Washington: A group of members of the US parliament asked the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to sanctions on the Israeli NSO spyware company and three other foreign supervision companies they said helped the authoritarian government commit human rights violations.
Their letter was sent late Tuesday and seen by Reuters also asked for sanctions at the top executive in NSO, the company Cybersecurity United Arab Emirates Darkmatter, and European online mass supervision of Europe Nexa Technologies and Trovicor.
Parliamentarians requested a global magnitksky sanction, which punished those accused of allowing human rights violations by freezing bank accounts and prohibiting trips to the United States.
Darkmmatter cannot be contacted for comments.
Three other companies did not immediately reply to a comment request.
The letter was signed by the Chairperson of the Senate Finance Committee Ron Wyden, Chair of the Adam Schiff’s home intelligence committee and 16 other Democratic Parliament members.
Along with other reporting about this industry, they quoted Reuters recently this month showed that the NSO spyware was used against employees of the State Department in Uganda.
Parliamentarians said the spyware industry depends on investment and US banks.
“To punish them significantly and send a clear signal to the supervision technology industry, the US government must spread financial sanctions,” they wrote.
The letter said the company facilitated “loss, torture and murder of human rights activists and journalists.” Supervision companies have attracted an increase in supervision from Washington as a series of media reports have binded them with human rights violations.
“Mercenares this supervision sells their services to the authoritarian regime with a long record of human rights violations, providing extensive spy power to the tyrants,” Wyden said told Reuters.
“It is predictable, these countries use monitoring tools to lock, torture and murder of journalists and human rights advocates.
Biden administration has the opportunity to turn off American dollar taps and help remove it from business forever.” In November, the Ministry of Commerce placed NSO on the list of the entities called, prohibiting A.S.
Suppliers from software sales or services to the Israeli spyware maker without getting special permission.
A number of legal challenges also threaten the industry.
Last week a leading Saudi activist and the non-profit electronic frontier foundation demanded Darkmatter, accusing the group he was hacked into his phone.
Apple sued the NSO Group in November, saying that it violates the law A.S.
By breaking into the software installed on the iPhone.
Reuters 2019 investigation, quoted in the letter, also exposed the secret hacking unit in Darkmme, known as Project Raven, which helps spy on his enemies.
In September completion with the Ministry of Justice, three unit members, all former intelligence operations A.S., claimed to violate hacking law.