NSO Sues Haaretz Over Reports On Police Misuse Of Pegasus Spyware

NSO Group filed a libel suit on Sunday against the Hebrew financial daily Calcalist for a series of reports alleging that the Israel police misused the company's Pegasus spyware to surveil civilians, Josh Breiner reported for the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

Photo Insert: NSO said the systems are only on-site at the client and that it does not control them through "cloud architecture."

The NSO group said "It seems that this is not a journalistic investigation, but rather a one-sided, biased and false publication which has been made public in a way which raises concern that the newspaper's actions aim to serve a purpose that is completely foreign to professional, responsible and impartial journalism."

Israel’s Pegasus scandal looked like the scoop of the decade. So where’s the proof? Two weeks ago, the firm sent a warning letter to the Israeli financial daily over one of the reports.

In the report, the publication said that NSO covers its tracks and blocks documentation of actions taken with the spyware. By doing so, the report said, it's impossible to thoroughly investigate the use of the program and its list of targets.

NSO also said that the team that then-Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit convened before leaving office at the end of January to investigate allegations of misuse of the spyware by the Israel Police found no evidence that the police used the spyware without a search warrant to hack into the phones of the individuals mentioned in the Calcalist series.

NSO denied the allegations and added that the report, much like other reports by the Israeli daily, does not provide the necessary proof or evidence. According to the company, it decided to sue on Sunday after the newspaper did not respond to its letter and failed to publish a correction to what NSO called "the false statements that were published."

The company made clear in its statement regarding the lawsuit that it does not operate the information systems that are in its clients' possession and does not have access to the information on them.

NSO said the systems are only on-site at the client, and in addition, NSO does not control them through "cloud architecture," as NSO described it. The systems automatically save logs that fully document any operation performed by the client and the client cannot change or delete it, NSO said.

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