Israeli spyware, Paragon, at center of Italian surveillance scandal
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Italy’s use of the Israeli spyware sparks oversight and legal concerns.
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Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni holds the 2024 year-end press conference in Rome on January 9, 2025 (AP)
An Italian parliamentary committee confirmed that the government used Israeli-made spyware Graphite, developed by cyber firm Paragon, to hack the phones of several migrant rights activists, though it found no evidence of spying on a prominent journalist critical of the ruling party.
The list of potential targets included civil society activists and an Italian investigative journalist who had exposed ties between Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's party and neo-fascist movements.
The revelations follow WhatsApp’s discovery of around 100 targeted accounts and a Citizen Lab investigation exposing how Paragon’s spyware was deployed globally.
Diplomatic fallout: Italy contacts 'Israel'
A recent report by the Israeli television program Zman Emet (Real Time) revealed that Italian officials were so outraged by Paragon’s move to block their access to the spyware that Italy’s prime minister reportedly contacted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for clarification.
On Thursday, the Italian parliamentary committee investigating the government’s use of spyware released its findings, an unusual moment of transparency in the typically opaque world of intelligence and surveillance.
The committee confirmed that Paragon had supplied its Graphite spyware to two Italian agencies, including the country’s external intelligence service, beginning in 2023. According to the report, the version provided did not allow activation of a device’s microphone or camera.
Instead, the spyware granted operators access solely to encrypted communications on compromised devices. The report also verified that Graphite exploited a WhatsApp vulnerability that Meta identified and patched in December 2024, just one month before the spyware’s activity became public.
Fallout in Israeli intelligence
The discovery of the WhatsApp vulnerability reportedly triggered "panic" within "Israel’s" elite military intelligence Unit 8200, according to the Israeli television program Zman Emet.
The Italian parliamentary committee also confirmed Meta’s findings that several migrant rights activists in Italy had their phones hacked. Among them were Luca Casarini, Giuseppe Caccia, and David Yambio, though in Yambio’s case, the breach was carried out using a different, unnamed spyware rather than Paragon’s Graphite.
The Italian committee confirmed that spyware surveillance of activists was legally authorized and began under previous governments but recommended stronger oversight. It also rejected claims that Italian agencies hacked journalist Francesco Cancellato.
The committee did not address that a second Fanpage journalist received a hacking alert from Apple, and authorities found no evidence that Cancellato was targeted. Paragon now sits between Meta’s partially confirmed claims and Italy’s denials, while Cancellato remains in the dark about who hacked his phone, when, or why, likely with no further answers forthcoming.
Misuse of surveillance technologies
The Paragon-Italy controversy unfolds amid escalating global concerns that sophisticated surveillance technologies, originally intended for counterterrorism and serious criminal investigations, are increasingly being misused for political ends, including the targeting of citizens and dissidents. While debates have long simmered over restricting exports of such tools to authoritarian regimes, the potential return of Donald Trump to the White House has renewed fears that US agencies like the FBI or CIA could employ them against political opponents or investigators.
At the same time, Western governments continue to pressure tech companies for access to encrypted communications. Just months ago, the British government called on Apple to build a “backdoor” into its iCloud service, a request the company is currently resisting.
