***

An Italian parliamentary committee has confirmed that the government used the Israeli-made spyware Graphite, developed by the offensive cyber company Paragon, to hack the smartphones of several activists working with migrants.

The committee confirmed that Paragon provided Graphite to two Italian agencies, including the country’s external intelligence service, starting in 2023. The version of Graphite provided did not include the ability to activate the phone’s microphone or camera, the report said. Instead, it only enabled its operators access to encrypted communications on the hacked devices.

The report also confirmed that Graphite exploited a vulnerability in WhatsApp that Meta identified and patched in December 2024, one month before the spyware’s activity was publicly disclosed. The vulnerability’s discovery also caused “panic” at Israel’s military intelligence Unit 8200, according to the recent Israeli television report.

  • HiddenLayer555@lemmy.mlEnglish
    924·
    2 days ago

    Say the line Bart!

    sigh, “Unlike insert socialist country here, the West has freedom of speech and the right to express your opinions without the secret police coming after you.”

    YAYYYYYYY!

    • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
      63·
      1 day ago

      Fuck all those spying countries. But yea still I believe in the west you get in trouble for acting, not just speaking

        • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
          14·
          3 hours ago

          Being deported sucks, but it’s nowhere as bad as going to prison heh, but there sure is an increase of those shitty repressions all over the world currently

      • OneMeaningManyNames@lemmy.mlEnglish
        111·
        23 hours ago

        This is a cool way to protect a belief, narrowing the scope so that the refuting data do not apply anymore. Perhaps I can write a fucking essay about it, but do you have data to support this narrowing move? There is like a ton of data that the West has been invasively spying of possible threats to the status quo (from Cointelpro to undercover UK cops like recently), not just people “acting on it”. Furthermore, actions can fall under protected free speech as well, like putting up a poster, demonstrating, and protesting. So your proposal is inherently undemocratic if you roll back freedom to only protect oral expression, quite similar to a “Don’t ask don’t tell” attitude towards gay people. What you just said is simply counter-factual. Blanket surveillance is a staple of Western societies in the 21st century, and it blows my mind that there are still people oblivious to what is more or less spelled out clearly in the Patriot Act and all laws modeled after it across the globe.

        • Samsuma@lemmy.ml
          62·
          22 hours ago

          well said, i wish eurolibs would get this through their head, but i’m wishing for too much

        • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
          37·
          22 hours ago

          Sure, any censorship, spying and oppression is bad. I’m just saying one goes harder than the other, but I’m not denying that it sucks and that it clearly exists. I’m well aware of the patriot act and that speaking can endanger you. I just have this feeling like you get persecuted for speaking against the government in countries like China, whereas you need to be a strong figure to have the same fate in other countries. Anyways, it sucks for all countries that have this.

          I have no data and this is just a feeling.

          Democracy and freedom of speech, freedom to protest, freedom in general is in danger

          • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
            5·
            4 hours ago

            I just have this feeling like you get persecuted for speaking against the government in countries like China

            Tell that to the students that were expelled from their universities and had their degrees revoked or the public employees that were for fired for speaking out against the American government’s support for the Gazan genocide.

            Not to mention the civil servants that were fired/fined for advocating for LGBTQ rights in the decades past.

            • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
              22·
              4 hours ago

              USA sucks as well. As far as I’m concerned, it is not a democratic country that supports freedom of speech and I’ll never go there.

              USA is a bit similar to china on this subject

              • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
                31·
                4 hours ago

                it’s not just the usa; similar actions have happened in the uk and france regarding the genocide and they’ve also punished people for advocating for lgbtq rights in the past.

                that feeling that you have regarding repression from countries like china is only a feeling; not reality.

                • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
                  12·
                  4 hours ago

                  that feeling that you have regarding repression from countries like china is only a feeling; not reality.

                  Even though we have many instances where this happened? And people dissapeared in Hong Kong? Come on, you must be joking.

                  • eldavi@lemmy.mlEnglish
                    2·
                    4 hours ago

                    i literally just pointed out many instances of the same thing happening outside of china; my point is that it happens everywhere and your feeling that it only happens is china is not reality.

          • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
            2·
            5 hours ago

            I have no data and this is just a feeling.

            This is a description of what being propagandised feels like; you have this feeling, but you can’t put your finger on why.

            • FireIced@lemmy.super.ynh.fr
              11·
              4 hours ago

              Oh I know why, I just don’t have the data to confirm this and frankly, I don’t want to. I’ve heard enough to confirm this general feeling. People that have no interest in lying about this, getting sent in jail for minor things, or just seeing what the governments of these countries are saying, lying in plain sight.

              • BrainInABox@lemmy.mlEnglish
                1·
                4 hours ago

                I just don’t have the data to confirm this and frankly, I don’t want to. I’ve heard enough to confirm this general feeling.

                What you are describing is called “confirmation bias”

          • Samsuma@lemmy.ml
            11·
            5 hours ago

            I just have this feeling like you get persecuted for speaking against the government in countries like China, whereas you need to be a strong figure to have the same fate in other countries.

            I have no data and this is just a feeling.

            We can learn and take away a lot from this vibes-based, “democracy” virtue-signaling analysis, but not about the topic at hand.

            This is still a cool way to downplay the West’s imperial staple of suppressing activism, engages in revisionism and amplifies everything that helps liberalism, all while accusing everyone outside the imperial core of doing so (or doing worse) as well, the statement along the lines of “does worse” doesn’t mean anything when you recognize that it’s a Western idea fully embraced and embroidered by the West that is insurpassable/incomparable to any other form of censorship.

            Freedom of speech is a meaningless concept, especially so for anyone that’s not white, when you can’t actually criticize EU/US/KKKommonwealth countries within these countries meaningfully without fear of losing your job, your house, your visa (this is exacerbated for foreigners, often not talked about) or your life.

            https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/tufts-university-student-detained-pro-palestine-views-transferred-louisiana

            https://www.commondreams.org/news/ice-warrant-mahmoud-khalil

            Your “freedom” to “speech” and “democracy” are constrained within a clearly drawn boundary, the boundary of which is drawn by the ruling class.

            Any other country outside the West engaging in censorship is either a) a dog of the West or b) protecting itself from fully succumbing into being a dog of the West.

            Notice how a Westerner does not risk anything by truly believing in and expressing things like “china censorship bad arabs/muslims are dirty terrorist scum and need to be wiped off the map these russian orcs need to be wiped off the planet”, but a non-Westerner risks absolutely everything by even slightly hinting at a criticism towards Western imperialism/wanting better conditions at the cost of the ruling class, perhaps even in their own damn fucking country, this is where point a) comes in to play.

            When it comes to China, they fall squarely in b):

            https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAEwoYIYgJA

            Once you understand the asymmetry, it becomes a lot clearer why the “both sides” argument is just a feeble attempt at minimizing Western imperialism.