10 ms·

Hungarian journalists and critics of Orbán were targeted with Pegasus

612 points by r_sz 5y ago

NicoJuicy 5y ago
Orbán is a cancer on Europe, i really the EU has a decent response this time.
- xiphias2 5y ago
  Sure, and Orban would have never been able to have so much power if EU wouldn't give so much free money to him without verifying where that money goes.
- labster 5y ago
  I’m sure he’ll get a huge GDPR fine for using transferring that much PII without consent. And not even one cookie warning! How much is 4% of Hungary’s GDP?
- dstick 5y ago
  I read in the newspaper today that the EU issued an ultimatum to Poland: get rid of the unlawful special court that deems itself above the EU law, or face repercussions. Finally they're growing some teeth. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-commission-intends-to-set-ultimatum-for-poland/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/europea... However, after Googling for an online source, I came across this article about another ultimatum for justice reform in 2017, and things only got worse after that :-/ https://euobserver.com/justice/138627 https://euobserver.com/justice/138627
  - dogma1138 5y ago
    It’s hard to issue these ultimatums when in Germany the constitution is supreme too and the courts would and do take it over EU law when there is conflict.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Except they don't. Please don't spread polish government's propaganda.
      - dogma1138 5y ago
        Except they do https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-against-germany-over-ecb-ruling/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-aga... Overall the EU has about the same number of procedures open against Germany as they do against Poland, both are pretty high on the list Germany is #5 Poland is #4.
        trasz 5y ago
        Except they don't; there's no similarities between those cases other than the courts being involved. The German case has nothing to do with the government openly ignoring its own constitution.
        volta83 5y ago
        While the German court ruled against the EU, the German government immediately complied with EU law. Those in the EU suing Germany for its court decision here are actually German, and are only doing this to establish legal precedent. This makes it a completely different situation than what’s going on with Hungary and Poland.
  - desine 5y ago
    How terrible that local laws, written and enacted by the voting population they preside over, take precedent over international laws written and enacted by legislators several times more distantly removed from the population. Hopefully the UN gets enough funding to occupy the roles of state and municipal police soon. Then we can free the common man from the tyranny of local government.
    - raverbashing 5y ago
      You're free to write all local laws you want and the rest of the world is free to not buy anything for you and give you one cent for anything.
    - jeroenhd 5y ago
      The whole point of international law is that countries choose to commit to following the same laws. There's no point signing any treaty if you're not planning on actually applying its legislation. If people they don't like the laws they've committed themselves to, they can choose not to follow them anymore. However, the advantages they receive in return, in this case the freedoms and economic benefits of being in the EU, will also disappear if they decide to play by their own rules. With the massive benefits Poland has gotten from the EU, I don't think it's in their interest to leave, especially since it doesn't have the negotiating power the UK had (and Brexit has been a series of catastrophes nonetheless). Nobody is forcing these people to follow foreign laws, it's just that they want the benefits without doing anything in return. The EU is not just a trade bloc, it's an institution to create a shared European ideal. They may not like the deal, but they're free to refuse it and negotiate a better one.
    - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
      > How terrible that local laws, written and enacted by the voting population they preside over They're written by the politicians who were voted into power and who have certain vested interests in voting them. They were not voted by a population, sorry.
    - trasz 5y ago
      Erm, the root of the problem is that polish government is breaking polish law, in particular the constitution. It's not "polish constitution against EU", it's "polish government against polish constitution and the EU".
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - jollybean 5y ago
    And how does the EU justify it's legal supremacy? Where do they get that right? By treaty? Or perhaps the European Court of Justice simply 'ruled' that it's laws were 'supreme' in a bizarre act of defining it's own jurisdiction outside of treaty agreements? Europeans never agreed to give the ECJ supremacy. The ECJ just 'took' that power. It's a baffling bit of legal history [1][2] and it demonstrates just how powerful these institutions can become outside of democratic norms. A quote: "The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself. The majority of national courts have generally recognized and accepted this principle, except for the part where European law outranks a member state's constitution. As a result, national courts have also reversed the right to review the conformity of EU law with national constitutional law." Because of this and the resulting vaguery, it's still not always perfectly clear which 'court' is supreme in exactly what ways. The Germans resolve that EU laws cannot contradict their Basic Law - to be determined by their own Supreme Court, which is kind of a backwards way of saying 'our national courts still have supremacy'. It would be pretty interesting to see Poland take on the ECJ in this case, because it might cause an EU level constitutional crisis as they'd probably challenge the legitimacy of the 'Supremacy' ruling from 1964 that set the precedent. It's not as clear cut as the headlines would have us believe, like for example a US State taking on the Supreme Court. Even in Canada, the provincial leaders invoke Constitutional shenanigans to make up their own laws that can't be rescinded by the constitution. We'll have to see what happens. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/primacy_of_eu_law.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/primacy_of_eu_law... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
