French President Emmanuel Macron called Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last week to ensure that Israel is investigating the worldwide claims involving the Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli NSO Group, Channel 12 News reported on Motzei Shabbos.

Macron requested that the prime minister ensure that the issue was addressed. Bennett agreed but emphasized that the alleged spying took place long before he entered office.

The Pegasus Project, a comprehensive investigation by 17 international media outlets published last week, claims that the Pegasus spyware, which was developed to use against terrorists and criminals, has been widely abused and used against politicians, journalists and activists in countries around the world. A list of about 50,000 surveillance targets was leaked to Amnesty International. Macron’s name was on the list as being targeted by France’s ally Morocco.

NSO has been hit with multiple lawsuits claiming that the company violated human rights by selling its software to repressive governments.

NSO has denied the claims. In an interview with Yisrael Hayom over the weekend, NSO CEO, Shalev Hulio, said: “We’ll be very happy if there is an investigation into the affair, because we’ll be able to clear our name.”

“We don’t have and have never had any ties to the list that was published, and if it turns out that there was some client who exploited our system to track journalists or human rights workers, they’ll be cut off immediately. We’ve proven that in the past, including with some of our biggest customers, and we stopped working with them.”

Hulio says that the software is being targeted because it was developed In Israel. “It looks like someone decided to come after us. This whole story isn’t just incidental. The Israeli cyber sector is under attack, in general. There are so many cyber intelligence companies in the world, but everyone just focuses on the Israeli ones. Forming a consortium like this of journalists from all over the world and bringing Amnesty [International] into it – it looks like there’s a guiding hand behind it.”

“I believe that in the end, it will turn out to be Qatar, or the BDS movement, or both. In the end, it’s always the same entities. I don’t want to sound cynical, but there are people who don’t want ice cream to be imported here [to Israel] or for technology to be exported. The way I see it, it’s no coincidence that the same week that people try to prevent Cellebrite’s IPO, an expose about [cyber firm] Candiru is published, and now us. It can’t be that this is all coincidental.”

Hulio added that the software is sold only to governments and not companies or individuals. Furthermore, the software is not sold to every government. In the 11 years since NSO was founded, the company has refused sales to 90 countries.

The Yisrael Hayom interviewer pointed out that some of the countries that purchased the NSO software have dubious human rights records: Saudia Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco.

Hulio responded that he can’t discuss specific customers but two-thirds of their customers are European countries, which use the software to fight terrorism and crime. He emphasized that Pegasus is a “lifesaving program,” preventing terrorist attacks on almost every continent and leading to the arrest of over 100 pedophiles.

NSO Group, founded in 2010 by Hulio and Omri Lavie, is based in Hertzliya and employs 600 people. Its spying software Pegasus, considered the most advanced in the world, enables the user to extract all data from cellphones and use their cameras and microphones without leaving traces and can be activated remotely.

The chairman of the Knesset’s Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, Ram Ben-Barak (Yesh Atid), said on Thursday that Israel has established a committee on the issue.

(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)