Ubai al-Aboudi, director of the Bisan Centre for Research and Development and user of one of six devices reportedly hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, speaks during a press conference at the offices of al-Haq Centre for Applied International Law in Ramallah in the occupied West Bank on November 8, 2021. (Abbas Momani / AFP via Getty Images)
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Apple has just filed a lawsuit against Israeli spyware company NSO for harming Apple and its users. Apple accuses NSO of “[weaponizing] powerful state-sponsored spyware against those who seek to make the world a better place,” thus indirectly incriminating Israel. This will further boost the case for banning all spyware.
The Biden administration’s decision earlier this month to “blacklist” NSO, whose infamous Pegasus software hacks smart phones, and another Israeli company, Candiru, which targets computers, may have been influenced by the growing outrage from US-based tech giants about how NSO’s spyware is undermining their own systems’ security, thus threatening their markets.
The United States sanctioning foreign companies is an old story. It happens all the time, usually in response to some commercial transactions deemed harmful to what Washington likes to call “US interests.” But while targeting Chinese and Russian companies is by now routine, going after high-profile Israeli corporations is unprecedented.
Contrary to Israeli claims, NSO is closely connected to, licensed, regulated, and supported by the Israeli government. Apple’s lawsuit goes further, accusing Israel of “sponsoring” and enabling NSO. The Israeli government, as reported in the Israeli media, “considers NSO’s software a crucial component of its foreign policy and national security.”
The Israeli paper Haaretz has tracked the strong correlation between Israel’s foreign policy objectives and NSO sales in countries led by dictators or authoritarian regimes. It concluded that the Israeli state “worked proactively to get Israeli cyberweapon companies, first and foremost NSO, to operate in these countries, despite their problematic records on democracy and human rights.” Haaretz presented evidence of Israeli government corruption to partially explain the company’s collusion with NSO.
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Israel is not accustomed—to put it mildly—to being placed in the basket of potential threats to US national security with Russia. After all, regardless of which party is in power, the United States has for decades been Israel’s enabler, military funder and armor against international accountability. It has consistently singled out Israel for special treatment, showering it with unconditional, mostly military, funding. For Washington to now list Israeli spyware companies as a substantial menace is causing panic in Israel. And the fact that journalists are already asking whether the Biden administration plans to pressure Israel to rein in NSO, as it has pressured Russia over cyber-hacking, is likely only exacerbating this panic.
According to research by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, NSO’s Pegasus spyware has been used to spy on governments …….
Source: https://www.thenation.com/article/world/apple-nso-pegasus-spyware/