from the never-even-bothering-to-ask,-are-we-the-baddies? dept
Thu, Oct 12th 2023 04:13pm – Tim Cushing
Investigation Shows Israeli Malware Firms Pitching Spyware To Embargoed Countries, Serial Human Rights Abusers
As we’re all painfully aware by now, former Israeli intelligence analysts are capable of producing private sector malware companies faster than the CIA can produce successful coups.
Related:
Investigation: How Israeli Spyware Was Sold to Egypt and Pitched to Qatar and Saudi Arabia
A Front Company and a Fake Identity: How the U.S. Came to Use Spyware It Was Trying to Kill.
The secret contract — which The New York Times is disclosing for the first time — violates the Biden administration’s public policy, and still appears to be active. The contract, reviewed by The Times, stated that the “United States government” would be the ultimate user of the tool, although it is unclear which government agency authorized the deal and might be using the spyware. It specifically allowed the government to test, evaluate, and even deploy the spyware against targets of its choice in Mexico.
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The secret November 2021 contract used the same American company — designated as “Cleopatra Holdings” but actually a small New Jersey-based government contractor called Riva Networks — that the F.B.I. used two years earlier to purchase Pegasus. Riva’s chief executive used a fake name in signing the 2021 contract and at least one contract Riva executed on behalf of the F.B.I.
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The deal unfolded as the European private equity fund that owns NSO pursued a plan to get U.S. government business by establishing a holding company, Gideon Cyber Systems. The private equity fund’s ultimate goal was to find an American buyer for the company.
Related:
Read More »In his famous dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in 1928 called the right to be left alone the most comprehensive of rights and the right most valued by civilized men. He was referring to the right to be left alone from the government — a right that today we call privacy.
Holes in the Constitution
Related:
The market for commercial spyware — which allows governments to invade mobile phones and vacuum up data — is booming. Even the U.S. government is using it.
How the Global Spyware Industry Spiraled Out of Control
During the Trump administration, the FBI paid $5 million to an Israeli software company for a license to use its “zero-click” surveillance software called Pegasus. Zero-click refers to software that can download the contents of a target’s computer or mobile device without the need for tricking the target into clicking on it. The FBI operated the software from a warehouse in New Jersey.
The FBI and Zero-Click
Related:
NSO Group Pitched Phone Hacking Tech to American Police
A former NSO employee told Motherboard that Phantom was “a brand name for U.S. territory,” but the “same Pegasus,” referring to NSO’s phone hacking tool that the company has sold to multiple countries including the United Arab Emirates, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia for millions of dollars. Infamously, Saudi Arabia used the software to surveil associates of murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Motherboard granted the source anonymity to protect them from retaliation from NSO
Ms. Cat’s Chronicles 
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