Slovenian officials blame Israeli firm Black Cube for trying to manipulate vote

Terr_

Alternate source due to paywall: https://www.politico.eu/article/black-cube-leak-tape-corrupt...

hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I wonder when people will stop being scared to speak out. Is it once they lose their job due to stolen data? Is it once Palantir decides they are a threat and they lose their freedom? Is it once they lose their own land? Is it after starting the 10th war?

cbcoutinho

https://archive.ph/LwhOj

greenavocado

Joel Zamel, an Israeli intelligence veteran, led the Israeli intel company Psy-Group, which worked closely with Netanyahu and the Trump campaign circle, including Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner. Psy-Group partnered with Cambridge Analytica (later Emerdata) to influence the 2016 US elections using social media data. The Black Cube intel firm, staffed by former Mossad agents, was employed by Cambridge Analytica, which was involved in harvesting Facebook data. Harvey Weinstein Hired ex-Mossad Agents to Track Women Accusing Him of Sexual Assault Weinstein hired Israeli firm Black Cube to research his accusers and to scuttle reports of his sexual abuse Black Cube operatives posed as activists, abuse victims and sources for journalists https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/2017-11-07/ty-article/report...

shevy-java

Israel really needs to stop interfering in other countries' elections. That's not acceptable. We don't interfere when their population votes for warcriminals either.

seydor

Israel has created a whole industry around "politics" as a service. Between rampant spying in multiple countries using Predator etc and slimy campaings like this, you can buy governments for an increasingly affordable price.

chiengineer

At this point its extremely clear and important to understand It doesnt matter how men, bodies / hours / time / millions and billions you spend building a defensive They will infiltrate with less than 500k And come out on top 100% of the time This is a fundamental human problem that needs fixing across the entire planet It does not matter what country or secret groups are involved or how much life or death is truly at stake There is a 100000% chance some dumbass is willing to fuck if all up for a small bribe

bilekas

Am I mistaken but in theory aren't Solvenia and Isreal technically allies ? I'm not naive to believe intelligence agencies don't target each other in many ways, but general voting interference seems quite brazzen. I would love to see an example being made out of them here. That said, bar sanctions, Isreali 'private' companies like this seem to have carte blanch on whatever they want to do. No sanctions, no fines, not even investigations will happen I fear.

jmyeet

I want to talk about Ticketmaster. People hate Ticketmaster. For good reason. TM throws on all these fees, clearly engages in third-party selling, makings buying difficult and jacks up prices. All of this is known. But what's less known is that artists, especially big artists, like Ticketmaster. Why? Because TM is a sacrificial anode. It takes all the hate but adding junk fees that in part go to the artist. The artist can say they're selling seats from as low as $20 in press releases while the least they will get for a seat is $30 because of all the fees. Being hated is a service you can sell because it takes away attention from what you're doing. You get to blame this third-party but you're still absolutely complicit in everything they're doing. You see where this is going? Israel is America's Ticketmaster. Anything bad that Israel or an Israeli firm does, the US could end today with a phone call by simply saying "we're cutting off aid if you don't stop doing". The price of this is to be the sacrificial anode for what is actually American foreign policy. There are well-funded and organized efforts to whitewash Israel's reputation and those were successful up until the last few years. Israel is a huge supplier of spyware eg Pegasus [1]. Despotic regimes use this to spy on journalists and opposition figures and has likely been used to locate and kill them. You think we couldn't stop that? Of course we can. But we like that because, again, Israel takes the heat. So Israel interfering in Slovenia's elections is the least surprising thing I've heard. I'd be surprised if it wasn't true. You will find Israeli influence in probably every election. [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

chimpanzee2

Doesn't matter, half of HN will still defend them.

dadoum

Recently, there were municipal elections in France, and there was Israeli interference there as well [0] (the article is pay-walled and in French but it's written in the title at least). [0]: https://www.lecanardenchaine.fr/politique/53391-la-campagne-...

nmeofthestate

"Black Cube" - wonder what they're going for there. Maybe "Sinister Obelisk" was taken.

vrganj

Israel under Netanyahu is part of the international antidemocratic axis of imperialist autocracy. Other members, in no particular order: Orban, Trump, Putin, Babis, Thiel, Bolsonaro, Ellison, Milei, Nawrocki. These gentlemen (and of course they're all men) constitute the 21st century axis of evil, responsible for most of the backsliding and worsening of rule of law around the world.

_zoltan_

and Russia is now doing the same in Hungary... :(

zug_zug

It seems to me that interfering in a foreign election should be understood to be grounds for war.

epolanski

It's insane the power and influence Israelis have. In the US it's blatant, from the insane amounts of money and weaponry sent to Israel (why are american taxpayers subsidizing Israel exactly? It's not like they are neither poor nor US owes them) to the recent events in the middle east. But even in Europe. Here in Italy the coalition government has multiple high profile politicians that just happen to be shareholders or CEOs of security companies owned by Israelis. And just so it happens that the same security and communication companies get lots of work by the Italian government. And when journalists brought this up because they didn't report it to neither the government nor parliament, nothing happened anyway. It's a scandal really, but if you write or say it, you're labeled as anti semitic, so criticizing and surfacing this terrible stuff is always controversial.

nashashmi

The desperation of the state is becoming apparent. Look for more election interference in the future. It will be more sophisticated. And likely can be traced in past elections.

gokhan

Already downvoted to hell. Will leave frontpage in 5-10 mins with 273 points in 1 hour. Shame.

bawolff

So is the allegation that this private intelligence firm tried to induce members of the government party to offer a bribe. They then published the recorded conversations. I guess what is missing from the article is was the videos misleading or did they really get offered the bribe? Because if its the latter, its kind of hard to feel sympathy for a corrupt official getting caught even if the mechanism was problematic.

rekrsiv

Quick question: Could they also be manipulating this message board's voting?