President Biden kind of mostly bans commercial spyware from US govt US president Joe Biden on Monday issued an executive order on the "prohibition on use by the United States government of commercial spyware that poses risks to national security" – a title that is not quite as simple it seems. The order represents a "policy of the United States Government that it shall not make operational use …
"policy of the United States Government that it shall not make operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States Government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person."
You do have to wonder how big a market the US government is for commercial spyware, given the already mighty home-grown capabilities available to the US. Would this order be enough to make the commercial operators relocate to the US? Or is the rest of the world market much bigger than the US market, so no company will be bothered to relocate?
I'm sure part of this is because Biden is pissed that Israel, via the various commercial organisations operating there, will be getting intelligence feeds he doesn't feel they should be getting. By trying to manipulate the market so that all commercial spyware has to be filtered through the US, he will be thinking that he can control what the US releases or withholds from its (alleged) allies. It will also probably be an attempt to cut off independent diplomatic moves that Israel can make, in part aided by Israel's ability to "help" with enhancing other states intelligence capabilities. It appears that the Democrats feel they should be in charge of Israeli foreign policy (maybe domestic as well??) and seem to get very uppity when Israel makes independent moves that it's "big brother" doesn't approve of.
"It appears that the Democrats feel they should be in charge of Israeli foreign policy (maybe domestic as well??) and seem to get very uppity when Israel makes independent moves that it's "big brother" doesn't approve of."
Rather the opposite, actually. Recent history shows that especially Republicans but also Democrats are basically happy that US foreign policy wrt Israel is dictated by the Israelis. That's what's allowed Israel to effectively annex the West Bank and turn it into a de facto Apartheid state.
If the US is reining Israel in a fraction, that can only be a good thing. But I don't think that's what's happening at all... Pegasus will get all the license it needs from the US to operate, as long as it isn't operating against perceived US interests. If the US wants to use Pegasus (directly or through a third party) to bug (to pluck an example out of thin air completely at random) the German chancellor's phone, it will happen
Erm... stop tilting at straw men. I nowhere claimed that the Israelis ran the world, rather that they have a decisively strong influence on US foreign policy as concerns Israel specifically. I even gave a specific example of Israel creating an Apartheid West Bank, with tacit US approval.
If you want to convince anyone that the opposite to be true, it's up to you to provide evidence, rather than building up a straw man (which you completely fail to knock down)
Just remember to make sure that you and your buddies are using private encryption......and do not rely on anything commercially available which the spooks have already "backdoored"!
The point is that commercially available encryption products each represent a single point of failure. If MANY citizen groups develop their own private encryption, the effort imposed on the spooks is multiplied. Some may wonder if this is a good thing.......
Ref: The Code Book, Simon Singh
Ref: Applied Cryptography, Steve Schneier
Ref: Cryptography Engineering, Ferguson/Schneier/Kohno
Example: https://cr.yp.to/chacha.html
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