Leaked: Israel attempted to obstruct US lawsuit against Pegasus spyware
Press TV – July 25, 2024
Israel has gone to great lengths to obstruct a high-stakes US lawsuit that could potentially expose highly confidential information regarding the regime’s Pegasus spyware, one of the world’s most notorious hacking tools, leaked files suggest.
Israeli officials confiscated documents related to the Pegasus spyware from its manufacturer, NSO Group, in a bid to prevent the company from complying with demands from WhatsApp in a US court to provide information about the intrusive technology, said the British media on Thursday.
These documents indicate that these seizures were part of an unusual legal tactic devised by the Israeli regime to prevent the disclosure of details about Pegasus, which Tel Aviv feared could lead to significant diplomatic and security repercussions for the regime.
Pegasus enables NSO clients to secretly install hidden software on smartphones, allowing them to extract messages and photos, record calls, and activate microphones covertly. NSO’s clients have included both authoritarian regimes and democratic nations, and the technology has been implicated in human rights abuses worldwide.
NSO has sold its spyware – known as Pegasus – to Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Hungary and India among others.
The spyware also allows its users to monitor conversations, text messages, photos and location, and even encrypted messaging apps such as Signal and WhatsApp. Pegasus can turn phones into remotely operated listening devices.
Since late 2019, NSO has been embroiled in a lawsuit in the US filed by WhatsApp, alleging that the Israeli firm exploited a vulnerability in the messaging service to target over 1,400 of its users across 20 countries within two weeks. NSO rejects the allegations.
The seizure of files and computers from NSO’s offices in July 2020, kept secret until now by a strict gag order issued by an Israeli court, sheds new light on the close relationship between Israel and NSO, and the shared interests of the privately owned surveillance company and the country’s security establishment.
The removal of files in July 2020 occurred after talks between Israeli officials and NSO about how to respond to WhatsApp’s demands for NSO to disclose internal documents regarding its spyware, prompting questions about potential coordination to withhold certain information from US legal proceedings.
At one point, NSO’s lawyer, Rod Rosenstein, a former US deputy attorney general during the Donald Trump administration, reportedly asked one of Israel’s US attorneys whether the Israeli regime would intervene to assist in the legal dispute with WhatsApp.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp accused NSO of failing to fulfill its responsibilities to provide internal documents as part of the legal discovery process. This process aims to help WhatsApp gather information crucial for its case and reveal unprecedented details about how NSO’s government clients have utilized Pegasus.
Nevertheless, the covert involvement of the Israeli regime has impeded WhatsApp’s efforts to compel NSO to provide crucial information. Recently, WhatsApp’s lawyers informed the US court that NSO has “only produced 17 internal documents of its own.”
Both Israel and NSO anticipated expansive demands from WhatsApp for confidential internal company documents, including lists of its clients.
As the discovery process became imminent in the early part of 2020, NSO considered requesting a “blocking order” from the Israeli regime. This order would prevent NSO from disclosing specific information to WhatsApp. A memo outlining this proposal was shared with Israel’s justice ministry in April of that year.
Tel Aviv’s actions seem to have significantly affected the case. NSO has contended that its ability to engage in the discovery process has been constrained by several legal restrictions in Israel.
Earlier this month, WhatsApp’s lawyers told the court they had not yet received any documents relevant to Pegasus, accusing NSO of a “continued refusal to meaningfully participate in discovery.”
The US government blacklisted the Israeli company in 2021 for its sale of hacking tools to repressive regimes.
US police no longer trust FBI – report
RT | July 25, 2024
Many US state and local law enforcement agencies are refusing to share vital information with the Federal Bureau of Investigation due to concerns that it has become partisan and politicized, according to a whistleblower report submitted to Congress.
The 230-page report was compiled by an alliance of retired and active-duty agents and analysts, who spoke to more than 30 “independent, highly credible” sources across the US.
“They are not only reluctant to work with the FBI but reportedly have decided to no longer share actionable, substantive information on criminal and other intelligence-related activity” with the Bureau, because they believe it “has been operating as a partisan federal agency motivated by a political agenda” in recent years, the report’s authors said.
The report’s existence was first reported on Wednesday in the New York Post. The document itself was sent to the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees and posted online.
The group described a “crisis of confidence” in FBI-led task forces and a “disturbing loss of trust” in the Bureau as a whole, even as Director Christopher Wray testified to Congress about a “complex threat environment” that is unprecedented in his career.
Most sources pointed to the FBI’s response to the January 6, 2021 riot at the US Capitol and the August 2022 raid on former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence, Mar-a-Lago.
One of the sources described the FBI’s behavior as “that of a Third World country” and argued it “should be dismantled and its personnel prosecuted and given long prison sentences.”