    - mariusor 5y ago
      In your post you seem to imply that European Law has precedence over national laws in all cases. As your first link details a couple paragraphs down, it's not so, it only covers those where nations submit to EU sovereignty explicitly: > It should be noted that the primacy of EU law only applies where EU countries have ceded sovereignty to the EU — fields such as the single market, environment, transport, etc. However, it does not apply in areas such as social policy and taxation.
- jsbdk 5y ago
  I'm not defending his actions as I have no horse in this race, but he seems to have the support of his country - why should the EU be above that?
  - meibo 5y ago
    Because they are an EU member, which comes with certain obligations and values. If you don't want that part of the deal, you shouldn't get the money either.
  - jonathanstrange 5y ago
    Because any country that joins the EU agrees with the European Union Treaties in a legally binding way, and among other things these guarantee certain minimal democratic standards and human rights in the European Convention on Human Rights. The government of a country cannot just pick those parts of signed and ratified treaties they happen to like at one time or another and reap the benefits of membership without also fulfilling corresponding requirements and duties. They would have to leave the EU first, which they are free to do at any time. Of course, then they would also not get any membership benefits.
  - tobltobs 5y ago
    The EU shouldn't be above that. But when Hungary doesn't like the rules of the EU it should leave. Of course it never will, as it is depending on the 3.000.000.000 Euro yearly support.
    - upgrejd 5y ago
      Why would they leave when they can have the cake and eat it?
    - ipatec 5y ago
      Those 3b are such a simplistic narrative. How much money do Western companies make in Hungary due to EU? The reality is that EU is mostly a neo-colonial project where the East Europe is depleted of resources (especially human capital) and treated as nothing more than a marketplace for W European products.
- ipatec 5y ago
  Between the power/control being taken over by someone elected and supported by most of his country or being taken over by some bigger organization like EU with very twisted interests... well.. I thing the first is preferred.
- biscotte_ 5y ago
  Always funny to see the europhiles say how much they love europe... but... the Hungarians this... and the lazy greeks that... and the Luxembourg cheaters... and the Polish that... yes of course they are very “tolerant, “humanists”, etc, but dont you dare step out of the very fine line of what THEIR europe is.
- tarere 5y ago
  > "Orbán is a cancer on Europe" Orbán too little "woke" ? One would say "EU is a cancer for european nations and people", I strongly think that this techno-totalitarist institution is on the brink of total collapse. Brexit first, Hungary, Poland, I sure hope France is next with our "startup nation" CEO. French people voted NO to EU in 2005, it was forced upon us. You may argue as much as you want EU and its supra-national institutions are not a democratic process. If EU was good for Europe, US would not have set it up back in the days. Everything is about power. Before it was power of nations, now it is obviously power from a selected few over the mass, supra-national oligarchy.
xiphias2 5y ago
Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.
- raverbashing 5y ago
  Cue the Orbanites saying how the EU wants to interfere in "matters of their country" This (and the events of January 6th) are a good reminder that the law is worth the paper it's printed on if no one acts on it.
- bkovacev 5y ago
  China has already targeted Serbia and Montenegro - infrastructure mainly. I can't find the source now, but I have heard they already started investing in Hungary.
  - erk__ 5y ago
    A good example of that is the Fudan university campus https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653
  - chpatrick 5y ago
    Orban wants to build a massive Chinese university campus in Budapest, with a loan from China. https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-university-budapest-orban-viktor-gergely-karacsony https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-univ...
- Dah00n 5y ago
  I don't know much about Hungary so could you provide a reason why it is bad "if EU lets China come into Hungary"? Unless it is because China Bad, then I'm not interested, but I'm hoping for something more interesting than that. Personally I would hate to see EU close in on itself and so it needs to align with outsiders. China seems just as good a partner as the other big markets to me.
  - 5y ago
bwb 5y ago
I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more. I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?
- raverbashing 5y ago
  You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example) The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.
  - johnnycerberus 5y ago
    Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.
  - pferde 5y ago
    Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.
- pydry 5y ago
  Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances. Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group. Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.
deleted 5y ago
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poisonborz 5y ago
If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices and legal disputes that take years without a noteworthy resolution. Due to how alliances within the union work - Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself.
