Spyware moratorium to prevent harm to people? You dreamer you!

23. März 2023  •  1 Minuten

If we ever ban spyware, it’s going to be because it threatens business and national security, not because it threatens humans.

Inspired from the «Netzpolitischer Abend» of the Digitale Gesellschaft on March 16 2023 on the topic «Statesponsored spyware, Pegasus and the NSO Group » with hacker and security researcher Donncha Ó Cearbhaill from the Security Lab of Amnesty International:

(32:05) In 2021, after the Pegasus project, Apple decided to try to also tackle this problem. They saw that it’s not only bad for their users but also bad for their business if their phones are being interrogated all the time. So what they have done is to file a lawsuit against the NSO group in a court in the US. Which has been a really promising development. They also have a lot more money to hire good lawyers than Amnesty might do to challenge them.

[…]

(39:05) Geopolitical and national security risks are probably more convincing to a lot of states to start putting in better regulation on the sale, use and transfer of spyware than when we show evidence that a journalist or an activist is being interrogated.