Facebook bans 7 'surveillance-for-hire' companies that spied on 50k users
> NSO has said it sells its software to governments to combat terrorism and serious crime, and isn't responsible for how it may be misused.
Such bullshit. In the Nuremberg trials in the aftermath of the Second World War, several directors of IG Farben were held responsible for shipping the chemical Zyklon B to the SS which used it commit mass murder. The court rejected the defendants argument that they weren't responsible for how their product was used. Similarly, NSO and other spyware companies are responsible for how authoritarian regimes use their products to harass and endanger dissidents.
Facebook is a surveillance company, I guess they don't want other companies getting in on their action.
50K users is a drop in the bucket. The issues are:
* Can MetaFace reliably detect such bad actors?
* Is their current technology, where users don't control their own data, compatible with protecting users privacy? In other words, isn't this exactly where we expected to end up when these technologies were first built?
* How can we trust that they don't just ban the ones they don't like and leave users to the mercies of the others?
And I'm sure another 7 will take their place. Or the same 7 will change their name and rebrand, and sneak back in for a while.
The root of the problem is that Facebook provides an environment where this sort of activity is possible. But fixing that would hurt their profits, so they won't.
More on Black Cube, NSO group, and Citizen Lab:
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/99/
https://darknetdiaries.com/episode/100/
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/28/world/black-cube-nso-citi...
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/24/insider/hacking-nso-surve...
https://citizenlab.ca/2021/09/forcedentry-nso-group-imessage...
In other news 7 'surveillance-for-hire` companies create arms length shell companies.
"Black Cube obtains legal advice in every jurisdiction in which we operate in order to ensure that all our agents' activities are fully compliant with local laws," it said.
In other words they looked for every loophole or underhanded way they could get the information while staying just on the side If legality.
All companies are based out of Israel… Just like NSO with Pegasus. Geez
I get so many random foreign people (ostensibly) wanting to connect with me on Facebook, who I dont know, I began to assume a good percentage of them are just bots or puppets (or "personas") trying to catfish me or inject further data-gathering probes into the Fb social network. LinkedIn has this phenomenon too, but there it feels like a percentage are just aggressive career-networkers. But on Facebook, its out of control and more obvious.
They will just rename/reform themselves. And there are other channels for spying on people.
This brings up the question: is there a good, realistic guide for a normal person on how to prevent being spied on?
They probably lose 100k users a day.
Just in the nick of time ...
drop one ally
There should be a low that outside company can spy on any data that the hosting company can. The information is out there, why facebook should be the only one who can access it?
what did they got by spying on faccbook account?
Yeah, of course they will. They don't like competition.
But it's more likely than not a PR show. They might even privately contact those companies and advise them to rebrand and then re-sign the contracts with them.
If at the start of 2022 you are still trusting Facebook then you have problems with your critical thinking process.
In other words, the drug cartel bans 7 small dealers who are doing business on the cartel's territory without permission.
There’s a lot of info about mostly Israeli ones, but a vague description of one Chinese one. I see parallels of the traditional usage of Jews as scapegoats. Christians aren’t allowed to lend for interests so they used Jews. When the king or other Christian ruler needed money, a pogrom was initiated, the assets of Jews were taken, and the cycle was repeated.
The US uses a lot of Israeli intelligence, as if the CIA and 5 eyes (yes there’s more but it’s just the term used) wasn’t enough. It’s easy to blame the Israelis, and the foreign country of Israel but the US funds them. It’s similarly easy to blame China for taking American jobs, but it’s often ignored who gave them those jobs in the first place?
Banning intelligence operations is nothing but virtue signaling, I’m sure they’ll give up, there’s no way to figure out how to beat Facebook’s ban, especially since intelligence isn’t very good at bypassing bans or regrouping as other companies.
"Yeah, that's our racket!"
Eliminating competition...
Only 7 forgot to pay their dues?
Ironic given Facebook's business model is to spy on users.
> These ... companies ... try to trick them into handing over sensitive personal information so that the firms could install spyware on their devices
Could this be seen as anti-competitive behaviour by Meta?
