Israeli citizens targeted by police using Pegasus spyware, report claims [View all]

[Eugene]

Also: Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens (Calcalist)

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Source: The Guardian

Israeli citizens targeted by police using Pegasus spyware, report claims

Investigation alleges Israeli police carried out phone intercepts without court supervision or monitoring of how data was used

Peter Beaumont
Tue 18 Jan 2022 14.54 GMT

The Israeli police allegedly conducted warrantless phone intercepts of Israeli citizens, including politicians and activists, using the NSO group’s controversial Pegasus spyware, according to an investigation by the Israeli business media site Calcalist.

Among those described as having been targets in the report were local mayors, leaders of political protests against the former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former government employees.

According to the report, the surveillance was done without the court supervision required for Israeli citizens and without monitoring of how the data was used, a claim denied explicitly by the Israeli police service and a government minister.

A separate report in the Israeli daily Haaretz, based on an invoice seen by the paper, suggested the Israeli police was invoiced by NSO group for 2.7m shekels (£635,000) in 2013, apparently for a basic version of the program.

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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2022/jan/18/israeli-citizens-targeted-by-police-using-pegasus-spyware-report-claims

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Source: Calcalist

Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus to spy on citizens

Mayors, leaders of political protests against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and former governmental employees, were among those tracked by police without a search or bugging warrant authorizing the surveillance

Tomer Ganon 07:03 18.01.22

Israel police uses NSO’s Pegasus spyware to remotely hack phones of Israeli citizens, control them and extract information from them, Calcalist has revealed. Among those who had their phones broken into by police are mayors, leaders of political protests against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former governmental employees, and a person close to a senior politician. Calcalist learned that the hacking wasn’t done under court supervision, and police didn’t request a search or bugging warrant to conduct the surveillance. There is also no supervision on the data being collected, the way police use it, and how it distributes it to other investigative agencies, like the Israel Securities Authority and the Tax Authority.

One of the problematic instances that has been uncovered is the tracking of activists in the protests against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while he was still in office. The protests against Netanyahu gathered momentum during 2020 as the Covid-19 pandemic hit the country and the first lockdowns were imposed on Israelis. With the level of anxiety in the Netanyahu government continually rising, efforts were made to reduce the magnitude of the protests through the use of judicial and procedural tools, with police increasing the force and violence against protesters, the leaders in particular.

But the heads of the political protests had no idea that Israel police had remotely planted NSO’s spyware in their phones, taking over their devices and having the ability to listen to all their calls and read all their messages. The order to conduct the surveillance on Israeli citizens that aren’t criminals or suspects with NSO’s spyware was given by high-ranking police officers without a court warrant or the supervision of a judge. Those who received the order and executed it were members of the police’s special operations cyber unit in SIGINT, whose entire activity is confidential.

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Read more: https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3927410,00.html