[rndgermandude]

>how EU and other countries are talking nothing about the use of this

You mean the customers of such malware (even if not necessarily Pegasus in particular)?

E.g. the German government bought FinFisher licenses, the German federal police bought Pegasus licenses. France was reportedly in late talks with NSO to buy Pegasus when the latest scandal hit that included Pegasus apparently having been used against Macron (tho the French government denies it was about to buy Pegasus). The UK might have been a customer too - at the very least the UK government hosted NSO at a trade show.

Aside from buying spyware, governments are keen on spying not just on foreigners but also their own citizens, in the EU too, e.g. the EU Data Retention Directive [0] or the German "remote forensic software" which is commonly known as the "Staatstrojaner" ("state trojans") which is basically the same as Pegasus just in blue. Or in the UK Theresa May's "snooper charter" (which eventually became the "Investigatory Powers Act").

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

[KarlKemp]

Note that Germany failed to buy Pegasus in 2017 because their in-house lawyers decided that it would be illegal to use. After a lot of back-and-forth, they did eventually sign a contract for modified version in 2021. That version was supposed to include changes making its use legal. It isn't quite known what the alterations were, but it's been speculated that data would have to match a case-specific wordlist to be exfiltrated, excluding, for example, irrelevant private data.

[Brian_K_White]

I think the only important fact is that they wanted to.

Being thwarted, partially, this time, for the moment, in one location, doesn't change anything.

Do you deny the essential assertion that states seek to surveil, and get what they want? Does this speedbump change that?

[KarlKemp]

"They" in the end, didn't want to. It was an internal struggle, and the law won.

[rndgermandude]

Finfisher was bought despite every legal expert they asked, including those they had on permanent payroll, saying it would be illegal to use. They later claimed they didn't use it only paid for the license.

They also said they'd only use a special Pegasus version that would be within the law, laws that they made and that then had to be severely limited later on by the Bundesverfassungsgericht (German constitutional court) again and again. If the government parties back then (one of which is still leading the new federal government coalition, both of which are leading different state legislators, 14 out of 16) had their way back then, things would be a lot worse.

If "they" (for various theys, as in federal government, state governments, federal/state police, intelligence services including internal ones such as the Verfassungsschutz and the MAD) actually did abide by the law is another matter E.g. they (intelligence services, in particular the BND) "helped" the US spy on German citizens including politicians via the XKeyscore program, and only admitted what was already known thanks to journalists, or even less actually, and didn't comment on anything else even when questioned by the German parliament, doing the whole "national security" yadayada or "I cannot recall".

In a day and age where government agencies write guides on how to carry out "parallel construction"[0], and after all that Snowden and others revealed, I am a bit skeptical when "they" tell the citizens that "they" only bought spyware but never used it, or only bought spyware with undisclosed modifications that allegedly made it lawful (under framework of law that indeed is of a questionable constitutionality in itself, and which had major parts struck or severely limited by courts) - a claim nobody was ever able to check thus far.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction

[Brian_K_White]

So you do deny that.

Well I assert that is a delusional optimistic outlook unsupported by any evidence in the history of states so far recorded.

[JumpCrisscross]

> unsupported by any evidence in the history of states so far recorded

Only if you ignore half the evidence. Runaway authoritarianism is as common a failure mode as states which strait jacket themselves into irrelevance.

[Brian_K_White]

I don't see it. All states, in fact all structures of organization or governance, from states to companies to bowling leagues, seek to surveil and control as much as they can get away with. Even rinkydink little local groups, if you give them some phone app that let's them know things they had no business knowing yesterday, will happily use it.

They don't always get away with everything they want on the first try, but they always want and they always try and the acceptable standard norm always progresses only in one direction. Wins in the other direction are local wins against, not examples of some state actually deciding they don't want.