
Supporters of Mexico’s Soda Tax Targeted with NSO Exploit Links (2017) - deegles
https://citizenlab.ca/2017/02/bittersweet-nso-mexico-spyware/
======
joe_the_user
It seems logical that when once we have a pure "wild west" situation where
anyone contract for the hacking of any target, that corporations producing
products arguably not in the public good will have an incentive to target
their critics.

~~~
TACIXAT
>where anyone contract for the hacking of any target

Unfortunately, the law does not reflect this. Governments still have a
monopoly on these sorts of attacks. If you do it without the government
blessing, you usually end up in a cage.

------
motohagiography
Companies like this have a bright future as the result of a quirk of resource
economics.

Short version is, resource rich governments don't need a sophisticated state
apparatus to stay in power, so long as they can pay the army. (See "resource
curse," and demesquitas "logic of political suvival")

It means their domestic intelligence capability is not as mature as that of a
democracy, so they have to go to market for sophisticated technical
surveillance services. Enter mercenary intelligence companies like NSO.

Mexico is an exception, but in general if there were a way to get early
exposure to this market, the margins are probably hyper political and
irrational, and it's not going away.

Maybe DPRK will trade these services to unstable regimes for currency and
support, but imo these sort of companies are here to stay.

~~~
whatshisface
> _It means their domestic intelligence capability is not as mature as that of
> a democracy,_

That step is not one I can follow. Wouldn't a military kleptocracy stand even
more to gain from keeping an eye on everyone than a democracy would? In a
democracy almost nobody is an enemy of the people but in a militaristic
dictatorship almost everyone is an enemy of the state. Domestic intelligence a
la East Germany is way more important when the government is brutal and hated.
In America the average person would not side with the revolution if they had
the opportunity, so spotting revolutionaries isn't very important.

If anything, private companies are springing up to do this because small
military dictatorships want their services way more than the average small
democracy.

If democracies tend to have expansive intelligence agencies it is not because
they need them more than, say, Putin, but because their populations are so
rich and happy that they are willing to shoulder a giant black budget on pure
faith.

~~~
motohagiography
Democracies have mature intel capabilities because their public services are
so large that they can mobilize the resources for things like custom malware,
electronics, and a kind of parallel tech industry.

Basically, if a government depends on a tax base (and not resource money),
it's going to have a real domestic intelligence capability. This also explains
non-democratic but sophistcated states, as it's a question of tax base.
Democracies are a useful example of this.

In a resource cursed economy, the government doesn't need public services
because they make their money on resources, not taxes. What's changed is their
people have cell phones and can organize online, which means small coalition
resource states are on their back foot, hence going to the mercenary market
for intel solutions.

I encourage you to look up the references in the original comment to become
familiar with the dynamics at play.

~~~
whatshisface
> _Democracies have mature intel capabilities because their public services
> are so large that they can mobilize the resources for things like custom
> malware, electronics, and a kind of parallel tech industry._

This still comes across as an unsupported assertion. To use the US as an
example, the NSA isn't particularly synergistic with the NHS or any other non-
clandestine government agency. They have their own budget and an independent
asset sheet. The NSA actually competes for resources with the NHS, as the tax
burden can only be so high. In an alternate universe where heart disease
killed more people every every year than domestic terrorism ( _cough_ ),
Congress could make the NHS bigger without raising taxes by reducing funding
for the domestic surveillance system.

With the same economy, a country with no civil service would be able to afford
more internal security than one with a large, expensive civil service. Taken
to the ultimate extreme you get a government that provides no services but
levies a high tax/bribery burden, so that it can use it to fund a domestic
security apparatus (which is badly needed because military kleptocracies are
not popular!).

~~~
motohagiography
Again, I would encourage you to look up demesquitas "logic of political
survival." It provides the foundation for the view, and isn't really something
one can intuit without familiarity with the model.

~~~
whatshisface
I've been down that road before, and trust me geopolitical theories are a dead
end. Nobody can predict anything, and almost everything written is just an
elaborate justification for why whatever is happening today was inevitable. It
is disappointing to realize but armchair HN comments are the best you can hope
for in this area, as they have the advantage of not being as long to read.

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
_I 've been down that road before, and trust me geopolitical theories are a
dead end. Nobody can predict anything, and almost everything written is just
an elaborate justification for why whatever is happening today was inevitable.
It is disappointing to realize but armchair HN comments are the best you can
hope for in this area, as they have the advantage of not being as long to
read._

That’s a far more sweeping and far less supported statement than the one
you’ve been demanding citations for, don’t you think? Besides, unless you’re a
peofessional commenting on your field, then you’re matching armchair with
armchair, without even the benefit of being able to point to existing theories
supporting your view.

~~~
whatshisface
Gesturing at a body of academic work will only move the discussion forwards if
everyone already likes it from past experiences or trusts it implicitly, which
might be true for chemistry but is not so true for polsci!

~~~
toufiqbarhamov
That’s true, and as a debate it’s not very fertile ground. On the other hand
if we all go into this with an eye on sharing perspective rather than changing
minds, it could be edifying. I’m pretty skeptical of political science
theories, but they can be very compelling even as they lack the rigor of a
true science. Moreover, the people who lead us definitely ascribe to these
theories and this “science” and understanding their mindset has to have some
value.

Besides, even if the conclusions can only have the strength of guesses and
inferences, or just demonstrating historical patterns that can have value.

~~~
whatshisface
> _but they can be very compelling even as they lack the rigor of a true
> science_

That's really the heart of the problem. As any good salesman knows, there are
many ways to convince someone that don't involve demonstrating your case, and
many of them appear rational. This "scientific rigor" thing isn't just a
cultural gatekeeping mechanism, it was built up over a centuries-long slow
realization that the natural emotion of being convinced has to do with the
truth in only the rarest of cases. The feeling that you're learning something
is seriously intoxicating, and it turns out that it is just as prone to
leading you astray as any other feeling. Geopolitical theory is _always_
compelling; and it's just as compelling on every side of every argument, to
the point where it's clear that it won't actually help you determine which
side is right. That's because, along with a few other fields that I won't drag
in to this, it is essentially the crystalized art of activating the human
feeling of being compelled.

------
dev_dull
> _targeted with government-exclusive spyware._

Honestly, who can even say that? What makes something "government exclusive"?
These types of comments are a legitimacy stink to me. What type of narrative
are these people selling?

Reminds me of the "proof" the DNC was hacked by the Russian government was
because guccifer email was... sent through a random Russian email relay???

~~~
lern_too_spel
> Reminds me of the "proof" the DNC was hacked by the Russian government was
> because guccifer email was... sent through a random Russian email relay???

Russian email relays had nothing to do with the attribution of the Guccifer
2.0 hacks. Separately, the identity of Guccifer is known because he confessed:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer?wprov=sfla1](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guccifer?wprov=sfla1)

~~~
gjs278
the wikipedia article clearly states that there was no proof he did it and it
even says in the opening paragraph that it’s a lie by the US govt

~~~
lern_too_spel
You appear to still not understand that Guccifer and Guccifer 2 are two
separate entities.

