News Ars: "NSO permanently barred from targeting WhatsApp users with Pegasus spyware"

[mikeymikec]

NSO permanently barred from targeting WhatsApp users with Pegasus spyware

Ruling holds that defeating end-to-end encryption in WhatsApp harms Meta’s business.

arstechnica.com

I had to laugh/cry at this point in the article:

NSO had argued that such a ruling would “force NSO out of business,” as Pegasus is its “flagship product.” Hamilton ruled that the harm Pegasus posed to Meta outweighed any such considerations.

Ah yes, the real victim here is the company that seeks legal injunctions rather than protecting its users. Not the users.

“In the court’s view, any business that deals with users’ personal information, and that invests resources into ways to encrypt that personal information, is harmed by the unauthorized access of that personal information—and it is more than just a reputational harm, it’s a business harm,” Hamilton wrote. “Essentially, part of what companies such as Whatsapp are ‘selling’ is informational privacy, and any unauthorized access is an interference with that sale. Defendants’ conduct serves to defeat one of the purposes of the service being offered by plaintiffs, which constitutes direct harm.”

I wonder if the judge had to redraft this statement a few times before she felt she managed to avoid the elephant in the room being Meta's business model of selling user data.

 

[Rebel_L]

Isnt secretly installing spyware on peoples stuff a crime?

 

[mikeymikec]

Isnt secretly installing spyware on peoples stuff a crime?

I doubt that there was an innocent party represented in the whole case.