Israeli police: Evidence points to improper spyware use by investigators

New evidence indicates that investigators with the Israeli police improperly used spyware to spy on citizens’ phones, the national police force announced on Tuesday.

The announced followed reports in an Israeli newspaper last month on police using NSO Group’s Pegasus software, without authorization, to snoop on people including protesters and politicians. The Israeli attorney general and lawmakers responded to the ensuing outrage with promises to investigate. 

The police probe “found additional evidence that changes certain aspects of the state of affairs” during a secondary investigation that followed an earlier preliminary internal review, according to The Associated Press.

Their Tuesday statement did not specifically mention the NSO Group, which developed the spyware that the police are accused of using, and which has reportedly been used by governments to spy on dissidents and political opponents around the world. 

Also on Tuesday, Avichai Mandelblit, Israel’s outgoing attorney general, said he told police “to adopt procedures immediately in order to prevent breach of authority” and asked that a fact-finding team submit a report regarding the allegations by July 1, the AP added.

The initial review prompted by the newspaper’s report did not find evidence of misuse, and earlier this month, Omer Barlev, who is in charge of the police in Israel, said that most of the claims in the report “are simply erroneous.”

“There was no surveillance, no hacking of any phone of any protester in any protest,” Barlev said at the time. “It’s against the law.”

But the Israeli newspaper Calcalist reported that police have used Pegasus spyware since 2013.

NSO technology is blacklisted in the United States, and it has been the subject of global controversy given its use to spy on journalists and human rights activists among others. 

The company has said it only sells products to state security agencies with approval from Israel’s Defense Ministry.