Jerusalem: The Israeli parliamentary review panel can recommend changes to the defense export policy on charges of high-profile sold by spyware by Israeli NSO cyber companies have been misused in several countries, said a senior parliament member on Thursday.
Among those suspected of targeting Pegasus NSO software was French President Emmanuel Macron, who planned to hold his cabinet on Thursday over call for investigations.
“We certainly have to see you on all the licensing subjects provided by Deca,” RAM Ben-Barak, Head of Overseas Knesset and the Defense Committee, told the Israeli army radio, referring to the government-managed defense control agency.
Israel has appointed a team of inter-ministers to assess the report published since Sunday after investigation by 17 media organizations, which said Pegasus software has been used in the efforts of a smartphone that tries and managed to belong to journalists, government officials and human rights activists.
Other world leaders among them whose telephone numbers said the news organization was in the list of possible targets including Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and King of Morocco Mohammed VI.
NSO has rejected reporting by media partners as “full of the wrong assumptions and unbound theories”.
Reuters has not yet independently verified reporting.
Targeting terrorists, the criminals of 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 the Mossad National Intelligence Agency.
“The truth is said, this system (Pegasus) has found many terrorist cells and criminal families and helps many people.
If it has been used incorrectly, or sold to irresponsible parties, it is something that needs to be examined.” 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 that all foreign clients are trusted government.
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.
After the Army radio also aired the interview on Thursday with Szabolcs Panyi, a Hungarian journalist who said Pegasus had been found on his cellphone, Head of NSO Shalev Hulio vowed to investigate.
“If he is a target, I’ve convinced you that we will cut into anyone’s system that takes action against him because it cannot be tolerated for someone to do something like this,” Hulio said.
In accordance with the NSO and defense of the Ministry of Defense concerning identifying client countries, Hulio stopped confirming that Hungary had bought Pegasus.
He said NSO had worked with 45 countries and rejected around 90 other as a potential client.
The company has turned off five Pegasus systems because of harassing, said Hulio, adding that software cannot be used against Israeli or US phones.
Asked on Thursday whether the Hungarian government had bought Pegasus, Prime Minister Viktor Orban from Gergely Gully staff said the details of the secret intelligence meeting “not public information”.
He added that all intelligence meetings were carried out legally.