Pressure to assist with “J6” cases has led to a belief that the Bureau is driven by a “partisan, political agenda.” One source said they could not understand why the FBI was not going after any other groups with the same fervor. Another said that local officers feared they could be targeted “because of their love for the US” and perceived as “domestic terrorists” based on how they vote.
Newer FBI agents “do not bother to conceal their distaste” for traditional political or religious views and openly identify themselves as “woke or liberal,” the head of a multi-agency task force said. Hired on the basis of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) guidelines, they are “completely worthless” and “the worst batch of people,” the whistleblowers said.
The FBI academy at Quantico, Virginia at which new agents are trained “promotes a cult of narcissism” and arrogant superiority, while being intolerably politicized, the report claimed. Meanwhile, the Bureau’s Security Division has been abusing the security clearance process to purge conservative-leaning agents from its ranks.
The whistleblowers urged Congress to force the resignation of Wray as “an extreme measure of last resort” and the only way to restore the Bureau’s reputation.
Netanyahu’s ‘Abraham Alliance’ Proposal Completely Detached From Reality – Analyst
By Ilya Tsukanov – Sputnik – 25.07.2024
Israel’s prime minister has sketched the outlines of a new NATO-style alliance between Tel Aviv, Washington and Arab countries which he said could “counter the growing Iranian threat.” Dr. Mehran Kamrava, professor of government at Georgetown University’s Qatar campus, explains why the proposal is ludicrous.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hopes to bring countries like Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and perhaps Egypt into a new Israeli and US-led, NATO-style pact dubbed the ‘Abraham Alliance’ is not only unrealistic, but not original, either, Kamrava told Sputnik, commenting on Netanyahu’s Wednesday afternoon address to a joint session of Congress.
“I don’t think that [an alliance between Israel and the Gulf States, ed.] is a realistic assumption because Saudi Arabia normalized relations with Iran… Bahrain and Iran have been in conversations about a rapprochement, and the UAE, despite having maintained its relationship with Israel, has also maintained a relationship with Iran,” Kamrava pointed out.
In his speech, Netanyahu outlined a “vision for the broader Middle East” involving taking a cue from what the US did after the Second World War by creating NATO and applying it to the Middle East. The proposed bloc should include the US and Israel, and “all countries that are at peace with Israel” or wish to “make peace with Israel,” Netanyahu said.
The Abraham Alliance proposal is “not new,” Kamrava stressed, noting that Netanyahu has “been advocating this for a number of years,” with Israel’s push to normalize ties with its Gulf neighbors seen as the first step in this direction.
Today, Israel can only dependably rely only on United States Central Command and Washington for weapons and other support, Kamrava said. That’s because “the Israeli lobby is quite powerful in the United States, particularly in Congress,” with both parties and all of its major figures, from presidents Biden and Trump to vice president Harris, declaring themselves Zionists or otherwise voicing “strong support” for Israel.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, remains mired in a “deep” and hopeless political mess, Kamrava said, facing “pressure from [his] left that want the hostages back…pressure from the Israeli army, which has said that it is unable now to bring the remaining hostages home through continued use of force and the continuation of the war,” and “pressure from the right that want a complete eradication of Palestinians.”
In this situation, only a continuation of the war, and playing up the “Iranian boogeyman” can save him, the observer summed up.
FBI accusing Russia to ‘divert attention’ from its failures – Moscow
RT | July 25, 2024
The FBI is using a supposed ‘threat’ to American democracy from Russia as a diversion to draw public attention away from the bureau’s own failures, Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov claimed on Thursday.
He was responding to allegations made by FBI Director Christopher Wray, who claimed before Congress on Wednesday that Moscow had been attempting to interfere in the US “election cycle after election cycle,” in particular, during the current race for the White House.
“We assess that the Russian government continues to want to influence and in various ways interfere with our democracy, with our electoral process,” Wray told lawmakers, claiming that investigators had recently uncovered a “significant disruption of a generative AI-enhanced social media” of Russian origin, which was “designed to be an influence operation.”
Antonov dismissed Wray’s allegations, describing them as “yet another unsuccessful example of blame-shifting.” He said this was a policy that is often utilized by both the FBI director and other American officials.
“These are obviously yet more attempts to play the ‘Russian card’ to justify their own failures,” he stated, adding that “it is understandable” that representatives of the US administration “want to divert the attention of ordinary citizens from their mistakes and the numerous internal contradictions in America.”
“We flatly reject insinuations against Russia. Our country has never interfered in democratic processes. Moscow has always respected and will always respect the choice of the American people.”
Antonov suggested that, in order to find those responsible for the problems within the US, Wray and other Washington officials “should look at their reflection in the mirror.”
