
The battle in Israel to create an unhackable phone - Turukawa
https://www.ft.com/content/4636b35e-8844-11e9-97ea-05ac2431f453
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upofadown
The NSO Group's technology ends up being an oppression enabler in practice.
Citizen Lab has been quite critical:

* [https://citizenlab.ca/?s=nso+group](https://citizenlab.ca/?s=nso+group)

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bhouston
I view working for NSO Group is no different than working for any arms
company. And there is a lot of money to be made selling arms to despots and
dictators. In part, because it is those leaders who have the least legitimacy
are those who are the most insecure and feel need the strongest tools to
solidify their rule.

Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms, nor do they need to forcibly
suppress their dissidents (which is what I understand is the main market is
for NSO Group's tools.)

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duxup
>Secure leaders do not need to stockpile arms

Well that can be more of a factor of what their foreign policy is / situation
is and less about internal legitimacy.

Maybe better said they don't need to stockpile arms for domestic use as much
if they feel secure / legitimate.

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neonate
[http://archive.is/nQ5Fb](http://archive.is/nQ5Fb)

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ukz
Much appreciated!

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leandrod
[http://intactphone.com/](http://intactphone.com/)

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seonsakke
Great business model combination by these companies. The one focuses on
hacking, the other on protecting from hacking.

I would think that the different national intelligence agencies would have
high interest in infiltrating such companies.

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danny_taco
It's quite clever actually, why spend resources to try and infiltrate them -
which is not a guarantee, when you can pay a fraction of the cost for their
capabilities so you can focus your efforts on other nation states or your own
citizens.

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seonsakke
Good point: I think the cost of buying the service is much lower than the cost
of any covert operations or infiltration. (This is a pure guess.)

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whatamidoingyo
I remember speaking to a guy at a bar. He said he worked at IBM, and wanted me
to write the software for an "unhackable" phone, that "never needs to be
updated". I think I left shortly after.

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ryanlol
Why would an unhackable phone require update capability? A smartphone almost
certainly would, but I don’t see why a simple dumbphone would require such.