- ceilingcorner 5y ago
  Orban exists because of EU overreach. If the Brussels set weren’t intent on turning the EU into a federal United States of Europe, none of these “rogue states” (a completely absurd label for Hungary, btw) would have any political interest in Fidesz/PiS/etc.
  - jq-r 5y ago
    Wrong. EU is the boogeyman for the governments in Eastern Europe. Whatever unpopular move they make, EU gets blamed for it. It is easy to blame some entity everyone knows exits, but at the same time, that entity is more like a group which doesn't fight back against it. Even if they fight back and criticize the government here and there, the latter own the media and that becomes a non-story. Right wing governments always need a boogeyman to rally against. Today it is EU, LGBT+ groups, Roma etc. Tomorrow it might be you and me.
    - ceilingcorner 5y ago
      Sorry but this is a caricature. These countries were dying to join the West 30 years ago. Orban himself was one of the most prominent pro-West figures in the 90s. The only reason these countries are now “hostile” is because the EU and the West have changed.
      - dathos 5y ago
mola 5y ago
All of Netanyahu's allies in the world seem to have profited from this relationship by obtaining military grade surveillance inorder to suppress human rights of journalists and opposition. This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. I'm convince pegasus was used against Israeli journalists, opposition leaders and law enforcement officials. Too bad our political system is still under his thumb and doesn't shed light on this crap even now that he's no longer PM.
- joelbluminator 5y ago
  Hungary aside, most of Israel's allies in the region are dictatorships, actaully all of them: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco (arguably, let's agree it's not a liberal democracy) and so on and so on. There are zero democracies in the area. So it's easy to see Israel's interest in supplying technology to those regimes and assuring good relations; it's not like the oppositions to these dictators are any better, the Muslim Brotherhood is appalling. Now Hungary isn't really important to Israel and is part of the EU, may have been wiser to not do that. > This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia?
  - mola 5y ago
    In the area, I agree. But Netanyahu chose to spurn democratic European allies and allign Israel with Hungary and Poland. Basically he made western Europe an enemy of Israel because he chose settlements over a peace process, to alleviate the foreign pressure he alligned Israel with Hungary and Poland, also helping Russia with its cold European conflict. > Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia? How's that relevant? If you're fishing for hypocrisy, be assured I dislike the US take on democracy and it's leaders of late no less than Netanyahu. But At least the US has a constitution, checks and balances. And a tradition of freedom and democracy. Israel has a growing population, the parts that grow are mostly lacking any sense of democratic values or tradition. Guess which electorate Netanyahu spurned and which he focused his Messiyah propaganda on.
    - joelbluminator 5y ago
zsellera 5y ago
So far Orban's regime is the only eu/western government involved in this scandal. I see that no surprise. There is no need of official government approval to conduct such surveillance. It's enough to have weak access contol to such technologies, political roles within the agencies, and poor work ethics in civil servants: there alway will be someone with will and motive to act in favor of the system, off the record. Orban deliberately shaped the government this way.
immmmmm 5y ago
a friend of mine had written an interesting piece of investigation journalism on this topic https://medium.com/@maribst https://medium.com/@maribst
NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago
I perceive this as an example why allowing privacy violation for one group for the "sake of greater good" does not work. Usually the same tools will be used with oppressive regimes. In the beginning it will start with pretext that "we are using this tools to find terrorists, pedophiles and protect children" but more often it will end up prosecuting journalist, silencing whistleblowers and undermining political opponents creating perpetual state of oppression and corruption.
alexseman 5y ago
Haha so many comments from the SV & Bruxelles globo-homo bubble. Hungary is a sovereign nation with a freely elected body of leaders who uphold the national, traditional & Christian values on which it is founded and which allowed this nation's continuity throughout history. Get over it.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account since it has only been using HN for ideological battle. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (and no, we don't care what your ideology is)
  - AKSucks 5y ago
    > (and no, we don't care what your ideology is) Unless you happen to present a articulate, reasoned objection to the use of the term "sex worker" to describe camgirls, in which case your comments go "poof!"
iamnotwhoiam 5y ago
Does anyone have any idea how Pegasus actually works? I haven't found any teardowns or even a clear description of what the iMessage says. This is some kind of code injection attack that can go through a text message?
- est31 5y ago
  From my understanding, the attack can happen through multiple ways. Companies like NSO purchase vulnerabilities for this step and probably have a set of them on their disposal, ready to deploy ones as they get discovered. Pegasus is the rootkit which is installed once the attack is successful, and allows spying on the user. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
- nuker 5y ago
  iOS iMessage bugs parsing images, I recall
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    From the Amnesty report shown by another commentator, there were a bunch of compromised Apple services.
- abhiminator 5y ago
