Israeli Spyware Firm NSO Group Named On Commerce Department’s Prohibited List
November 4, 2021—In a move meant to put human rights at the center of U.S. foreign policy, the U.S. Commerce Department announced yesterday it is adding four companies to a list of companies subject to trade restrictions.
The four companies include Israel-based Candiru and the NSO Group, a Singapore-based company called the Computer Security Initiative Consultancy PTE (COSEINC), and Russia’s Positive Technologies.
In effect, the decision puts the companies on trade blacklist that imposes extra licensing requirements. Specifically, companies on the Entity List under Export Administration Regulations face limited availability of most license exceptions for, exports, reexports, and transfers (in-country) to listed entities.
National Security or Foreign Policy Risk
The U.S. government puts companies (or “entities”) on the list when officials determine that it “engages in activities that are contrary to the national security or foreign policy interests of the United States.”
Since President Joe Biden took office in January 2021, the administration has increasingly tied economic and foreign policy decisions to human rights. U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo said yesterday’s action reflects that effort.
“The United States is committed to aggressively using export controls to hold companies accountable that develop, traffic, or use technologies to conduct malicious activities that threaten the cybersecurity of members of civil society, dissidents, government officials, and organizations here and abroad,” Raimondo said.
In its statement, the Commerce Department said the action “is aimed at improving citizens’ digital security, combatting cyber threats, and mitigating unlawful surveillance.”
Meanwhile, a State Department spokesperson added that the actions are not “against countries or governments where these entities are located.”
Pegasus Spyware Software
U.S. investigators found the Israeli companies NSO Group and Candiru “developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used this tool to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”
The NSO Group is the manufacturer of Pegasus, which can secretly run on a smartphone. In 2018, a watchdog called Citizen Lab found the software actively monitoring phones across the globe, in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Egypt, France, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Qatar, Turkey and the United Kingdom. More recently, reports surfaced that the Pegasus software targeted at least 37 journalists, including New York Times writer Ben Hubbard.
Israel Targets Human Rights Defenders, Journalists
What’s interesting is that it is not only the private company software that is targeting journalists and human rights advocates. In some cases, governments are blatantly acting out against individuals and civil society organizations.
In recent weeks, Israeli Minister of Defence Benny Gantz designated six Palestinian human rights and civil society groups as terrorist organisations. International organizations and others strongly condemned the decision.
“This designation is a frontal attack on the Palestinian human rights movement, and on human rights everywhere,” the UN Office of Human Rights said in its reaction. “Silencing their voices is not what a democracy adhering to well-accepted human rights and humanitarian standards would do. We call upon the international community to defend the defenders.”
The organizations named — Addameer, Al-Haq, Defense for Children International – Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the Bisan Center for Research and Development, and the Union of Palestinian Women Committees — include many who work with women and children. According to the OHCHR, Israel’s decision “would effectively ban the work of these human rights defenders, and allow the Israeli military to arrest their staff, shutter their offices, confiscate their assets and prohibit their activities and human rights work.”
Russian & Singapore Companies’ ‘Cyber Exploits’
According to the Commmerce Department’s final rule, Positive Technologies and COSEINC “traffic in cyber exploits used to gain access to information systems, threatening the privacy and security of individuals and organizations worldwide.”
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