AS NSO SCANDAL SPIRALS, ISRAELI PM NAFTALI BENNETT ANNOUNCES STATE INQUIRY

Mon 07 February 2022:

Naftali Bennett, Israel’s prime minister, has announced a state investigation into the growing Pegasus surveillance controversy.

“Things allegedly happened here that are very serious,” he said in a statement that also credited Pegasus as “an important tool in the fight against terrorism and severe crime”.

“But they were not intended to be used in phishing campaigns targeting the Israeli public or officials, which is why we need to understand exactly what happened.”

It comes after a newspaper disclosed that police used strong spyware against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s confidants and a slew of other notable figures without permission.

Pegasus, a cellphone hacking tool made by Israel’s NSO Group, was used to “phish for intelligence even before any investigation had been opened against the targets, and without judicial warrants”, Calcalist daily said in an unsourced report.

The credibility of key Israeli institutions was at stake, according to President Isaac Herzog.

“We must not lose our democracy. We must not lose our police. And we must certainly not lose public trust in them. This requires an in-depth and thorough investigation,” Herzog said in response to the Calcalist report.

According to NSO, it exclusively sells spyware to genuine government law enforcement and intelligence agencies that have been authorized by Israel’s Defense Ministry for use against terrorists and criminals.

After governments used Pegasus spyware to spy on dissidents, journalists, diplomats, and human rights activists in countries such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and the United States, NSO Group is facing daunting financial and legal challenges, including the threat of default on more than $300 million in debt.

NSO has been placed on a US blacklist, thereby barring American companies from delivering technology to the Israeli firm.

Last month, Apple filed a lawsuit against NSO, claiming that the company’s operating systems were being violated by exploits such as a so-called zero-click hack, which may corrupt a device without requiring any user involvement. The company notified a large number of users around the world that they had been hacked.

In 2019, Facebook filed a lawsuit against the Israeli company, alleging that it hacked the company’s worldwide popular WhatsApp communication service.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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