Herzliya: an official at the Israeli Cybersecurity company NSO Group said on Wednesday that the controversial pegasus spyware tool was not used to target French President Emmanuel Macron.
Comments came as an unlimited reporters (RSF) urged Israel to suspend spy technology exports after the head of state – including Macron – and a number of journalists and activists appeared on the target list selected for potential potential.
We can “specifically come out and say sure that the French President, Macron, is not a target,” Chaim Gelfand, head of officers’s obedience at the NSO Group, told the i24 news television network.
But he also offended “some cases raised that we were not so comfortable with”, noting that in such circumstances companies “usually approach customers and have a long discussion …
to try to understand what is the legitimate reason, if any, to use the system.” Gelfand comments were broadcast on the same day with the Head of the RSF Christophe Deloire called for Israeli Prime Minister Naphtali Bennett “to impose a direct moratorium on the exports of supervision technology, until the protective regulatory framework has been set”.
Deloire’s call comes after a list of leaking from around 50,000 telephone numbers that are believed to have been selected by the NSO Group client.
The number that is said to include Macron people, and 13 other state heads.
Pegasus can hack a cellphone without a user who knows, allows clients to read each message, track the user’s location and utilize the camera and cellphone microphone.
NSO has a contract with 45 countries, and said the Israeli Ministry of Defense must approve the transaction.
The company does not identify its customers.
However, the rights group Amnesty International and Paris-based organization prohibits the stories obtained by the list, said the NSO government clients include Bahrain, India, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda and Saudi Arabia.
Reporting by media outlets including the Guardian, Le Monde and Washington Post found that nearly 200 journalists from the organization including AFP were on the list.
“Allows the government to install spyware used in practice to monitor hundreds of journalists and their sources around the world raises the main problem of democracy,” Deloire said.
Bennett spokesman and Defense Minister Benny Gantz did not respond to the question from AFP on Wednesday.
NSO, Giant Tech Israel, is based in North Herzliya Tel Aviv, and has 850 employees.
The CEO of Shalev Hulio, 39, denied in an interview with Israel’s 103FM radio on Tuesday that his company was involved in mass supervision.
He said NSO had “no connection” to a list of thousands of telephone numbers.
On Wednesday, Bennett touted Israeli technology skills at the Cyber ​​conference in Tel Aviv.
“From every $ 100 invested in cyber defenses around the world, $ 41 of them are invested in the Israeli cyber defense company,” he said.
“We as a government, we as a nation, must defend themselves,” Bennett added.
He suggested the global interest in Israeli technology remained strong, by saying “dozens of countries” signed a memorandum to get Israeli tools that survived against cyber attacks.
Further statement on Wednesday by NSO claimed that the company was a victim of “ferocious and slander campaigns”, and it would no longer respond to media questions.
“Every claim that the name in the list is certainly related to the target pegasus or the potential target of Pegasus is wrong and wrong,” he said.
“NSO is a technology company.
We do not operate the system, we also do not have access to our customer data, but they are obliged to give us this information with investigations,” added the company.
On Tuesday, Gantz said Israel approved technology exports only to the government “exclusively for the purpose of preventing and investigating crime and terrorism”.
He said Israel was “studying” a recent publication about this problem.