So if I followed the story, it as GRU (Russian intel) that hacked his phone. Dutch intel then recruited a spy from GRU that handed over the data.
In any case, Kushner - and rightfully so - could not obtain a security clearance the first time around, due to massive debt. But it was overruled / waived by higher ups.
I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example - a cautionary tale - on the type of person you do not want to grant anything of importance.
Honestly it sort of blows my mind that the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled.
"Dutch government hacked into Jared Kushner's phone" is accurate.
The GRU double-agent proved that the GRU had compromised Kushner's phone. Subsequently, Dutch intelligence themselves independently attempted to hack Kushner's phone.
"In The Hague, the MIVD hacking team tried to reverse engineer the Russian penetration of Kushner’s iPhone." [...]
"The Dutch team had been trying to pick the phone’s door lock, so to speak, when it occurred to them that the Russians may have found an unlocked window to gain entry instead. Their hypothesis was correct. By early 2018, the MIVD had found a vulnerability in the iPhone that gave them access." [...]
"when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner’s screen as he used it, filing their own cache of surveillance on their internal computer servers."
Also (edit):
The part of the story I actually care about is two governments hoarding an iphone zero day, and using it to secretly hack iphones. I condemn it.
Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
So again, I condemn this extrajudicial activity, which undermines the digital security and privacy of everyone.
I'd love to correlate this comment of yours with the ones made around the time when it was found that the USA was spying wholesale on EU government officials, hacking telecommunications providers and so on.
Regarding the Dutch intelligence officials (in fact regardless of their country), targeted and legally authorised information collection is fine. That is what intelligence agencies are supposed to do. "Trust but verify", and all that.
It's blanket surveillance, unauthorised surveillance that crosses the line.
One of the biggest outcrys was when it was alleged the us hacked Merkel's phone. Surely that fits in your constraints. But it was the worst of the worst that the us could do when it emerged. Let's not equivocate
To whoever said that other countries do this, so it's ok (bandwagon fallacy):
Have the moral courage to do the right thing for the right reasons, regardless of everyone else doing the wrong thing. Take responsibility for your own actions, instead of offloading it to the actions of others. Act according to what you think is right instead of failing to think altogether.
Deciding your own version of what is right instead of adopting the beliefs of others, and acting according to what you believe instead of blindly following, is an expression of free will and dignity.
To whoever said that Jared Kushner is a bad person, so it's ok (double standard fallacy):
If you stop applying the law equally, your country is lawless. If you do not grant human rights to those who you justifiably hate, you no longer have human rights. When you bring before a court evidence obtained by crime, you are the criminal.
If you believe that arbitrary surveillance is wrong, as I do, you can either defend Jared Kushner's right to to privacy, or endorse arbitrary and unequal justice.
Would you accept anonymous men and women, secretly recording sexually explicit photos of you? If no, you have a double standard or some mental gymnastics to prove that Kushner is guilty of a crime without a trial. Or, you can assert that 'the ends justify the means', which is the death of civility.
In 2014, Christopher Brannan among others, leaked sexual photos of female celebrities from icloud. He was charged with unauthorized access and imprisoned for 38 months. Should he have been allowed to do the same thing because he was paid to do it? No, and the Dutch intelligence officers are his equal; equally disgusting people. If you hack someone's phone, you are repulsive, because the ends do not justify the means.
So I will defend Kushner's privacy, as I would my own, and demand that if someone wants to search his iphone, they can go to the judge and get a warrant instead of taking screenshots like a little creep.
Moreover, I defend without exception, Kushner's immunity to anything on his phone, because whatever derives from hacking the phone is illegitimate.
Of course. So if you find on Jared's phone a video of him murdering your daughter, and there is no other evidence for it, I hope you will stick to your principles about him having immunity.
The U.S. spent years explaining to the world that nothing is extrajudicial that happens to non-Americans outside of the United States. So please explain how this activity of the MIVD broke any Dutch laws.
I agree with you but by this time we know that this has become business as usual. I mean the U.S lead the way: Spy anyone including friends and allies. Find what they talk with their mother as well, maybe it would serve the orange pumpkin well in a negotiation.