  This article from Amnesty International's Security Lab is a good primer on the attack vector used by the Pegasus exploit https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
- swiley 5y ago
  The iMessage exploit sounds like a Null terminated string issue. The rest of it sounds like a Metasploit-esque framework along with some telemetry tools.
- fulafel 5y ago
  Pegasus is a name for their attack repertoire of the day plus whatever next stage payloads are run upon a successful compromise.
mayank_vashisht 5y ago
It’d be interesting to learn how the NSO group's marketing worked. Did NSO go knocking on the doors of all these despotic regimes? Or was it the other way around? And what was the hand of the Israeli government in the deal-making? For instance, reports state that the spying in India began right after the India’s PM met with Netanyahu in 2017 [1] So was NSO actively backed by the government? Sigh. So many questions. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-rahul-gandhi-among-indian-targets-of-nso-client https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-...
Vaderv 5y ago
Thank you tje country that made it
saagarjha 5y ago
> The son and one of the closest confidants of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. They were both selected as targets before the Hungarian national election of April 2018. Back then, Simicska was the owner of a media empire, and he was openly waging war against the Orbán government. (It would have been futile to target Simicska with this spyware as he did not use smartphones.) There's literally no winning here. You can literally disconnect from the internet and they'll just target the people around you…
londons_explore 5y ago
Where is this list of phone numbers? I want to check if my numbers on it or anyone I know...
janjones 5y ago
Here is a technical report about the exploits: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  Holy shit, there's literally a dozen of Apple products exploited. It's not a single "Apple music exploit", it's dozens of separate services. Music, messenger, safari, iOS, etc... I never want to hear Apple cares about security again. I could forgive 1 mistake, but this seems like negligence. (Don't put me down as a defender of MS or Android, but at least they don't use "Security" in their marketing)
  - t-c-h 5y ago
    If you would have actually read the report, you would have known the attacks are not specifically device or mobile OS bound. They simply say that iOS leaves behind more useable traces. From paragraph 10: Much of the targeting outlined in this report involves Pegasus attacks targeting iOS devices. It is important to note that this does not necessarily reflect the relative security of iOS devices compared to Android devices, or other operating systems and phone manufacturers. In Amnesty International’s experience there are significantly more forensic traces accessible to investigators on Apple iOS devices than on stock Android devices, therefore our methodology is focused on the former. As a result, most recent cases of confirmed Pegasus infections have involved iPhones.
    - deregulateMed 5y ago
      The article doesn't mention android again. And I'm not even defending android, I'm attacking Apples unethical marketing practices of claiming security and privacy, but failing.
  - ohashi 5y ago
    That seems dramatic. It's a billion dollar ex-spy run company catering towards governments with seemingly no ethics. No offense to Apple but this is near state level actor as a threat and with enough motivation ($$$$$$$$) they will find ways to exploit Apple's software no matter what.
germandiago 5y ago
I came to the conclusion that politicians are a big problem. Not sure we can get rid of them but they are. FWIW I just see them use the money of others for their own purposes coactively and provoke a lot of polarization. Many times with bad intention for selfish interests. I am talking about ALL of them. I think people should be able (Hungarian case at hand) to choose whether they want certain contents to be taught at certain age for their kids. No matter which ones. It should be a free to choose thing. The minimum stuff we must all agree upon should be not killing, discriminating, etc. in legal terms. But when you try to force people to like or dislike something, instead of respecting others (whether they like or not other people ideas) then you have this highly polarized environment because you will always find the other half resisting, since it is imposed contents highly ideological. I think that things could be way better with fewer of these people.
re-al 5y ago
"Pegasus takes advantage of so-called zero-day vulnerabilities of software running on mobile phones, meaning built-in flaws that not even developers and manufacturers are aware of." Vulnerabilities, eh - 'flaws'? Or backdoors there by design? What's in a name?
haspok 5y ago
TL;DR: the government hacking into private mobile phones is completely legal practice according to Hungarian laws and nobody can be held responsible for it.
giorgioz 5y ago
Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus: https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-spyware-attacks/167909/ https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s... Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?
- ignoramous 5y ago
  That's a PR piece by an upstart that sells MDM (mobile device management) suite to enterprises. There are many entrenched MDMs that can very well do as much, if not more.
freakynit 5y ago
Fuc** dictator assholes. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.
freakynit 5y ago
Fuc** inhumane dictators. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.
deleted 5y ago
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gypsyharlot 5y ago
When you don't do the EU's bidding, their propaganda machinery will work so hard that even Goebbels would be impressed. Then comes the sanctions and other bullying approaches to force your ways. God I hope more countries follow the UK and leave the world's fattest bureaucracy.
known 5y ago
No privacy = No democracy

