see url:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/07/21/shalev-hulio-nso-surveillance/
see full legend...What a lovely story of country bumpkins making good as
technogeek entrepreneurs all on their little ownio...what dirty
work...They were only cleaning up society around the world, exposing and
getting rid of the bad guys, the paedos, the druggies, the murderers,
the terrorists...And they had absolute trust in governments of nation
states to do the right thing, and only use it for law abiding
purposes...Where have I heard that one before?...😉
Quote<<<
CEO Shalev Hulio said he would ‘shut Pegasus down’ if there were a
better alternative. In lengthy interviews, Hulio and co-founder Omri
Lavie traced a journey launched from an Israeli kibbutz and said the
company’s technology had saved lives.
Two 20-something Israeli entrepreneurs who had been running a small
customer service start-up for mobile phones were at a client meeting in
Europe in 2009 when they received a visit from law enforcement officials.
The entrepreneurs’ first instinct was fear. Maybe they had done
something wrong that they weren’t aware of, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie
recalled in interviews this week with The Washington Post.
Instead, the officials made an unexpected request. The agents said the
Israelis’ technology, which helped carriers troubleshoot their
customers’ smartphones by sending them an SMS link that enabled the
carrier to access the phone remotely, could be useful for saving
people’s lives. Traditional methods of wiretapping calls were becoming
obsolete in the age of the smartphone, the officers explained, because
early encryption software blocked their ability to read and listen to
the conversations of terrorists, pedophiles and other criminals. Would
Hulio and Lavie be able to help them, by building a version of their
technology that the officials could use?
More than a decade later, the cybersecurity company that arose out of
that fateful conversation — the NSO Group, an acronym based off the
first names of the three founders — is at the center of a global debate
over the weaponization of powerful and largely unregulated surveillance
technology.
This week, The Washington Post and a consortium of 16 other media
partners reported that the company’s military-grade spyware was used in
attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to
journalists, business executives, and two women close to the murdered
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
>>>End of Quote