Spying on everyone including your friends and allies has been standard practice for hundreds of years. The US's major sin, from an international politics perspective, might only be that they've been so hamfisted about it.
Compare to courtly politics in post-Renaissance Europe. All sorts of intrigue and backstabbing, largely only governed by two cardinal rules. First, never conduct yourself in an unseemly manner. Second, don't get caught.
A spy agency with a way to spy is expected to instead reveal the vuln so that nobody can use it? Are you wearing pajamas because that's a nice little dream. Of course a spy agency is going to exploit for their gain any vuln they find.
Also, what the Dutch did by following what the Russians did is exactly why government approved backdoors will not work. As soon as someone else finds out that there is a way, they will use it form themselves.
Though I respect the sentiment of his concerns, it is indeed a pipe dream. What do we expect the five eyes are doing? Certainly not sacrificing intelligence to bolster iPhone security, any day of the week.
This guy was whining a few days ago that Anthropic is the most evil company in the world because they won't let the American military have free reign to murder people with it. Then he goes on to say he is against "hacking". What does he think the military and surviellance do?
> Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
All the counter-arguments I've read to this comment so far have been along the lines of, "well they started it."
And well they did. But if your response to the U.S.'s brand of dehumanization is more dehumanization then you've actually helped them achieve their goal. The people who run the U.S. want a world where respect for privacy (among so many other things) is thrown away because they believe they have the guns and resources to gain the most from that kind of world.
It's part of why I'm getting out of the USA. Key norms of decency we had are broken now, and in our social system you can bet that the next powers who come in will do little more than make a show of repairing them. They now see what's possible and they'll use it for their own ends. It's a spiral.
Then why do you love the American military and intelligence having free reign to use AI to surveill on and attack people? Do you think the American military reveals its zero days?
You literally said Anthropic is the most evil in a comment discussion where the US military and Palantir were dicussed. Clearly you think somehow Anthropic are more evil than mass murderers. You haven't yet explained why one should think otherwise.
I don't consider it extrajudicial. Kushner should be charged with crimes in the united states. It is not extrajudicial just because the US is corrupt and won't prosecute kushner. Had that prosecution happened, everything the dutch did would be evidence against kushner.
I don't see why the dutch have any obligation to avoid monitoring a compromised phone that the US lets happen. The dutch have every right to know what the russians are getting from that phone.
Becoming a public servant means you should have fewer privacy rights compared to the average person because of the outsized power and influence a public servant has. All the info that Kushner hid should have been in the security clearance form that he was exempted from.
Kushner's behavior undermined the world far more than this phone hack.
The part of the story I actually care about is two governments hoarding an iphone zero day, and using it to secretly hack iphones. I condemn it.
Sorry, but the US threw this out of the window starting with the Patriot Act. Many tech companies were in the NSA PRISM program and the program probably still exists today. Common US E2E encrypted messengers can be read out by US services through weak defaults (e.g. iMessage in iCloud is encrypted at-rest unless ADP is enabled both sides of the chat, similarly, WhatsApp only encrypts backups at-rest by default).
The US can grab all that data from US companies, regardless whether the person regardless of whether the person is inside or outside the US thanks to the CLOUD Act.
> Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
This isn't about the privacy of one individual human. This is about the security practices of a politically exposed person and the information they have access to.
Any high profile, high security clearance individual must have top-notch security. Any information gleaned or stolen from them can have enormous repercussions.
Submitting yourself for security clearances involves signing up for these investigations. Either he did so and regrets it, or he took a job that absolutely requires that he did, but he didn't.
Kushner should not have been near any job of any importance. Especially not after it became known that corruption and crime wasn't just an individual thing but something that runs in the family.
Neither. He just do not give a shit, because he is Trumps family and as such, he does not have to give a shit. Practically speaking, he is very much above any law and there is whole party dedicated to keeping that way for him.
