Paris / Jerusalem: Israel considers serious allegations that spyware developed by Israeli companies used against public figures including French President Emmanuel Macron, Israeli defense minister told his partners to Paris on Wednesday.
The Head of Israeli defense Benny Gantz met with French defense minister Florence Parly partially to share the initial findings of the Israeli government’s assessment of exports to France by the NSO Group, who sell spyware Pegasus.
A French government spokesman said Parly would “take advantage of the opportunity” to ask Gantz what the government knew about NSO activities, which have emerged as diplomatic responsibility for Israel.
At the request of Parly, Gantz “commented on the problem of NSO and told him that Israel took the accusation,” said a statement from his office.
“Israel provides a cyber license only to the nation-state and only to be used for the needs of dealing with terrorism and crime,” said the statement.
Investigation issued by 17 media organizations, led by the non-profit journalism group based in Paris, said spyware had been used in a smartphone effort to try and successfully belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.
Macron’s phone is on a potential target list for supervision by Morocco, which uses Pegasus software, French newspaper Le Monde reported.
Macron has called for an investigation.
Israel has established a senior inter-minister team to see spyware charges.
Gantz told Parly that “representatives learned this problem came to NSO today, and that Israel saw the problem with the maximum seriousness”.
NSO said the report on Pegasus was full of the wrong assumptions and the theories were not corrobed “.
Pegasus is intended to be used only by government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight terrorism and crime, which the company said.
NSO said it did not know the specific identity of people towards who the client uses Pegasus, but if it receives the complaint can obtain a list of targets and unilaterally turn off the software for each client found has misused it.
An Israeli official said the Ministry of Defense would support the action by NSO if the error was determined.