612 points by r_sz 5y ago

NicoJuicy 5y ago

Orbán is a cancer on Europe, i really the EU has a decent response this time.

xiphias2 5y ago
Sure, and Orban would have never been able to have so much power if EU wouldn't give so much free money to him without verifying where that money goes.
labster 5y ago
I’m sure he’ll get a huge GDPR fine for using transferring that much PII without consent. And not even one cookie warning! How much is 4% of Hungary’s GDP?
dstick 5y ago
I read in the newspaper today that the EU issued an ultimatum to Poland: get rid of the unlawful special court that deems itself above the EU law, or face repercussions. Finally they're growing some teeth. https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/european-commission-intends-to-set-ultimatum-for-poland/ https://www.euractiv.com/section/politics/short_news/europea... However, after Googling for an online source, I came across this article about another ultimatum for justice reform in 2017, and things only got worse after that :-/ https://euobserver.com/justice/138627 https://euobserver.com/justice/138627
- dogma1138 5y ago
  It’s hard to issue these ultimatums when in Germany the constitution is supreme too and the courts would and do take it over EU law when there is conflict.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Except they don't. Please don't spread polish government's propaganda.
    - dogma1138 5y ago
      Except they do https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-against-germany-over-ecb-ruling/ https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-prepares-legal-action-aga... Overall the EU has about the same number of procedures open against Germany as they do against Poland, both are pretty high on the list Germany is #5 Poland is #4.
      - trasz 5y ago
        Except they don't; there's no similarities between those cases other than the courts being involved. The German case has nothing to do with the government openly ignoring its own constitution.
      - volta83 5y ago
        While the German court ruled against the EU, the German government immediately complied with EU law. Those in the EU suing Germany for its court decision here are actually German, and are only doing this to establish legal precedent. This makes it a completely different situation than what’s going on with Hungary and Poland.
- desine 5y ago
  How terrible that local laws, written and enacted by the voting population they preside over, take precedent over international laws written and enacted by legislators several times more distantly removed from the population. Hopefully the UN gets enough funding to occupy the roles of state and municipal police soon. Then we can free the common man from the tyranny of local government.
  - raverbashing 5y ago
    You're free to write all local laws you want and the rest of the world is free to not buy anything for you and give you one cent for anything.
  - jeroenhd 5y ago
    The whole point of international law is that countries choose to commit to following the same laws. There's no point signing any treaty if you're not planning on actually applying its legislation. If people they don't like the laws they've committed themselves to, they can choose not to follow them anymore. However, the advantages they receive in return, in this case the freedoms and economic benefits of being in the EU, will also disappear if they decide to play by their own rules. With the massive benefits Poland has gotten from the EU, I don't think it's in their interest to leave, especially since it doesn't have the negotiating power the UK had (and Brexit has been a series of catastrophes nonetheless). Nobody is forcing these people to follow foreign laws, it's just that they want the benefits without doing anything in return. The EU is not just a trade bloc, it's an institution to create a shared European ideal. They may not like the deal, but they're free to refuse it and negotiate a better one.
  - rad_gruchalski 5y ago
    > How terrible that local laws, written and enacted by the voting population they preside over They're written by the politicians who were voted into power and who have certain vested interests in voting them. They were not voted by a population, sorry.
  - trasz 5y ago
    Erm, the root of the problem is that polish government is breaking polish law, in particular the constitution. It's not "polish constitution against EU", it's "polish government against polish constitution and the EU".
- deleted 5y ago
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- jollybean 5y ago
  And how does the EU justify it's legal supremacy? Where do they get that right? By treaty? Or perhaps the European Court of Justice simply 'ruled' that it's laws were 'supreme' in a bizarre act of defining it's own jurisdiction outside of treaty agreements? Europeans never agreed to give the ECJ supremacy. The ECJ just 'took' that power. It's a baffling bit of legal history [1][2] and it demonstrates just how powerful these institutions can become outside of democratic norms. A quote: "The principle was derived from an interpretation of the European Court of Justice, which ruled that European law has priority over any contravening national law, including the constitution of a member state itself. The majority of national courts have generally recognized and accepted this principle, except for the part where European law outranks a member state's constitution. As a result, national courts have also reversed the right to review the conformity of EU law with national constitutional law." Because of this and the resulting vaguery, it's still not always perfectly clear which 'court' is supreme in exactly what ways. The Germans resolve that EU laws cannot contradict their Basic Law - to be determined by their own Supreme Court, which is kind of a backwards way of saying 'our national courts still have supremacy'. It would be pretty interesting to see Poland take on the ECJ in this case, because it might cause an EU level constitutional crisis as they'd probably challenge the legitimacy of the 'Supremacy' ruling from 1964 that set the precedent. It's not as clear cut as the headlines would have us believe, like for example a US State taking on the Supreme Court. Even in Canada, the provincial leaders invoke Constitutional shenanigans to make up their own laws that can't be rescinded by the constitution. We'll have to see what happens. [1] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/primacy_of_eu_law.html https://eur-lex.europa.eu/summary/glossary/primacy_of_eu_law... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
  - mariusor 5y ago
    In your post you seem to imply that European Law has precedence over national laws in all cases. As your first link details a couple paragraphs down, it's not so, it only covers those where nations submit to EU sovereignty explicitly: > It should be noted that the primacy of EU law only applies where EU countries have ceded sovereignty to the EU — fields such as the single market, environment, transport, etc. However, it does not apply in areas such as social policy and taxation.
jsbdk 5y ago
I'm not defending his actions as I have no horse in this race, but he seems to have the support of his country - why should the EU be above that?
- meibo 5y ago
  Because they are an EU member, which comes with certain obligations and values. If you don't want that part of the deal, you shouldn't get the money either.
- jonathanstrange 5y ago
  Because any country that joins the EU agrees with the European Union Treaties in a legally binding way, and among other things these guarantee certain minimal democratic standards and human rights in the European Convention on Human Rights. The government of a country cannot just pick those parts of signed and ratified treaties they happen to like at one time or another and reap the benefits of membership without also fulfilling corresponding requirements and duties. They would have to leave the EU first, which they are free to do at any time. Of course, then they would also not get any membership benefits.
- tobltobs 5y ago
  The EU shouldn't be above that. But when Hungary doesn't like the rules of the EU it should leave. Of course it never will, as it is depending on the 3.000.000.000 Euro yearly support.
  - upgrejd 5y ago
    Why would they leave when they can have the cake and eat it?
  - ipatec 5y ago
    Those 3b are such a simplistic narrative. How much money do Western companies make in Hungary due to EU? The reality is that EU is mostly a neo-colonial project where the East Europe is depleted of resources (especially human capital) and treated as nothing more than a marketplace for W European products.
ipatec 5y ago
Between the power/control being taken over by someone elected and supported by most of his country or being taken over by some bigger organization like EU with very twisted interests... well.. I thing the first is preferred.
biscotte_ 5y ago
Always funny to see the europhiles say how much they love europe... but... the Hungarians this... and the lazy greeks that... and the Luxembourg cheaters... and the Polish that... yes of course they are very “tolerant, “humanists”, etc, but dont you dare step out of the very fine line of what THEIR europe is.
tarere 5y ago
> "Orbán is a cancer on Europe" Orbán too little "woke" ? One would say "EU is a cancer for european nations and people", I strongly think that this techno-totalitarist institution is on the brink of total collapse. Brexit first, Hungary, Poland, I sure hope France is next with our "startup nation" CEO. French people voted NO to EU in 2005, it was forced upon us. You may argue as much as you want EU and its supra-national institutions are not a democratic process. If EU was good for Europe, US would not have set it up back in the days. Everything is about power. Before it was power of nations, now it is obviously power from a selected few over the mass, supra-national oligarchy.