It requires nothing like a party. Presidents can pardon anybody they want, and we set a precedent, which seems to be holding for now, from the last President that you can even preemptively pardon people for any possible crime that they may or may not have committed during some window of time. So anybody sufficiently close to a President is defacto immune to the law. This will only change if immunity, pardoning, and other related laws change. And they will not.
I think that's also misdirected frustration. The only people that can genuinely determine the composition of the Supreme Court are the Supreme Court Justices themselves. Parties can only control such by chance alone. And so Justices staying in office to the point of their literal death is extremely selfish. It removes any sort of guaranteed 'balance' in succession, because your successor is going to be a random pick based on a balance between the Presidency and Senate.
It also creates a scenario where people remain on the bench long after their competence has likely faded. RBG, for instance, was 87 years old when she 'retired.' Her final wish is to not be replaced until a new President had been sworn in, which was predictably not granted. She had 30 years to choose that presidency herself, but simply refused to do so.
This just isn’t true. They _should_ have top notch security but that also requires responsible, security-aware action from the principal.
This assumption was destroyed during the first Trump administration and continued being eroded in his second. They do not practice good opsec. (See Signal app usage) Nobody is enforcing policies, and nobody tells the bosses that they can’t do something because [reason].
TrackerFF 1 day ago
In any case, Kushner - and rightfully so - could not obtain a security clearance the first time around, due to massive debt. But it was overruled / waived by higher ups.
I've worked in intel, and Kushner seems like the textbook example - a cautionary tale - on the type of person you do not want to grant anything of importance.
Honestly it sort of blows my mind that the US has a system decisions by security professionals can simply be overruled.
lukewarm707 1 day ago
The GRU double-agent proved that the GRU had compromised Kushner's phone. Subsequently, Dutch intelligence themselves independently attempted to hack Kushner's phone.
"In The Hague, the MIVD hacking team tried to reverse engineer the Russian penetration of Kushner’s iPhone." [...]
"The Dutch team had been trying to pick the phone’s door lock, so to speak, when it occurred to them that the Russians may have found an unlocked window to gain entry instead. Their hypothesis was correct. By early 2018, the MIVD had found a vulnerability in the iPhone that gave them access." [...]
"when Kushner used the phone, they could see his screen. Almost as soon as they got inside, the intelligence service began capturing every image of Kushner’s screen as he used it, filing their own cache of surveillance on their internal computer servers."
Also (edit):
The part of the story I actually care about is two governments hoarding an iphone zero day, and using it to secretly hack iphones. I condemn it.
Digital privacy is important to me. I think that all humans should have it. Feel free to disagree. Jared Kushner is a human.
So again, I condemn this extrajudicial activity, which undermines the digital security and privacy of everyone.
jacquesm 1 day ago
srean 1 day ago
It's blanket surveillance, unauthorised surveillance that crosses the line.
halJordan 1 day ago
srean 20 hours ago
Not conducive for trust though, which I assume had long vanished anyway.
lukewarm707 16 hours ago
Have the moral courage to do the right thing for the right reasons, regardless of everyone else doing the wrong thing. Take responsibility for your own actions, instead of offloading it to the actions of others. Act according to what you think is right instead of failing to think altogether.
Deciding your own version of what is right instead of adopting the beliefs of others, and acting according to what you believe instead of blindly following, is an expression of free will and dignity.
To whoever said that Jared Kushner is a bad person, so it's ok (double standard fallacy):
If you stop applying the law equally, your country is lawless. If you do not grant human rights to those who you justifiably hate, you no longer have human rights. When you bring before a court evidence obtained by crime, you are the criminal.
If you believe that arbitrary surveillance is wrong, as I do, you can either defend Jared Kushner's right to to privacy, or endorse arbitrary and unequal justice.
Would you accept anonymous men and women, secretly recording sexually explicit photos of you? If no, you have a double standard or some mental gymnastics to prove that Kushner is guilty of a crime without a trial. Or, you can assert that 'the ends justify the means', which is the death of civility.
In 2014, Christopher Brannan among others, leaked sexual photos of female celebrities from icloud. He was charged with unauthorized access and imprisoned for 38 months. Should he have been allowed to do the same thing because he was paid to do it? No, and the Dutch intelligence officers are his equal; equally disgusting people. If you hack someone's phone, you are repulsive, because the ends do not justify the means.