Wray’s testimony on Wednesday was largely focused on the investigation into the assassination attempt on former US President and Republican nominee for this year’s election, Donald Trump. The attempt on Trump’s life during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania on July 13 caused public outcry, with Republicans lambasting the US Secret Service for failing to protect the presidential nominee. Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle was forced to resign earlier this week, having admitted that Trump’s attempted assassination was “the most significant operational failure at the Secret Service in decades.”
Wray is not the first Washington official to make allegations of Russian interference in the US electoral process. During the 2016 and 2020 elections, US intelligence agencies repeatedly claimed that Moscow had deployed hackers and used disinformation to affect the vote in favor of Trump. Earlier this month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) alleged that Russia had launched a “whole-of-government” effort “to shape electoral outcomes” in this year’s election to turn public opinion against President Joe Biden. None of the claims made in previous years have been substantiated.
US Creating Logistic Centers in Black Sea to Speed Up Arms Supplies to Ukraine – Kremlin Aide
Sputnik – 25.07.2024
MOSCOW – The United States wants to create logistics centers in the Black Sea region to speed up arms supplies to Ukraine and deploy long-range weapons, Russian presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev said on Thursday.
“In the countries of the Black Sea region, the United States intends to create logistics centers to accelerate the supply of weapons to Ukraine, as well as to deploy modern long-range weapons,” Patrushev said.
At the Washington summit, NATO demonstrated plans to increase its military presence and intensify confrontation in the Black Sea, the official added.
There can be no talk of unhindered passage to the ports of the Sea of Azov by ships of Western countries supporting Kiev, the aide noted.
“Given the aggressive nature of Western countries that directly support the Kiev regime in conducting military and terrorist actions against Russia, currently any unhindered passage of their ships to the ports of Azov is out of the question,” he emphasized.
Last month, the countries that signed a joint communique following the Swiss-hosted summit on Ukraine have called for providing access to sea ports in the Black and Azov seas to ensure global food security.
The number of joint exercises between the Japanese navy and NATO countries and other military allies of Washington in 2024 has already increased 30 times compared to last year, Patrushev added.
EU Refuses Support to Hungary, Slovakia on Russian Oil Transit Dispute With Ukraine
Sputnik – 25.07.2024
The European Union has denied its support to Hungary and Slovakia after they sought to force Ukraine to restore Russian oil transit to the bloc, the Financial Times reported citing sources familiar with the matter.
EU Trade Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis told the FT that Brussels would need more time to gather evidence and assess the legal situation. Eleven of the EU nations attending a meeting of trade officials on Wednesday backed his stance and none took the side of Budapest and Bratislava, diplomats told the FT.
Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto said on Monday that Hungary and Slovakia had asked the European Commission to launch consultations with Ukraine after it stopped the transit of oil through the Druzhba pipeline. Szijjarto also said that Hungary would not approve the allocation of 6.5 billion euros ($7 billion) for arms sent to Ukraine through the European Peace Facility until the issue was resolved.
Ukraine’s trade agreement reportedly contains a clause that provides for the possibility of suspending oil transit. An EU diplomat was quoted as saying by FT that disruption in Russian oil supplies would have a “huge impact” on the central European nation.
Last week, Szijjarto said that Ukraine stopped the transit of Lukoil’s oil. The Slovak Economy Ministry confirmed that the country was no longer receiving oil from the Russian oil giant, which was sanctioned by Ukraine. Slovakia’s Slovnaft refinery imports Russian crude from another supplier, but the country is discussing the current situation with Ukraine.
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The Case for Dismantling the Rules-Based International Order
By Professor Glenn Diesen | December 23, 2024
The so-called “rules-based international order” aims to facilitate a hegemonic world, which entails displacing international law. While international law is based on equal sovereignty for all states, the rules-based international order upholds hegemony on the principle of sovereign inequality.
The rules-based international order is commonly presented as international law plus international human rights law, which appears benign and progressive. However, this entails introducing contradictory principles and rules. The consequence is a system devoid of uniform rules, in which “might makes right”. International human rights law introduces a set of rules to elevate the rights of the individual, yet human-centric security often contradicts state-centric security as the foundation of international law.
The US as the hegemonic state can then choose between human-centric security and state-centric security, while adversaries must abide strictly by state-centric security due to their alleged lack of liberal democratic credentials. For example, state-centric security as the foundation of international law insists on the territorial integrity of states, while human-centric security allows for secession under the principle of self-determination. The US will thus insist on territorial integrity in allied countries such as Ukraine, Georgia or Spain, while supporting self-determination within adversarial states such as Serbia, China, Russia and Syria. The US can interfere in the domestic affairs of adversaries to promote liberal democratic values, yet the US adversaries do not have the right to interfere in the domestic affairs of the US. To facilitate a hegemonic international order, there cannot be equal sovereignty for all states. … continue
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