<story><title>UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus</title><url>https://citizenlab.ca/2022/04/uk-government-officials-targeted-pegasus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mschuster91</author><text></text></item><item><author>nivenkos</author><text>Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.middleeasteye.net&amp;#x2F;fr&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;israeli-diplomat-sought-set-labour-group-undermine-crazy-corbyn-1016879568&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.middleeasteye.net&amp;#x2F;fr&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;israeli-diplomat-sough...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The current government is a huge ally of Israel.</text></item><item><author>Jenk</author><text>The current home secretary, Priti Patel, was forced to resign from her previous (lesser) role as Minister for International Development for secretly (and thus illegally) meeting with Israeli diplomats.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-politics-41923007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-politics-41923007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is completely unsurprising that there is little care shown by our government.</text></item><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised this isn&amp;#x27;t a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly &amp;quot;closely monitoring how their customers were using the software&amp;quot; or akin to that.&lt;p&gt;Like, yeah, blame the UAE &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; for this but let&amp;#x27;s also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>coldtea</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Face it, Corbyn and the Labour Party do have a massive issue with antisemitism&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Only if we define it as criticism of Israeli policy.&lt;p&gt;Otherwise, that&amp;#x27;s a smear, substituting criticism with antisemitism.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;A smear campaign can only be really effective if there is a solid truth behind it.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Nope, it can be very effective without any truth. Try smearing someone as a pedophile - you think they&amp;#x27;ll be able to wash it off? Goebbels, for one, advised for complete lies, repeated often.&lt;p&gt;In fact, a complete huge lie can be even more believable, as people go &amp;quot;would they said something that great, if it wasn&amp;#x27;t at least a bit true?&amp;quot;.</text></comment>
<story><title>UK Government Officials Infected with Pegasus</title><url>https://citizenlab.ca/2022/04/uk-government-officials-targeted-pegasus/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mschuster91</author><text></text></item><item><author>nivenkos</author><text>Israel was also behind many of the efforts to smear the former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn - &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.middleeasteye.net&amp;#x2F;fr&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;israeli-diplomat-sought-set-labour-group-undermine-crazy-corbyn-1016879568&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.middleeasteye.net&amp;#x2F;fr&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;israeli-diplomat-sough...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;The current government is a huge ally of Israel.</text></item><item><author>Jenk</author><text>The current home secretary, Priti Patel, was forced to resign from her previous (lesser) role as Minister for International Development for secretly (and thus illegally) meeting with Israeli diplomats.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-politics-41923007&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.bbc.co.uk&amp;#x2F;news&amp;#x2F;uk-politics-41923007&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;It is completely unsurprising that there is little care shown by our government.</text></item><item><author>Someone1234</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m surprised this isn&amp;#x27;t a major diplomatic incident between the UK and Israel too, since the Israeli intelligence company was supposedly &amp;quot;closely monitoring how their customers were using the software&amp;quot; or akin to that.&lt;p&gt;Like, yeah, blame the UAE &lt;i&gt;mostly&lt;/i&gt; for this but let&amp;#x27;s also have a discussion about why this was sold to anyone who would pay with no oversight at all. Western countries need to do better.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dijit</author><text>That&amp;#x27;s not really how smear campaigns work.&lt;p&gt;Using a very extreme example: if I got 4 people to call you a pedophile, then people will believe it until you submit proof that you&amp;#x27;re not.&lt;p&gt;The problem is that it&amp;#x27;s impossible to prove the absence of something, so you&amp;#x27;re forced to push back on me: &amp;quot;Where&amp;#x27;s your proof that I&amp;#x27;m a pedophile&amp;quot;, where I can reply with anecdotes or other useless information.&lt;p&gt;The point is not to &amp;quot;prove&amp;quot; you are a pedophile in that case, the point is to make people associate your name with pedophilia, and to make it unclear if you are or if you aren&amp;#x27;t. 80% of people will not look further into it.&lt;p&gt;Pedophilia is probably too extreme of an example and people &lt;i&gt;may&lt;/i&gt; be more critical of pedophilia accusations than, say, racism ones.</text></comment>