from the nose-dive-continues-uninterrupted dept
NSO Group is irredeemable. It must know that by know. Its investors know it. The public knows it. Even the government of the country it set up shop in — a shop filled with ex-government employees — can hardly seem to stomach being associated with it.
At any point, this could have been prevented. The Israeli ex-spies setting up the company could have chosen more trustworthy governments to do business with. When evidence first started surfacing of abusive deployments of its spyware, it could have pulled contracts and crossed these governments off its customer list.
But it didn’t do any of that. It seemed to embrace being a part of the worst parts of the world. And it was given impunity by the Israeli government, which assisted in brokering deals with well-known human rights abusers.
It also pitched its products to governments known for their rampant corruption. Even before the incredibly damaging leak of its customers’ alleged targets (which included journalists, human rights activists, opposition leaders, and at least one ruler’s ex-wife) was made public, questionable deployments by the Mexican government had already made headlines.
During this ongoing saga, more news has surfaced detailing NSO’s interactions with the Mexican government. In late 2021, a Mexican businessman was arrested for deploying NSO’s Pegasus malware to target a journalist — access likely provided by the Mexican government itself. The following year, an investigation found more evidence of abusive deployments targeting journalists who had recently published pieces detailing (you guessed it) government corruption.
Obviously, not every person employed by the government of Mexico is corrupt. But this latest NSO Group news looks an awful lot like a government finding a few figureheads to punish for abusive spyware deployments that likely involved far more people than the four being rung up here.
The Federal Attorney General’s Office (FGR) announced Monday that it is prosecuting the former head of the now-defunct Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC) and three other ex-officials in connection with an “illegal” purchase of the Pegasus spyware system in 2014.
One of those prosecutions is on indefinite hold, thanks to its target finding much friendlier confines to inhabit until this all blows over.
The FGR said in a statement that ex-AIC head Tomás Zerón, who the federal government is attempting to extradite from Israel, former Federal Ministerial Police chief Vidal Díazleal, and two other former senior law enforcement officials, Judith Araceli Gómez Molano and Rigoberto García Campos, were responsible for a 460 million peso (US $26 million) purchase of the spyware by the PGR, as the Attorney General’s Office was formerly called.
I doubt that NSO has branched out into the field of harboring international fugitives to make ends meet, but it does seem kind of, I don’t know, convenient that one its customers has decided to make NSO’s native land his home country, at least for the time being.
The back story isn’t that much better. I mean, what there is of it. According to the statement, the purchase was made with government money but never ended up in the government’s hands. If that’s to be believed, it means these four officials spent tax dollars to buy a powerful toy for themselves, separating this purchase and use from any form of oversight, allowing them to deploy it at will against anyone they felt like targeting.
But no one’s hands are completely clean here. The Mexican government — including its military, which handles a lot of its drug war — made multiple previous on-the-book purchases of NSO’s spyware. The abuses detailed in outside investigations trace back to the government, making it unclear whether it was the regular government engaging in abusive targeting or this supposed rogue group of law enforcement officials now facing criminal charges.
As for the official currently hiding out in Israel, he’s got far more serious charges facing him should the Mexican government ever manage to have him extradited:
The former AIC chief had led the investigation into the disappearance of students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Teachers’ College. He now faces charges in connection with the case, including torture and tampering with evidence.
These are the kind of people NSO Group has chosen to do business with. Sure, it may be able to maintain semi-plausible deniability by claiming this apparently illegal purchase at least appeared to have been official Mexican government business, but its well-established history of being, at best, ethically agnostic when courting customers makes it clear NSO’s conscience is far from clear.
Filed Under: malware, mexico, pegasus, spyware, surveillance
Companies: nso group
Source link
