[dang]

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.

[notacoward]

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.

[quickthrower2]

Until I read the article, I assumed "NSO" would be a US government three letter agency. But hard to convey it is a company too in 80 chars I guess.

[catalogia]

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

[pnako]

>Exercise for the curious: have there ever been many titles like that?

I found a few "China's Huawei", "China's Tencent" and "China's Baidu".

[rimliu]

So it could as well be "WhatsApp sues Israel's NSO for allegedly helping spies hack phones".