and every one of their privacy claims is completely unverifiable; all their services are centralized and closed source.

honestly, it doesn’t matter if we can’t verify their privacy claims (unless you use their services). what matters is they’re screwing with the big guys money. facebook. spotify. NSO. these are good things to mess with. the fact that they made it their brand, just means there is more to come. that benefits us.

Dessalines
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Apple is one the big guys. They are I think the highest market cap company in the US. I don’t know why many people fall for their “underdog” propo.

I’ve never heard of anyone thinking of them as an underdog post-iPhone days. Certainly during the Microsoft era, but not now. Regardless,

they’re the only megacorp that isn’t entirely evil from the ground up.

@pingveno@lemmy.ml
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Despite NSO claims to only allow the Pegasus spyware to be used on criminals and terrorists, this was shown to not be the case. Activists, journalists, and politicians have all been targeted. Now Apple is bringing the fight to the aggressor in the place where it really hurts - their pocketbooks.

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