Scandals don’t stop spyware: governments drive purchases

Since companies operating in the sector often have to face greater control by democratic governments on the activities they carry out, and above all according to the somewhat nebulous reference legislation in force in the European Union, they tend to set up their respective offices in Member States where the implementation of controls on the use of such tools is known to be ineffective.

Examples include Nso Group, which has set up subsidiaries in Bulgaria and Cyprus to facilitate the sale of its products, or Intellexa, which owns a number of cyber-espionage companies, including Cytrox and Circles, and has established footholds in Cyprus, Greece and Malta. In 2021 the “Pegasus project”, based on the collaboration of over 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in ten countries coordinated by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based non-profit media organization, and with the technical support of Amnesty International, revealed how Nso Group’s Pegasus spyware was used to access a list of fifty thousand phone numbers identified as “selected for targetingby Nso customers.

The working group had analyzed all the numbers, subsequently matching them with a series of identified people. From the original list, the analysts had also identified over a thousand individuals classified as “of interest” and scattered across over fifty countries. The victims included several members of the Arab royal family, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists, and more than 600 politicians and government officials, including cabinet ministers, diplomats, and military and security officials. At least ten prime ministers, three presidents and a king were also found on Pegasus’ target lists.

As was easy to predict, the investigation produced such a level of public outrage as to force the United States, in 2021, to include Nso Group on a sort of blacklist that brought the company almost to the brink of bankruptcy. A few weeks after the announcement of the scandal, Apple launched a legal action against Nso Group aimed at “curbing the abuse of spyware State-sponsored,” while commending Amnesty Tech and Citizen Lab for their work.

While the future of Nso Group is currently shrouded in uncertainty, the digital spy industry as a whole remains particularly thriving. Many governments remain turning to private companies for digital spy applications.