High Profile Spy Companies Are Damaging Israel’s Image
Over the weekend, the Cyprus Police confiscated a “spy van”
that roamed the streets of Larnaca loaded with surveillance equipment valued at
$9 million. The owner of the vehicle, according to local reports, is one Tal
Dilian, formerly the head of the Israeli military’s intelligence directorate’s
tech unit.
Dilian retired from the Israeli military and turned to the
private market 17 years ago and has since become a multimillionaire, according
to an extensive profile of him published by Forbes in August.
Dilian’s spy van can intercept data such as Whatsapp and
Facebook messages, contacts, call logs, and text messages from any phone in a
one-kilometer radius, according to Forbes. Other technologies incorporated in
the vehicle include facial recognition and the ability to locate all phones in the
country within minutes.
The van and the technologies it holds are offered by
Dilian’s company, Intellexa Ltd., as part of the spy services it provides to
different countries in the world, and its presence in Cyprus was enough to
cause some political unrest. In a written statement released Friday, Andros
Kyprianou, head of Cyprus’ opposition party, the Progressive Party of Working
People, urged the state to operate and immediately confiscate Dilian’s
equipment.
Dilian is not an isolated case. He is part of a vast
ecosystem of Israeli companies developing and marketing spying and surveillance
technologies to other countries and even private entities. Perhaps the most
infamous company in this regard is Herzliya-based NSO Group, the developer of
phone hacking software Pegasus.
In October, Facebook filed a lawsuit against NSO, claiming
the company’s technology was used to piggyback on messaging app subsidiary
WhatsApp, targeting more than 1,400 users in 20 countries, many of which were
human rights activists and journalists.
One of the many addendums to Facebook’s lawsuit was a 2015
contract signed between the government of Ghana and a local representative for
NSO, called Infralocks Development Ltd., and an accompanying pamphlet that
outlined NSO’s capabilities. According to the contract, Ghana paid $8 million
for NSO’s Pegasus software, for training personnel in using the software, and
for ongoing technical support.
This is not the first time NSO’s conduct has been questioned
in and outside of court. Earlier in October, Amnesty International published a
report accusing NSO of spying on Moroccan human rights activists, previously
harassed by their government.
In 2016, researchers from the University of Toronto's
Citizen Lab, a digital and human rights research group, reported that a spyware
developed and marketed by NSO was used in the United Arab Emirates to target
human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor, who has been incarcerated since 2017 and
is currently serving a 10-year sentence for posts he published on social media.
In 2017, the group again pointed fingers at NSO's spyware, this time reporting
it was used to target activists, journalists, and political opposition in
Mexico.
In December 2018, an associate of Saudi journalist Jamal
Khashoggi, who was brutally killed inside his country’s embassy in Istanbul
earlier that year, sued NSO, claiming the company’s interception of his
communications with Khashoggi significantly contributed to the Saudi regime’s
decision to eliminate him. NSO’s connection to Khashoggi was first found by
Citizen’s Lab.
Citizen’s Lab also found similar faults in the conduct of
another Israeli company, defense contractor Elbit Systems Ltd. In a 2017
report, the organization said that Elbit supplied the Ethiopian regime with a
Pegasus-like software, developed by subsidiary Cyberbit Ltd. The state used the
software to target journalists and activists advocating for the country’s Oromo
minority.
Another Israeli company that has been in the
not-so-flattering limelight in the past few weeks is facial recognition startup
AnyVision Interactive Technologies Ltd. In October, NBC News and Israeli media
outlets reported that Anyvision’s technology was being used by Israeli military
forces to spy on Palestinians in the West Bank. AnyVision denied the claims,
stating the technology is only being used at checkpoints in the West Bank, but
it seems Microsoft, one of its biggest backers, remained less than reassured.
On Friday, the software giant announced it had hired former U.S. Attorney
General Eric Holder to look into whether the use of AnyVision’s technology by
Israeli forces violated any of Microsoft’s ethical AI principles.
Another prominent Israeli actor in the field of surveillance
is Black Cube, whose team is reportedly composed of ex-Mossad and former Israel
Security Agency (Shin Bet) agents. Among the Israeli officials to hold
positions on Black Cube’s board over the years are former Mossad directors Meir
Dagan and Efraim Halevy and former chief of the Israeli Police Yohanan Danino.
Black Cube first came to public awareness in 2017 when the
New Yorker magazine revealed that now-disgraced Hollywood producer Harvey
Weinstein contracted it to collect information on an actress accusing him of
sexual misconduct. Black Cube has apologized for taking the Weinstein job, but
the company has since been linked to several other controversial incidents,
including the targeting of officials in the Obama administration, and,
allegedly, of a member of Citizen’s Lab.
These companies rarely act alone and often maintain business
ties between them. For example, Circles Technologies, another surveillance
company co-founded by Dilian, was acquired in 2014 by San Francisco-based
equity firm Francisco Partners, which merged it into NSO, in which it held a
majority stake at the time.
But these companies have an even more dominant common
denominator—all of them were established or are staffed by Israeli military and
security veterans. People who move on to the private sector after their
discharge and use the knowledge, professional expertise, and practical
experience they gained in Unit 8200, the Israeli military's equivalent of the
NSA, in the Mossad, or in Shin Bet to develop products they sell to the highest
bidder. This can be a private entity looking to discredit a business rival or
prevent damaging information from coming to light, or countries with a shady
record at best when it comes to upholding human rights.
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