xiphias2 5y ago

Orban used EU money to take total control of the country (media, poor voters). If EU lets China come into Hungary, it will backfire for the whole EU in my opinion.

raverbashing 5y ago
Cue the Orbanites saying how the EU wants to interfere in "matters of their country" This (and the events of January 6th) are a good reminder that the law is worth the paper it's printed on if no one acts on it.
bkovacev 5y ago
China has already targeted Serbia and Montenegro - infrastructure mainly. I can't find the source now, but I have heard they already started investing in Hungary.
- erk__ 5y ago
  A good example of that is the Fudan university campus https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653 https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-57372653
- chpatrick 5y ago
  Orban wants to build a massive Chinese university campus in Budapest, with a loan from China. https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-university-budapest-orban-viktor-gergely-karacsony https://telex.hu/english/2021/04/22/hungary-china-fudan-univ...
Dah00n 5y ago
I don't know much about Hungary so could you provide a reason why it is bad "if EU lets China come into Hungary"? Unless it is because China Bad, then I'm not interested, but I'm hoping for something more interesting than that. Personally I would hate to see EU close in on itself and so it needs to align with outsiders. China seems just as good a partner as the other big markets to me.
- 5y ago

bwb 5y ago

I always am amazed by how many people value their nation over larger groups of human beings who are just like them... isn't it time to up our game as humans and start thinking bigger? Why not abolish nations within the EU and just become the EU with different provinces? Nationalism is an ancient mentality, get rid of it and start moving into larger groups who can do more. I keep reading about the North American Alliance in sci fi books, how long until the usa, canada and mexico combine to create a bigger economic block?

raverbashing 5y ago
You can't fully remove nationalism, it's always going to exist in some way or the other, even in things that have nothing to do with "nations". (Yankees vs. Red Sox for example) The "no-borders" people are as out of touch with reality as Orban, though in different extremes.
- johnnycerberus 5y ago
  Nationalism is a new concept invented by the French. You can't say about Greece that it is/was a nation. The nationalization of Greece's city-states represents a Greek tragedy, one that culminated in economic collapse. People focus on their group and they think that the same rules apply globally, which isn't the case.
- pferde 5y ago
  Fully agree. I believe that taps into many thousands of years of tribalism - every human that ever lived had an "us" group and one or several "them" groups, and inter-group relations were rarely friendly.
pydry 5y ago
Economic alliances have never been a particularly good way of forming tribal allegiances. Belonging to a trading bloc doesnt make you actually care about the other group. Also, replacing "French" nationality with "EU nationality" doesnt get rid of nationalism it just scopes it at a larger level. There exist "EU nationalists" and to be honest, I find them as annoying as any other kind of nationalist.

deleted 5y ago

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poisonborz 5y ago

If there is one single lasting international effect of Orbán and his party, it's how he demonstrated how EU is completely helpless against rouge states (as well). The delicate political balance of its parliamental politics make it impossible to react to any complex, even if lethal threats. The EU funds and fuels a Belorussian-style regime in its own heartland for a decade now, and all they can do are angry notices and legal disputes that take years without a noteworthy resolution. Due to how alliances within the union work - Hungary has the full support of Poland and the V4 - any major blowback would result in shattering itself.

