Hong Kong is establishing a new court specifically for repression.

*Fast track to disaster? Brazil’s Grain Train plan raises fears for Amazon.*

The developer of the Pegasus spyware package has commanded the program — for all users, purportedly — to refuse to snoop on phone numbers of the US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, as well as Israel. Furthermore, these changes seem to have been imposed on preexisting users of the program.

That would imply that either the program has a back door, or it has a SaaSS component.

We might consider that the proper solution is to take further steps in the same direction, until the program is deactivated for all phone numbers. The manufacturer surely won't do that, though. So let's put that question aside and consider this from the standpoint of a user of Pegasus.

Would you want your country's intelligence agency to be limited in targets by a company that might obey other governments? Should governments accept being controlled by companies in this way?

Will the countries that are not thus protected start pressuring the company to protect them, too? For instance, what will France think of this? French ministers have been snooped on this way.

People who may be targets for spying can easily arrange to get US or UK phone numbers. If they do, will the company rescind this protection? If it can remotely protect certain phones, I suppose it can likewise remotely unprotect certain phones.

The US and UK have a deal: when the US wants to snoop on an American, since this would be illegal, the UK snoops on per and sends the US the information. And vice versa. Is there a tweak in Pegasus to allow the US and UK to continue doing that?

Crown Prince Bone Saw earlier demoted Saud al-Qahtani for his involvement in organizing the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, but is now rehabilitating him. Apparently three years in the cold is long enough punishment.

*University defends ‘academic freedoms’ after calls to sack professor.*

The sad thing is that a university's defending the freedom to state ones' opinions in a university should constitute news.