Jerusalem:
Israel’s leading defence committee will convene a specific session on the use of “offensive cyberarms” in the wake of international backlash more than the alleged misuse of NSO Group’s Pegasus application and additional revelations that other Israeli firms might have also supplied comparable spyware options to other nations, according to a media report.
The Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee will convene a closed session to talk about not just NSO and the string of revelations about its spyware’s prospective targets exposed as element of the Project Pegasus, but also other Israeli offensive firms that have made headlines in current months, every day Haaretz reported on Tuesday.
The Pegasus Project is a consortium of media outlets that reported the NSO’s Pegasus spyware was linked to hacks and prospective surveillance.
Firms like Candiru and Quadream have also sold their spyware options to non-democratic regimes, the report stated.
“The session of the influential Foreign Affairs and Defence Committee is apparently not listed on their official agenda and it will be sealed off from the public and its minutes kept off the record because the session will be held by a sub-committee dedicated to “intelligence challenges and other specific challenges,” the daily reported.
The meeting is reportedly set for August 9, though the committee chair, lawmaker Ram Ben Barak, has denied it.
“Check your sources,” his office told Haaretz when asked for a response about the planned discussion.
The subcommittee dedicated to intelligence is a small forum comprising only four lawmakers – Ben Barak, who in the past was the deputy head of the Mossad, Eli Avidar, who served in the agents” department within Israel”s military intelligence, Eitan Ginzburg and Zvi Hauser.
It is still unclear as to who will represent the defence establishment and what security bodies will be present, the report said.
The alleged use of the Pegasus software to spy on journalists, human rights defenders, politicians and others in a number of countries, including India, triggered concerns over issues relating to privacy.
With new information on the scandal pouring in, it was reported on Monday that the phone of a prominent British human rights lawyer and close associate of Princess Latifa of Dubai was infected by NSO’s Pegasus software.
An Amnesty International forensic analysis also revealed a day before yesterday that an additional British phone belonging to a Muslim activist was also actually targeted, along with the phones of three others – journalists from Hungary and Turkey and a legal official in India.
Le Monde reported that a French intelligence service confirmed that three phones belonging to journalists in the country were also targeted and showed signs of either the Pegasus software or attempts to have it installed, further straining tensions with France.
Paris has protested strongly, with President Emmanuel Macron himself reportedly calling Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett after news came out that his phone was targeted by Pegasus spyware.
Israeli Defence Minister, Benny Gantz, visited Paris last week on Wednesday and assured his French counterpart, Florence Parly, that Jerusalem is taking the issue “seriously”.
Jerusalem has established a committee to review the allegations of misuse of the NSO group’s surveillance software and hinted at a possible “critique of the complete matter of providing licences” after the matter came to light.
A report in France earlier this week said that the French government has asked Israel to ban the use of the Pegasus spyware in France, Haaretz said.
A source close to NSO reportedly told the Washington Post that as of six months ago NSO blocked the spyware being deployed on UK phone numbers.
At the beginning of last week, the firm said the leaked list was part of an “international conspiracy”.
“The report by Forbidden Stories is complete of incorrect assumptions and uncorroborated theories that raise really serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources. It appears like the ‘unidentified sources” have supplied data that has no factual basis and is far from reality,” the company said in the statement.
“The numbers in the list are not associated to NSO Group, and they in no way have been stating that they are, is fabricated data. It is not a list of targets or prospective targets of NSO”s consumers, and your repeated reliance on this list and association of the folks on this list as prospective surveillance targets is false and misleading,” the statement added.
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