An American court ordered the company NSO Group, the manufacturer of the spyware Pegasus, to hand over its code and other spyware programs to WhatsApp.
Judge Phyllis Hamilton's decision is a significant legal victory for WhatsApp, owned by Meta, which has been in litigation against NSO since 2019, claiming that the Israeli company's spyware was used against 1400 WhatsApp users over a period of two weeks.
The Pegasus code of NSO, as well as the codes of other surveillance products it sells, are considered state secrets, carefully guarded and highly sought after. NSO's activities are closely regulated by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, which must review and approve the sale of all licenses to foreign governments, reports the Guardian.
In making the decision, Hamilton took into account NSO's request to be released from all disclosure obligations in this case due to "various restrictions of the USA and Israel."
In the end, she sided with WhatsApp, requiring NSO to provide "all relevant spyware" for a period of one year before and after the two weeks during which WhatsApp users allegedly came under attack: from April 29, 2018 to May 10, 2020. NSO is also required to provide WhatsApp with information about the "full functionality of the relevant spyware."
However, Hamilton ruled in favor of NSO on another issue: the company will not be forced at this time to disclose the names of its clients or information about server architecture.
The litigation continues. NSO's Pegasus software can provide unlimited access to phone calls, emails, photos, location information, and encrypted messages without the user's knowledge. In 2021, the Biden administration blacklisted NSO after recognizing that the Israeli spyware manufacturer was acting "contrary to the interests of U.S. foreign policy and national security."
NSO sells its spyware to government clients around the world and claims that the agencies deploying it are responsible for how it is used. Although NSO does not disclose the names of its clients, research and media reports over the years have pointed to Poland, Saudi Arabia, Rwanda, India, Hungary, and the United Arab Emirates as countries where this technology has been used to spy on dissidents, journalists, human rights activists, and other members of civil society.
NSO claims that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security, and that its technology is designed to help catch terrorists, child abusers, and hardened criminals.
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