Letter sent to Treasury Department and State Department also demands sanctioning UAE’s DarkMatter, and European companies Nexa Technologies and Trovicor.
A group of US lawmakers has asked the Treasury Department and State Department to sanction
Israeli spyware firm NSO Group and three other foreign
surveillance companies they say helped authoritarian governments
commit human rights abuses.
Their letter sent late on Tuesday also asks for sanctions on
top executives at NSO, the United Arab Emirates cybersecurity
company DarkMatter, and European online bulk surveillance
companies Nexa Technologies and Trovicor.
The lawmakers asked for Global Magnitsky sanctions, which
punishes those who are accused of enabling human rights abuses
by freezing bank accounts and banning travel to the United
States.
The letter was signed by the Senate Finance Committee
Chairman Ron Wyden, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam
Schiff, and 16 other Democratic lawmakers.
Along with other
reporting on the industry, they cite a recent Reuters news agency article
this month showing that NSO spyware was used against State
Department employees
in Uganda.
‘Send a clear signal’
The lawmakers said the spyware industry relies on US
investment and banks.
“To meaningfully punish them and send a
clear signal to the surveillance technology industry, the US
government should deploy financial sanctions,” they wrote
Trovicor wrote back to Wyden, denying that it engaged in
bulk surveillance and suggesting that his office had confused
its work with that of another company.
“Trovicor’s products are not ‘spyware’ and are designed to
be used for targeted investigations against identified
individuals (as opposed to ‘Bulk’ surveillance),” it wrote.
DarkMatter could not be reached for comment, while NSO and
Nexa did not respond to questions.
The letter says the companies facilitated the “disappearance, torture and murder of human rights activists and
journalists.”
Surveillance firms have drawn increasing scrutiny
from Washington as a barrage of media reports have tied them to
human rights abuses.
“These surveillance mercenaries sold their services to
authoritarian regimes with long records of human rights abuses,
giving vast spying powers to tyrants,” Wyden told Reuters.
“Predictably, those nations used surveillance tools to lock up,
torture and murder reporters and human rights advocates. The
Biden administration has the chance to turn off the spigot of
American dollars and help put them out of business for good.”
Spokespeople for State and Treasury did not immediately
respond to questions about the request.
Possible further actions
In November, the Commerce Department put NSO on the
so-called Entity List, prohibiting US suppliers from selling
software or services to the Israeli spyware maker without
getting special permission.
A number of legal challenges also threaten the industry.
Last week a prominent Saudi activist and the non-profit
Electronic Frontier Foundation sued DarkMatter, alleging the
group hacked into her phone.
Apple sued NSO Group in November, saying that it violated US laws by breaking into the software installed on iPhones.
A 2019 Reuters investigation cited in the letter, also exposed a secret hacking unit within
DarkMatter, known as Project Raven, that helped the UAE spy on
its enemies.
In a September settlement with the Justice Department, three members of that unit, all
former US intelligence operatives, admitted to breaking
hacking laws.
Source: Reuters
US lawmakers seek sanctions against Israel’s spyware firm NSO
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