So I will defend Kushner's privacy, as I would my own, and demand that if someone wants to search his iphone, they can go to the judge and get a warrant instead of taking screenshots like a little creep.
Moreover, I defend without exception, Kushner's immunity to anything on his phone, because whatever derives from hacking the phone is illegitimate.
hardbass 16 hours ago
lukewarm707 16 hours ago
nkmnz 1 day ago
The U.S. spent years explaining to the world that nothing is extrajudicial that happens to non-Americans outside of the United States. So please explain how this activity of the MIVD broke any Dutch laws.
theplumber 1 day ago
bunderbunder 1 day ago
Compare to courtly politics in post-Renaissance Europe. All sorts of intrigue and backstabbing, largely only governed by two cardinal rules. First, never conduct yourself in an unseemly manner. Second, don't get caught.
dylan604 1 day ago
Also, what the Dutch did by following what the Russians did is exactly why government approved backdoors will not work. As soon as someone else finds out that there is a way, they will use it form themselves.
kappar 12 hours ago
hardbass 16 hours ago
troyvit 1 day ago
All the counter-arguments I've read to this comment so far have been along the lines of, "well they started it."
And well they did. But if your response to the U.S.'s brand of dehumanization is more dehumanization then you've actually helped them achieve their goal. The people who run the U.S. want a world where respect for privacy (among so many other things) is thrown away because they believe they have the guns and resources to gain the most from that kind of world.
It's part of why I'm getting out of the USA. Key norms of decency we had are broken now, and in our social system you can bet that the next powers who come in will do little more than make a show of repairing them. They now see what's possible and they'll use it for their own ends. It's a spiral.
Gud 1 day ago
Sort of how the police should keep tabs on violent criminals.
There is no "dehumanising".
ponector 1 day ago
hardbass 16 hours ago
lukewarm707 16 hours ago
hardbass 16 hours ago
whatthejesus 1 day ago
roosterIllusi0n 1 day ago
I don't see why the dutch have any obligation to avoid monitoring a compromised phone that the US lets happen. The dutch have every right to know what the russians are getting from that phone.
You are picking the wrong case for your cause.
miltonlost 1 day ago
Kushner's behavior undermined the world far more than this phone hack.
microtonal 1 day ago
Sorry, but the US threw this out of the window starting with the Patriot Act. Many tech companies were in the NSA PRISM program and the program probably still exists today. Common US E2E encrypted messengers can be read out by US services through weak defaults (e.g. iMessage in iCloud is encrypted at-rest unless ADP is enabled both sides of the chat, similarly, WhatsApp only encrypts backups at-rest by default).
The US can grab all that data from US companies, regardless whether the person regardless of whether the person is inside or outside the US thanks to the CLOUD Act.
x______________ 1 day ago
It goes a lot deeper than that..
mistrial9 1 day ago
there are branches of govt in the US system, not a single entity. Even the almighty secret police have been curtailed many times.
Believe me, not everyone is onboard with this approach to surveillance
echelon 1 day ago
This isn't about the privacy of one individual human. This is about the security practices of a politically exposed person and the information they have access to.
Any high profile, high security clearance individual must have top-notch security. Any information gleaned or stolen from them can have enormous repercussions.
tobylane 1 day ago
jacquesm 1 day ago
alistairSH 1 day ago
watwut 1 day ago
somenameforme 1 day ago
watwut 1 day ago
somenameforme 1 day ago
It also creates a scenario where people remain on the bench long after their competence has likely faded. RBG, for instance, was 87 years old when she 'retired.' Her final wish is to not be replaced until a new President had been sworn in, which was predictably not granted. She had 30 years to choose that presidency herself, but simply refused to do so.
sailfast 1 day ago
This assumption was destroyed during the first Trump administration and continued being eroded in his second. They do not practice good opsec. (See Signal app usage) Nobody is enforcing policies, and nobody tells the bosses that they can’t do something because [reason].
vcryan 1 day ago