by Phineas Rueckert and Karine Pfenniger at Forbidden Stories
- Amid a lawsuit pitting WhatsApp against the Israeli company NSO, the state of Israel ordered documents to be seized from the offices of the Pegasus spyware vendor
- Israel also emitted a gag order on the seizure to prevent further dissemination of the information
- Leaked files from the Israeli Ministry of Justice accessed by Forbidden Stories suggest that the MoJ pushed for language in NSO court filings to be modified
The government of Israel maneuvered to sway the ongoing lawsuit filed by WhatsApp in the United States against Israeli spyware company NSO in an attempt to prevent state secrets from being shared in legal proceedings, documents accessed by Forbidden Stories and shared with a consortium of international and Israeli media reveal.
In July 2020, about nine months after WhatsApp sued NSO in a California court, the Israeli government requested for files in NSO’s office in Israel to be seized as NSO faced a potential discovery process, the consortium found. This pre-trial procedure, typical to common law jurisdictions such as the U.S., can lead to sensitive, internal documents being produced in court through a subpoena. Israel feared that these documents, if included in the lawsuit through discovery, could reveal information about Israeli state secrets.
The state of Israel also maneuvered to keep the seizure under wraps. Israel filed a gag order on information pertaining to the seizure of files at NSO’s offices, effectively preventing Israeli media from publishing information about the seizure. This publication ban, which has been in place for more than a year, aimed to protect Israel’s national security and foreign relations. The gag order referred to the WhatsApp litigation, suggesting that it could have been issued in response to the lawsuit.
“Such revelations call into question Israel’s commitment to impartially regulate…