Sun 07 November 2021:
On Saturday, Israel’s Foreign Minister Yair Lapid distanced the government from the NSO Group, a company blacklisted by the US this week for alleged misuse of its phone hacking malware.
NSO Group has been accused of supplying authoritarian governments with hacking tools. NSO claims that it exclusively offers its goods to law enforcement and intelligence agencies and that it takes precautions to prevent abuse.
According to a July report by 17 media organizations, NSO’s Pegasus software targeted the smartphones of journalists, human rights activists, and government officials in various nations.
The company sends its products abroad under licences from Israel’s Defence Ministry, which has launched its own probe of the company’s practices after the alleged software misuse emerged.
There have been no announcements of outcomes, and Israel has provided no hint that it is considering reducing the scope of NSO’s exports.
“NSO is a private company, it is not a governmental project and therefore even if it is designated, it has nothing to do with the policies of the Israeli government,” Lapid told a news conference in Jerusalem. “I don’t think there is another country in the world which has such strict rules according to cyber warfare and that is imposing those rules more than Israel and we will continue to do so.”
His remarks are the first by a top Israeli minister to be made public since the Commerce Department announced the blacklisting on Wednesday.
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