Will Washington swallow Israeli NSO chief’s bait?
Following uncountable scandals, Israeli NSO chief executive Yaron Shohat pays a critical visit to Washington in an attempt to lure the US government into defending the company's controversial activities.
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Illustration of NSO logo (AP)
The embattled Israeli spyware firm, NSO Group, is exerting strained efforts to make a crime-fighting argument in Washington, but it confronts a near-impossible task in gaining the support of wary US lawmakers and human rights campaigners.
During a recent trip to lure Washington, NSO executive chief Yaron Shohat claimed, as quoted by Axios, that "the company's spyware tools are a boon in the fight against terrorism and crime."
Not an innocent visit
The NSO head's visit to Washington comes as the government works on a planned spyware executive order and shortly after lawmakers granted the intelligence agency greater tools to combat specific commercial spyware.
However, Shohat said he thinks "NSO can still win over skeptics with a simple argument: Our product saves lives around the world."
Read more: Khashoggi's wife to sue NSO for spying on her alongside KSA, UAE
NSO is now cash-flow positive as a result of its predominantly Western European government customers, he said.
Putting the blame on everyone but the spyware, he said, "The government that buys it, they are the ones operating it, they’re the ones deciding who to target, they are the one who is getting the intelligence gathered from the devices."
'A tool of espionage'
Meanwhile, human rights groups and experts are not convinced by the new CEO's statements because there are no specifics about how NSO is preventing abuse or delivering punishment to victims.
On his account, John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab who closely monitors NSO's work, described the spyware as "a tool of espionage that has nothing to do with crime or terror."
Israeli-led spyware industry has been embroiled in a seemingly never-ending spate of extremely prominent controversies. Revelations that it sells its spyware to authoritarian regimes, that its products have been used to spy on journalists, activists, politicians, and even potentially world leaders, and accusations that it played a role in murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi's death have put it at the center of international criticism.
US senior senators have recently said they would look into the government's purchase and use of strong spyware developed by two Israeli hacking firms, as Congress passed legislation aimed at limiting the spread of hacking tools, The New York Times reported.
It is worth noting that the Biden administration placed NSO and another Israeli hacker firm on a Commerce Department blacklist back in 2021, banning US corporations from doing business with the two firms.
