"Israel: Amnesty International engages in legal action to stop NSO Group’s web of surveillance", 13 May 2019

Amnesty International is supporting a legal action to take the Israeli Ministry of Defence (MoD) to court, to demand that it revokes the export license of NSO Group, an Israeli company whose spyware products have been used in chilling attacks on human rights defenders around the world.

In a petition to be filed tomorrow at the District Court of Tel Aviv, approximately 50 members and supporters of Amnesty International Israel and others from the human rights community set out how the MoD has put human rights at risk by allowing NSO to continue exporting its products...

“NSO Group sells its products to governments who are known for outrageous human rights abuses, giving them the tools to track activists and critics...” said Danna Ingleton, Deputy Director of Amnesty Tech...

The legal action is supported by Amnesty International as part of a joint project with New York University (NYU) School of Law’s Bernstein Institute for Human Rights and Global Justice Clinic, which seeks justice for human rights defenders targeted with malicious software...

NSO Group has repeatedly denied, but not credibly addressed, the accounts that its Pegasus spyware platform has been misused to target human rights defenders. Nor has it accepted responsibility or provided remedies for the multiple reported instances of misuse of its surveillance technologies. The company has failed to disclose its due diligence process, except for veiled references to the existence of an ethics committee. It remains unclear what factors are taken into consideration before the company sells an inherently invasive product like Pegasus...