ceilingcorner 5y ago
Orban exists because of EU overreach. If the Brussels set weren’t intent on turning the EU into a federal United States of Europe, none of these “rogue states” (a completely absurd label for Hungary, btw) would have any political interest in Fidesz/PiS/etc.
- jq-r 5y ago
  Wrong. EU is the boogeyman for the governments in Eastern Europe. Whatever unpopular move they make, EU gets blamed for it. It is easy to blame some entity everyone knows exits, but at the same time, that entity is more like a group which doesn't fight back against it. Even if they fight back and criticize the government here and there, the latter own the media and that becomes a non-story. Right wing governments always need a boogeyman to rally against. Today it is EU, LGBT+ groups, Roma etc. Tomorrow it might be you and me.
  - ceilingcorner 5y ago
    Sorry but this is a caricature. These countries were dying to join the West 30 years ago. Orban himself was one of the most prominent pro-West figures in the 90s. The only reason these countries are now “hostile” is because the EU and the West have changed.
    - dathos 5y ago

mola 5y ago

All of Netanyahu's allies in the world seem to have profited from this relationship by obtaining military grade surveillance inorder to suppress human rights of journalists and opposition. This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. I'm convince pegasus was used against Israeli journalists, opposition leaders and law enforcement officials. Too bad our political system is still under his thumb and doesn't shed light on this crap even now that he's no longer PM.

joelbluminator 5y ago
Hungary aside, most of Israel's allies in the region are dictatorships, actaully all of them: Egypt, Jordan, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Morocco (arguably, let's agree it's not a liberal democracy) and so on and so on. There are zero democracies in the area. So it's easy to see Israel's interest in supplying technology to those regimes and assuring good relations; it's not like the oppositions to these dictators are any better, the Muslim Brotherhood is appalling. Now Hungary isn't really important to Israel and is part of the EU, may have been wiser to not do that. > This is Netanyahu's legacy, a proto dictator, arming dictators. Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia?
- mola 5y ago
  In the area, I agree. But Netanyahu chose to spurn democratic European allies and allign Israel with Hungary and Poland. Basically he made western Europe an enemy of Israel because he chose settlements over a peace process, to alleviate the foreign pressure he alligned Israel with Hungary and Poland, also helping Russia with its cold European conflict. > Isn't the U.S selling arms to Saudi Arabia? How's that relevant? If you're fishing for hypocrisy, be assured I dislike the US take on democracy and it's leaders of late no less than Netanyahu. But At least the US has a constitution, checks and balances. And a tradition of freedom and democracy. Israel has a growing population, the parts that grow are mostly lacking any sense of democratic values or tradition. Guess which electorate Netanyahu spurned and which he focused his Messiyah propaganda on.
  - joelbluminator 5y ago

zsellera 5y ago

So far Orban's regime is the only eu/western government involved in this scandal. I see that no surprise. There is no need of official government approval to conduct such surveillance. It's enough to have weak access contol to such technologies, political roles within the agencies, and poor work ethics in civil servants: there alway will be someone with will and motive to act in favor of the system, off the record. Orban deliberately shaped the government this way.

immmmmm 5y ago

a friend of mine had written an interesting piece of investigation journalism on this topic https://medium.com/@maribst https://medium.com/@maribst

NiceWayToDoIT 5y ago

I perceive this as an example why allowing privacy violation for one group for the "sake of greater good" does not work. Usually the same tools will be used with oppressive regimes. In the beginning it will start with pretext that "we are using this tools to find terrorists, pedophiles and protect children" but more often it will end up prosecuting journalist, silencing whistleblowers and undermining political opponents creating perpetual state of oppression and corruption.

alexseman 5y ago

Haha so many comments from the SV & Bruxelles globo-homo bubble. Hungary is a sovereign nation with a freely elected body of leaders who uphold the national, traditional & Christian values on which it is founded and which allowed this nation's continuity throughout history. Get over it.

dang 5y ago
We've banned this account since it has only been using HN for ideological battle. Not cool. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (and no, we don't care what your ideology is)
- AKSucks 5y ago
  > (and no, we don't care what your ideology is) Unless you happen to present a articulate, reasoned objection to the use of the term "sex worker" to describe camgirls, in which case your comments go "poof!"

iamnotwhoiam 5y ago

Does anyone have any idea how Pegasus actually works? I haven't found any teardowns or even a clear description of what the iMessage says. This is some kind of code injection attack that can go through a text message?

est31 5y ago
From my understanding, the attack can happen through multiple ways. Companies like NSO purchase vulnerabilities for this step and probably have a set of them on their disposal, ready to deploy ones as they get discovered. Pegasus is the rootkit which is installed once the attack is successful, and allows spying on the user. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)
nuker 5y ago
iOS iMessage bugs parsing images, I recall
- deregulateMed 5y ago
  From the Amnesty report shown by another commentator, there were a bunch of compromised Apple services.
abhiminator 5y ago
This article from Amnesty International's Security Lab is a good primer on the attack vector used by the Pegasus exploit https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...
swiley 5y ago
The iMessage exploit sounds like a Null terminated string issue. The rest of it sounds like a Metasploit-esque framework along with some telemetry tools.
fulafel 5y ago
Pegasus is a name for their attack repertoire of the day plus whatever next stage payloads are run upon a successful compromise.

mayank_vashisht 5y ago

It’d be interesting to learn how the NSO group's marketing worked. Did NSO go knocking on the doors of all these despotic regimes? Or was it the other way around? And what was the hand of the Israeli government in the deal-making? For instance, reports state that the spying in India began right after the India’s PM met with Netanyahu in 2017 [1] So was NSO actively backed by the government? Sigh. So many questions. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-rahul-gandhi-among-indian-targets-of-nso-client https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/jul/19/key-modi-rival-...

