Jerusalem: The Israeli parliamentary panel can seek changes to the export defense policy on reports that the software sold by the Israeli NSO Group is used to spy on journalists, officials and activists in several countries, said a senior parliamentary member on Thursday.
Among those suspected of targeting Pegasus NSO software was French President Emmanuel Macron, who held his cabinet on Thursday over the appeal for investigations.
In the midst of the European Union’s concern, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told reporters in Berlin that spyware must be rejected by countries where there was no supervision of justice.
“We certainly have to look again at all the licensing subjects provided by Deca,” RAM Ben-Barak, Head of the Knesset (Parliament) of the Foreign and Defense Committee, told Israeli Army Radio, referring to the control of the defense exports managed by the government agent.
Israel has appointed an inter-minister team to assess reports based on investigations by 17 media organizations that say Pegasus has been used in a smartphone effort that seeks or successfully uses malware that allows the extraction of messages, records calls and secretly activates the microphone.
NSO has rejected reporting by media partners as “full of the wrong assumptions and unbound theories”.
The Israeli government team “will carry out the examination, and we will definitely look into the findings and see if we need to fix things here”, said Ben-Barak, former Deputy Head of Mossad.
He said the right use of Pegasus had “helped many people”.
DECA is in the Israeli defense ministry and oversee NSO exports.
Both the ministries and companies say that Pegasus is intended to be used to track terrorists or criminals, and all foreign clients are government examined.
Reuters.
After Pegasus Row, Israel’s eyes curb spyware exports
