People really underestimate the damage these tools are doing to society.
Who can afford these tools? What lengths have people gone to earn/keep large sums of money? What problems are society going through right now?
Its just stealing your data, which doesn't seem bad. But now, someone who probably doesn't like you has your location, habits, friends, future events. There are so many things that these people can do to interrupt the lives of journalists, activists, and just regular people with stalkers, and all of those things are covert because "How is your ex-girlfriend's friend supposed to know you made a bumble profile 2 days ago, find it, and match with you?"
> People really underestimate the damage these tools are doing to society.
Even when heads of state are being extorted. Morocco used it against France and Spain. It fizzled out of the news cycle and nothing happened. And those countries later announced multi-billion Euro investments in Morocco. If anything, this is a signal hiring Pegasus is very profitable and they can do whatever they want.
Who can afford these tools? The IC and security agencies of every country in the world with a GNI greater than, say, Bahrain†. So: probably like 300-500 different global threat actors (countries like the US have dozens of capable agencies; I assume Bahrain has 1-2).
† I picked Bahrain because they're the smallest country we know for a fact has been a customer of multiple CNE vendors, but that probably means Bahrain plus the next 20-30 countries down the list.
Who can afford these tools? What lengths have people gone to earn/keep large sums of money? What problems are society going through right now?
Its just stealing your data, which doesn't seem bad. But now, someone who probably doesn't like you has your location, habits, friends, future events. There are so many things that these people can do to interrupt the lives of journalists, activists, and just regular people with stalkers, and all of those things are covert because "How is your ex-girlfriend's friend supposed to know you made a bumble profile 2 days ago, find it, and match with you?"