> When challenged on the extent of this intelligence collection, Cohen stated with absolute certainty that he alone knew the scale of the operation: "You know how many equipment I mean treated equipment that we have in these countries? You can't. You don't. I do". When asked to name specific countries, he equivocated but revealed that this treated equipment is spread across virtually every potential theater of operation, confirming that these devices are present "in all the countries that you can imagine".
So there are, potentially-speaking, explosive devices controlled by Israel planted in consumer-devices, in every single country on the globe.
How often do you open up your device to check for bombs?
I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.
At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
> I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.
I think it's fairly unlikely that these devices are being shipped to normal hardware customers as doing so would likely risk exposing the operation. These sort of operations appear to exploit the fact that terrorist organizations themselves are forced to covertly procure hardware without going through typical supply chain channels.
> At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
There is a rather wide range of technologies/services that have both military and civilian use cases, drones being the obvious example of dual use hardware and shipping/logistics being an obvious example of a dual use service. Plenty of civilian shipping companies provide services to military customers around the world. I think it's pretty hard to argue that a highly targeted attack using drones transported by enemy civilian logistics is unethical simply because civilian logistics was used as part of the operation.
> An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
That's a rather disingenuous way to frame an operation which was arguably the most precise coordinated assassination operation against a terrorist organization in history. Virtually all individuals killed/injured by the operation were members of the terrorist organizations being targeted with only a tiny amount of civilian casualties(virtually all civilian casualties were family members of the terrorists that happened to pick up the devices instead of the intended targets AFAIU). These devices appear to have been exclusively sold to the terrorists and never distributed to normal customers. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of these devices ended up being sold to normal non-terrorist customers.
Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
> Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
I suspect in practice the spicy pagers would tend to be tracked quite closely by the intelligence agencies.
> There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
Intelligence agencies don't have a lot of accountability in general, but I'd hardly say operation grim beeper was playing fast and loose with how precisely the terrorists were targeted ultimately.
> On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
Hard to say how easy to detect they would be, but it doesn't seem all that likely that random consumers would run into these sort of devices. Intelligence agencies would certainly not want these devices getting distributed to the general public.
> When challenged on the extent of this intelligence collection, Cohen stated with absolute certainty that he alone knew the scale of the operation: "You know how many equipment I mean treated equipment that we have in these countries? You can't. You don't. I do". When asked to name specific countries, he equivocated but revealed that this treated equipment is spread across virtually every potential theater of operation, confirming that these devices are present "in all the countries that you can imagine".
So there are, potentially-speaking, explosive devices controlled by Israel planted in consumer-devices, in every single country on the globe.
Wouldn't this be trivial to verify unless distribution is highly targeted? Just open up some electronics?
How often do you open up your device to check for bombs?
I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.
At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
> I don't think the point is that it's not difficult to screen for, the point is that most people will not think to or do not have the means, the time, the knowledge, or the willpower to take apart all their devices, verify what is and isn't an explosive device, and then reassemble it intact. According to this report, there are a non-zero number of devices around the world, possibly in shipping containers, that contain explosives.
I think it's fairly unlikely that these devices are being shipped to normal hardware customers as doing so would likely risk exposing the operation. These sort of operations appear to exploit the fact that terrorist organizations themselves are forced to covertly procure hardware without going through typical supply chain channels.
> At least one of the suppositions I saw this last year, was that Ukraine was likely to be slapped on the hands for using consumer shipping for their military drone deployments. Because presumably, the majority of countries will not take lightly the fact that any given consumer shipping could now contain military equipment that could potentially be deployed against them, and that it is in the interest of every single country to react with prejudice to the mixing of consumer and military shipments.
There is a rather wide range of technologies/services that have both military and civilian use cases, drones being the obvious example of dual use hardware and shipping/logistics being an obvious example of a dual use service. Plenty of civilian shipping companies provide services to military customers around the world. I think it's pretty hard to argue that a highly targeted attack using drones transported by enemy civilian logistics is unethical simply because civilian logistics was used as part of the operation.
> An agent of the Israeli state has now admitted that since at least 2006 (so the better part of a quarter of a century), they have been planting bombs in consumer-grade electronics and subsequently using them to selectively blow people up in civilian places. How this is not a) worldwide news, and b) taken as an admission of overt terrorist activity, is utterly baffling. Can you imagine the reaction if an ex-NSA, ex-CIA, ex-MI7, or ex-MSS operative admitted that they had been planting explosives in consumer grade electronics?! There would be an international uproar.
That's a rather disingenuous way to frame an operation which was arguably the most precise coordinated assassination operation against a terrorist organization in history. Virtually all individuals killed/injured by the operation were members of the terrorist organizations being targeted with only a tiny amount of civilian casualties(virtually all civilian casualties were family members of the terrorists that happened to pick up the devices instead of the intended targets AFAIU). These devices appear to have been exclusively sold to the terrorists and never distributed to normal customers. There doesn't appear to be any evidence that any of these devices ended up being sold to normal non-terrorist customers.
Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
> Some random person is gonna get killed because their eBay sourced electronics were originally purchased for Iran, were intercepted by Mossad and tampered with, sent on their way, got seized in Jordan for sketchy customs papers, bought at evidince auction 18mo later by a reseller, who imported them (or the importer is gonna lose their life's work after being accused of explosives smuggling by the feds).
I suspect in practice the spicy pagers would tend to be tracked quite closely by the intelligence agencies.
> There's basically no accountability for these intelligence organizations preventing them from playing fast and loose.
Intelligence agencies don't have a lot of accountability in general, but I'd hardly say operation grim beeper was playing fast and loose with how precisely the terrorists were targeted ultimately.
> On the other hand, there's various degrees of explosives spot checking all over international boundaries and the like. If random explosives are moving around surely someone would run across them, so it my just be some scumbag spook trying to get people scared.
Hard to say how easy to detect they would be, but it doesn't seem all that likely that random consumers would run into these sort of devices. Intelligence agencies would certainly not want these devices getting distributed to the general public.
The sealed battery itself is the bomb. The tell was that the batteries had lower capacity than they should have given the size.
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45762307