In a bold step the US administration banned the Israeli firm NSO Group over its use of Pegasus spyware saying that the company knowingly supplied spyware that has been used by foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, journalists and others.
The firm, and another Israeli company, Candiru, acted “contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States,” the Commerce Department said, a striking accusation against a business that operates under the direct supervision of the Israeli government.
The ban is the strongest step an American president has taken to curb abuses in the global market for spyware, which has gone largely unregulated. The move by the Commerce Department was driven by NSO’s export around the world of a sophisticated surveillance system known as Pegasus, which can be remotely implanted in smartphones.
NSO’s spyware has been under scrutiny for years for its ability to stealthily, and remotely, extract sound and video recordings, encrypted communications, photos, contacts, location data and text messages from a device — without so much as a single click.
Among its targets were confidants of Jamal Khashoggi, the Washington Post columnist who was dismembered by Saudi operatives in Turkey; an array of human rights lawyers, dissidents and journalists in the Emirates and Mexico, and even their family members living in the United States.
After a consortium of media outlets reported over the summer that NSO’s spyware may have targeted smartphones belonging to journalists and world leaders from France, Morocco and elsewhere, a group of House Democrats called for NSO Group to be blacklisted and potentially sanctioned for human rights violations.
But it was never clear if those people were on a list of possible targets by NSO clients, or were actually hacked.
The announcement on Wednesday apparently came as a surprise to the Israeli defense ministry, which must approve licenses for the sale of Pegasus software to foreign governments, because it is categorized as a defense technology.
While Israeli officials insisted they were unprepared for the move, which prohibits the firm from acquiring American technology, the Israeli government had received a string of official and private warnings from Washington.
The ministry of defense declined to comment on the record on the action. But there was no question that the Commerce Department, by placing the firm on the “Entity List” of blacklisted companies, was striking at the heart of the Israeli intelligence community.
The ban would prohibit American firms from selling technology to NSO Group and its subsidiaries. Dell and Microsoft were alerted earlier that NSO Group would be added to the blacklist, according to two people briefed on the calls but unauthorized to speak publicly about them.