NSO Group under renewed investigation by US
The US Department of Justice is reportedly showing renewed interest in an Israeli cyber company previously tied to the surveilling of journalists and rights activists around the world.
Israeli spyware company NSO Group is facing a lawsuit in the
US filed by the messaging platform WhatsApp. The renewed efforts could be part
of the Biden administration agenda to increase its emphasis on human rights and
crack down on the Saudis, experts say.
The Guardian reported on Monday that the Justice Department
appeared to be reviving its examination of NSO Group. The report said that
Justice Department lawyers had recently contacted WhatsApp for information
regarding NSO Group's alleged 2019 targeting of 1,400 users of the messaging
app, which is at the heart of a lawsuit filed by WhatsApp against the Israeli
company.
The report in the Guardian comes after Microsoft President
Brad Smith came out against technology companies like NSO, calling them "21st
century mercenaries" and urging the Biden administration to intervene.
"NSO represents the increasing confluence between
sophisticated private-sector technology and nation-state attackers," Smith
wrote in a memo in December.
NSO Group is based in Herzliya and is most famous for a tool
called Pegasus, which reportedly has been used to target rights activists,
journalists and government officials in such diverse locations as Mexico,
Morocco and India. Pegasus, a smartphone spyware, is said to allow activities
such as spying on phone calls and messages, as well as enabling the phone's
microphone and camera. While the company repeatedly has been criticized for its
use against government critics around the world, it insists that the tool is
sold for the sole purpose of fighting crime and terrorism.
Prof. Orr Dunkelman of Haifa University's computer science
department is a director of The Center for Cyber Law and Policy. He said that
the special interest in this company, just one of Israel's rich selection of
cybersecurity firms, is because its tools are used for "offensive
cyber."
"Offensive cyber is, in many ways, a weapon,"
Dunkelman told The Media Line. While Israel has a number of offensive cyber
companies, "NSO have simply been caught a few times’ in the surveilling of
activists and journalists, “at least according to groups that specialize in
this area such as The Citizen Lab,” he said.
Prof. Eytan Gilboa, an expert in US-Israel relations and
American policy in the Middle East at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic
Studies, explains that the renewed interest in the company under the Biden
administration could be a result of its increased attention to human rights
issues.
"This administration is sensitive to human
rights," Gilboa told The Media Line. Specifically, "any use of a
cyber tool whose aim is to harm human rights is of special interest to
them," he said.
The Democratic administration developed a heightened
sensitivity to cyber violations in response to the alleged Russian interference
in the 2016 US elections, the professor explained.
Gilboa sees the reports of a revival of the investigation as
connected to a different policy toward Saudi Arabia, as well as a larger shift
in American policy in the Middle East in general. While the Trump administration
was a close ally to the Saudis, the present administration repeatedly has
expressed its reservations regarding the Saudi regime. At the same time, the US
has expressed its readiness to return to the Iran nuclear deal, after former
President Donald Trump decided to step away from the agreement.
Importantly, the Saudis reportedly used NSO spyware to watch
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, whose 2018 assassination in Istanbul by Saudi
operatives has been revived by the current administration, and is significantly
straining Saudi-US relations.
Prof. Dov Waxman, the Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert
Foundation Chair in Israel Studies at UCLA, where he directs the Younes &
Soraya Nazarian Center for Israel Studies, goes a step further in disconnecting
the investigation from outside factors. “I don’t think the DoJ is a kind of arm
of American foreign policy,” he told The Media Line.
However, if there is a tighter connection to the present
administration’s policy, Waxman points to its emphasis on human rights as
central to foreign policy. Additionally, Google, Microsoft and their fellow
tech industry leaders recently voiced their concerns regarding NSO, according
to a report in the Guardian.
“The Biden administration definitely has a better
relationship with those tech giants than did the Trump Administration,” the
UCLA professor said, “so it’s more receptive to their concerns.”
Waxman refers also to a recent court win for NSO in Israel,
which may have contributed to the renewed interest in the company. Amnesty International
had petitioned the Israeli court to revoke NSO’s export license, but the
petition was rejected in July 2020.
NSO’s Pegasus is classified as a weapon by Israel, and
therefore requires an export license from Israel’s Defense Ministry. The judge
that rejected the petition said she was convinced that the licensing procedure
is “a strict and sensitive procedure during which export requests receive deep
consideration,” and that there is continued supervision that can lead to a
suspension of the license in cases of human rights abuse, according to the
Israeli business daily Globes.
NSO Group declined to comment for this report.
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