The article title is "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world", which exceeds HN's 80 char limit, so it had to be shortened somehow. The submitted title was "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping hack phones around the world". I changed that to "WhatsApp sues NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones around the world" because it seemed to me that the "spies" bit adds more information than the "Israel's" bit. There's a difference between "helping hack" and "helping spies hack".
For completeness, I do think the commenters pointing out a slightly nonstandard weirdness in the phrase "Israel's NSO"—like the one comparing to "America's Google"—have a fair point. (Exercise for the curious: have there ever been many titles like that?) But it was not the determining factor.
NSO founders' ties to the Israeli government are a bit more essential to their business than the Google example. See also the China examples from another commenter. I'll bet there are examples of "Russian company XYZ" as well. In cases like these, the nationality of the company and especially of its former-unit-8200 founders does seem rather germane.
The way the name "NSO" sounds like a government intelligence agency reminds me of the way "United States Chamber of Commerce" also confuses people: https://0x0.st/zYWr.png
Given how strongly the Israelian security sector is tied to its national government, including directly recruiting from the military and often acting on its behalf the distinction is quite ridiculous.
Would HN have censored "China's Huawei?" Obviously not, it's the typical bias concerning western governments and allies that seems to be getting more blunt as time goes on the website.
Tech companies in Israel, security-related or otherwise, are tied to the government just as much as, if not less than, in the US, the UK, or France. There's nothing even remotely resembling the situation in China. "Recruiting from the military" is true for virtually every company in Israel, including sewage treatment companies, because military service is mandatory, and that's where people usually are before they get a job.
On the other hand, "Israel's" makes it sound like it's a governmental intelligence agency rather than a company. Misleading context could be worse than no context.
I respectfully disagree. A three letter acronym implies shared understanding. NSA, CIA, GHQ, MI6, KGB, IBM, AMZ, USA, etc, are globally recongized. NSO is ambiguous and confusing in a headline and demands explanation.
Google tells me that "NSO" is "Nurse Malpractice" for the entire first page fold. I assume it's similarly unhelpful in other regions for other people. 'Cmon, it's not a big, recognized, entity. Wait a year and the problem will be even more apperent.
Without clarification it's unclear exactly what NSO stands for. If Google was relatively unknown, it probably would be referred to "America's Google."
Also, NSO's founders were members of the Israeli Intelligence Corp (source: Wikipedia). Given the military links it would be reasonable to include its origin. News outlets would likely do the same for a Chinese company.
That they served in the intelligence corp does not imply "military links" in Israel (I'm not familiar with the company, and there could, indeed, be military links, but that fact is not any evidence in support of that). Probably 80% of people with technical background in Israel have done their mandatory military service in the Intelligence Corp or the air force. Among startup founders the ratio is probably higher. In other words, virtually much everyone with a higher education served in the military, and those in STEM fields are likelier than not to have done it in the intelligence corp.
Ummmm...Israel Govt allows them to export these tools. So yeah. The Israeli probably gets something in return from countries, in addition to NSO getting paid.
If you haven't heard of NSO, does "Isreael's NSO" actually clarify anything? Maybe now you know where they are, but you're still no more informed as to what they are.
Yes, it tells me a lot about intent, where people's opinions might lie, and so on. We can pretend like global politics doesn't set context, but it just...does.
"Israelie Security Firm NSO" would totally clarify it for me.
Once I clicked through to see "Israel's", it immediately clarified who they were, at least to me -- in fact I recently watched an entire 60 Minutes segment about them.
Just NSO sounds like some government agency I had forgotten about.
I don't see any reason to have a policy about this one way or the other, but in most cases there's no need to say which country a well-known company is from. There are a couple instances of "China's Huawei" from over a year ago, but that's negligible compared to the number of headlines about Huawei overall.
For completeness, I do think the commenters pointing out a slightly nonstandard weirdness in the phrase "Israel's NSO"—like the one comparing to "America's Google"—have a fair point. (Exercise for the curious: have there ever been many titles like that?) But it was not the determining factor.