Israel secretly authorized Israeli cyber-surveillance firms to work for gov of Saudi Arabia, despite international condemnation of kingdom’s abuse of surveillance tools to crush dissent and even after Saudi killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi
nytimes.com/2021/07/17/wor…
nytimes.com/2021/07/17/wor…
After murder of Khashoggi, NSO Group canceled its contracts w/ Saudi Arabia amid accusations that its tools were being misused by the kingdom. But Israeli gov encouraged NSO and two other firms to continue working w/ Saudis, and issued new license for a fourth to do similar work
Israel has licensed 4 Israeli firms to sell surveillance software to Saudis - NSO Group, Candiru, Verint, and Quadream. "Cellebrite, which manufactures physical hacking systems for mobile phones, has also sold its services to the Saudi gov, but without ministry approval"
NSO Group's internal investigation into whether its tools were used by Saudis in Khashoggi op concluded they were not, but NSO canceled contract w/ Saudis anyway. But NSO told ppl in 2018 Israeli gov and Trump were strongly encouraging company to continue its work w/ Saudi Arabia
In 2019 after private equity firm Novalpina bought NSO, the company resumed biz w/ Saudis. New contract came w/ restrictions. NSO set up system to block attempt by Saudis to hack European phone #s. [Reminds me of Hacking Team claim that it could control how customers use spytool]
But after recent news that NSO tools were used to spy on Al Jazeera journalists, "NSO recently shut down the system, and at a meeting in early July, the company’s board decided to declare new deals with Saudi Arabia off limits"
"The Israeli government also imposes strict secrecy on the [Israeli] companies that receive the licenses [to sell their spytools abroad], threatening to revoke them if the companies speak publicly about the identity of their clients."
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
