The prevalence of technology in everyday life and the epic of maintaining privacy seems like an in-equation; in fact impossible to solve.
The surveillance industry does not seem to distinguish between good and evil, and its managers acquire increasing firepower, the damage inflicted appears to be more political than factual, but it could be part of campaigns whose purpose is unknown or at least linked to Cyber Intelligence movements, trying to demonstrate detection and reaction capabilities.
A typical action of Hacktivism, propaganda whose consequence implies that the Facebook account of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was hacked, in line with the celebration of Israeli Independence Day, but also, simultaneously, dozens of attacks on targets in the country occurred affecting government entities, public services, banks, etc. The hackers known as "Sharpboys" streamed Arabic and Persian audio content on Netanyahu's account.
Some of these attacks involved publishing files containing hundreds of thousands of records, including names, identity documents, addresses, phone numbers, and personal documents.
Paradigmatic or not, it is not necessary for a user to click on any link, Pegasus is a spy software, formally recognizable, marketable, that secretly enables the exploitation of vulnerabilities in a device, with possibilities to read text messages, track calls, collect passwords, track the location of the phone, as well as inventory information from different apps; Gmail, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, etc.
Pegasus is a spyware that works for the Apple and Android operating systems, developed by the Israeli firm NSO, which stated that it offers authorized governments technology to combat terrorism and crime, prevent attacks and dismantle paedophile, trafficking or drug trafficking gangs, but its use is also suspected to spy on high-level political and social personalities. Like the infection to the cell phone of the President of the Spanish Government.
The possibility of official or clandestine espionage and the consequent loss of privacy seems to adopt a different regime when it collides with an intrinsic need, little or nothing attended to until now.
These days, Britain is discussing an attempt to surveil the internet by tapping encrypted messaging from Whatsapp, Signal and other messaging services. The goal of the online safety bill is to regulate social media giants by requiring tech companies to identify child sexual abuse material in private messages.
The platforms declare that it is not viable to create backdoors in encrypted digital services, even when trying to protect children online, the explanation is that in addition to encrypted communication being an asset of their products, they justify saying that this could expose the content to the actions that cybercriminals and in some cases foreign governments would take advantage of.
The official approach is to maintain that it is not possible to let thousands of pedophiles around the planet get away with it. Definitely this is a problem-conflict based on human behavior whose complexity has to do basically with the technological evolution and the emotionality of the problem, but above all with the safety of minors. Privacy is not an elastic problem, platforms include it or not, half is the same as nothing.
It could expose people to their security and privacy, and there is arguably no consistent way to stop malicious or obscure actions by government authorities.
The truth in these times is that technology platforms should research, develop and create technology to identify child sexual harassment and abuse. Disturbing or not, governments seem to "audit off the record" messages and content in digital format if it is a terrorist threat but not for cases of harassment, abuse and sexual exploitation of children.
Gabriel Zurdo is CEO of BTR Consulting, a cybersecurity specialist.