by Harry Davies and Stephanie Kirchgaessner at The Guardian
The Israeli government took extraordinary measures to frustrate a high-stakes US lawsuit that threatened to reveal closely guarded secrets about one of the world’s most notorious hacking tools, leaked files suggest.
Israeli officials seized documents about Pegasus spyware from its manufacturer, NSO Group, in an effort to prevent the company from being able to comply with demands made by WhatsApp in a US court to hand over information about the invasive technology.
Documents suggest the seizures were part of an unusual legal manoeuvre created by Israel to block the disclosure of information about Pegasus, which the government believed would cause “serious diplomatic and security damage” to the country.
Pegasus allows NSO clients to infect smartphones with hidden software that can extract messages and photos, record calls and secretly activate microphones. NSO’s clients have included both authoritarian regimes and democratic countries and the technology has been linked to human rights abuses around the world.
Since late 2019,…
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