Vaderv 5y ago

Thank you tje country that made it

saagarjha 5y ago

> The son and one of the closest confidants of former oligarch Lajos Simicska. They were both selected as targets before the Hungarian national election of April 2018. Back then, Simicska was the owner of a media empire, and he was openly waging war against the Orbán government. (It would have been futile to target Simicska with this spyware as he did not use smartphones.) There's literally no winning here. You can literally disconnect from the internet and they'll just target the people around you…

londons_explore 5y ago

Where is this list of phone numbers? I want to check if my numbers on it or anyone I know...

janjones 5y ago

Here is a technical report about the exploits: https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-methodology-report-how-to-catch-nso-groups-pegasus/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/research/2021/07/forensic-...

deregulateMed 5y ago
Holy shit, there's literally a dozen of Apple products exploited. It's not a single "Apple music exploit", it's dozens of separate services. Music, messenger, safari, iOS, etc... I never want to hear Apple cares about security again. I could forgive 1 mistake, but this seems like negligence. (Don't put me down as a defender of MS or Android, but at least they don't use "Security" in their marketing)
- t-c-h 5y ago
  If you would have actually read the report, you would have known the attacks are not specifically device or mobile OS bound. They simply say that iOS leaves behind more useable traces. From paragraph 10: Much of the targeting outlined in this report involves Pegasus attacks targeting iOS devices. It is important to note that this does not necessarily reflect the relative security of iOS devices compared to Android devices, or other operating systems and phone manufacturers. In Amnesty International’s experience there are significantly more forensic traces accessible to investigators on Apple iOS devices than on stock Android devices, therefore our methodology is focused on the former. As a result, most recent cases of confirmed Pegasus infections have involved iPhones.
  - deregulateMed 5y ago
    The article doesn't mention android again. And I'm not even defending android, I'm attacking Apples unethical marketing practices of claiming security and privacy, but failing.
- ohashi 5y ago
  That seems dramatic. It's a billion dollar ex-spy run company catering towards governments with seemingly no ethics. No offense to Apple but this is near state level actor as a threat and with enough motivation ($$$$$$$$) they will find ways to exploit Apple's software no matter what.

germandiago 5y ago

I came to the conclusion that politicians are a big problem. Not sure we can get rid of them but they are. FWIW I just see them use the money of others for their own purposes coactively and provoke a lot of polarization. Many times with bad intention for selfish interests. I am talking about ALL of them. I think people should be able (Hungarian case at hand) to choose whether they want certain contents to be taught at certain age for their kids. No matter which ones. It should be a free to choose thing. The minimum stuff we must all agree upon should be not killing, discriminating, etc. in legal terms. But when you try to force people to like or dislike something, instead of respecting others (whether they like or not other people ideas) then you have this highly polarized environment because you will always find the other half resisting, since it is imposed contents highly ideological. I think that things could be way better with fewer of these people.

re-al 5y ago

"Pegasus takes advantage of so-called zero-day vulnerabilities of software running on mobile phones, meaning built-in flaws that not even developers and manufacturers are aware of." Vulnerabilities, eh - 'flaws'? Or backdoors there by design? What's in a name?

haspok 5y ago

TL;DR: the government hacking into private mobile phones is completely legal practice according to Hungarian laws and nobody can be held responsible for it.

giorgioz 5y ago

Found this article/podcast about how to protect itself a bit more more Pegasus: https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-spyware-attacks/167909/ https://threatpost.com/protecting-phones-from-pegasus-like-s... Isn't Android and iOS supposed to investigate what's the security vulnerability that allows the remote hacking through SMS and patch it?

ignoramous 5y ago
That's a PR piece by an upstart that sells MDM (mobile device management) suite to enterprises. There are many entrenched MDMs that can very well do as much, if not more.

freakynit 5y ago

Fuc** dictator assholes. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.

freakynit 5y ago

Fuc** inhumane dictators. Screwing up the world and everyone living in it.

deleted 5y ago

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gypsyharlot 5y ago

When you don't do the EU's bidding, their propaganda machinery will work so hard that even Goebbels would be impressed. Then comes the sanctions and other bullying approaches to force your ways. God I hope more countries follow the UK and leave the world's fattest bureaucracy.

known 5y ago

No privacy = No democracy