Israel Police illegally hacked into the phone of a key witness in the criminal cases against former prime minister Binyanim Netanyahu, retrieving a large amount of data without a court warrant, Channel 13 News reported on Wednesday evening.
The retrieved data included text, photos, phone numbers, and use of various apps.
Channel 12 News played recordings in which police investigators are heard talking about illegally hacking someone’s phone, immediately prior to speaking with Shlomo Filber, a state witness in Case 4000.
In the ensuing uproar in response to the report, right-wing politicians called to drop the criminal cases against Netanyahu.
Netanyahu responded to the report by writing on Twitter: “An earthquake: This evening it was revealed that police illegally hacked phones in order to topple a strong right-wing prime minister.”
The revelation is likely to lead to significant delays in Netanyahu’s trial as his lawyers could demand to review the material and take appropriate action or demand a retrial if the individual in question was a witness who already testified in the case.
The report comes after Israel Police admitted that they illegally used spy software to hack into private citizens’ phones.
According to the Channel 13 report, the information about Netanyahu’s case was revealed as part of an inquiry by the Justice Ministry into the NSO exposé.
(YWN Israel Desk – Jerusalem)
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7 Responses
Bombshell: NSA & 8-200 have access to all of your personal information, no matter whether you actually were an “activist” or “criminal” or “terrorist”. You carry around surveillance devises. If you have daughters, they probably have been exposed to perverts in the intel community. Rav Nosson Tzvi Finkel was only wrong to smash phones in that they give off toxic fumes that probably didn’t help his health.
& the police MUST reimburse Bibi’s entire legal expenses
Unfortunately, I am not surprised by this report of illegal behavior by the Israeli police. It is just part of a larger pattern of their politization and abuse of their police power. The same thing is happening in the USA regarding the DOJ and FBI with their targeting of Trump, conservatives and parents of schoolchildren who are resisting leftist indoctrination in the schools. The one thing both countries have in common is that the culprits have leftist political leanings.
Is anyone shocked?
The police are corrupt, the courts are corrupt the prosecutors are corrupt, they don’t care about law and order, all they care about is scoring points by taking down many fish especially the “big fish”
Why did they await mandelblit’s retirement to announce this bombshell?
Only a fool can fail to connect these 2 dots
And Andy Cuomo walks scuff-free.
This is the illegal spying software that Bibi’s government was happy to authorize selling to both friendly and regressive governments around the world and resulted in the death or imprisonment of many political and human rights activists opposing those governments. That he might have himself been bitten by the snake he marketed is due justice, although so fare the evidence tying any such spying to his prosecution is really unclear.