לשם שמ’’ם

‫לשם שמיים‬

Authoritarianism and Democracy

in attacks on women’s autonomy, expression, and physical safety.

The Taliban is responsible for human rights violations against women, signifying a loss of democracy and freedom in Afghanistan. The Taliban works to dismantle modes of dissent and free expression, especially when dissent comes from women. Dissent is often seen as the hallmark of a free society, so the Taliban’s violent efforts to whittle away voices of opposition is a breach of freedom and civil liberties.

1 “What Is the Taliban?” Council on Foreign Relations, Council on Foreign Relations, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/taliban-afghanistan.

2 “A Historical Timeline of Afghanistan,” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 4 May 2011, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/asia-jan-june11-timeline-afghanistan.

3 “What Is the Taliban?” Council on Foreign Relations.

Heather Barr, “For Afghan Women, the Frightening Return of ‘Vice and Virtue’,” Human Rights Watch, 4 Oct. 2021, https:// www.hrw.org/news/2021/09/29/afghan-women-frightening-return-vice-and-virtue.

4 “Afghanistan: Taliban Deprive Women of Livelihoods, Identity.” Human Rights Watch, 18 Jan. 2022, https://www.hrw. org/news/2022/01/18/afghanistan-taliban-deprive-women-livelihoods-identity#.

5 “What Is the Taliban?”

6 Heather Barr.

7 Alasdair Pal, “Taliban Replaces Women’s Ministry with Ministry of Virtue and Vice,” Reuters, Thomson Reuters, 17 Sept.

2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/taliban-replaces-womens-ministry-with-ministry-virtue-vice-2021-09-17/.

8 David Zucchino and Yaqoob Akbary, “Threatened and Beaten, Afghan Women Defy Taliban with Protests,” The New York Times, The New York Times, 24 Jan. 2022, https://www.nytimes. com/2022/01/24/world/asia/afghan-women-taliban-protests.html.

9 “Afghanistan: Taliban Deprive Women of Livelihoods, Identity.”

10 Anna P. Kambhampaty, “#Donottouchmyclothes: Afghan Women Protest Taliban Restrictions on Rights,” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Sept. 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/29/style/donottouchmyclothes-afghan-women-protest-taliban.html.

11 “Afghanistan: Freedom in the World 2021 Country Report,” Freedom House, https://freedomhouse.org/country/afghanistan/ freedom-world/2021.

Page 7

When Greed Outweighs Good Niva Cohen, ’23

Globalism has brought a plethora of new opportunities for economic success and cooperation, but there’s a catch to an increasingly connected world: mutual responsibility.

Democracies that pick and choose the nature of their relationships with other countries neglect their values in favor of their self-interests.

To engage in the global community economically but not socially, to ignore human rights violations because they are inconvenient, is selfish, irresponsible, and hypocritical. Technology has emerged at the center of conversations about global markets because it is always evolving and universally useful. Highfunctioning artificial intelligence, facial identification, and surveillance equipment are among the fastest developing.

Policymakers, governments, and human rights activists debate how to use these technologies effectively. In placing financial success and security above liberty and human rights, the Israeli spyware program Pegasus has failed to strike a crucial balance: reaping the benefits of such powerful software without letting it exploit democratic values.

NSO Group, an Israeli company comprised of former cyberspies, designed Pegasus to insidiously infect mobile devices, leaving very little trace. Their software is almost impossible to defend against, as it can infiltrate phones without the users having to click on a mysterious-looking link.1 In 2019, Pegasus infected 1400 phones through WhatsApp simply by placing a call, even if the target did not answer it.2 Once “inside” the device, Pegasus can steal photos, videos, GPS information, communications, and passwords; it can even spy on the target by operating the phone’s camera and microphone. NSO sells this spyware technology to foreign governments – Mexico, India, and Hungary, for example – so that they can track terrorists, granting Pegasus software licenses that the Israeli Defense Ministry must also approve.

The Ministry claims that it “approves the export of cyber products exclusively… for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and counterterrorism.”3 As robust as Pegasus’s infection mechanisms are now, the software is always improving, finding newer and stealthier ways into phones through all apps.

Despite NSO’s purported goals, its technology has enabled authoritarian countries to surveil threats. Concerns about Pegasus spiked when investigators found an infection on Jamal Khashoggi’s wife’s phone. Saudi Arabian journalist Khashoggi was assassinated in Istanbul for his unfavorable reporting of his native government. The Pegasus Project reasons that the government could have tracked Khashoggi’s movement and mentality by listening to Pegasus-recorded phone calls between him and his wife. To evaluate the extent of spyware misuse, a group of journalists established the Pegasus Project. They compiled a list of 50,000 numbers in more than 50 authoritarian countries being tracked through