The Pegasus affair continues to shake Israel. An Israeli daily reveals the large-scale use of this spying technology by the Israeli police. An “earthquake” for the Jewish state, according to the Minister of the Interior.
Politicians, activists, journalists… In Israel, they have one thing in common: that of potentially having their telephones hacked by the Israeli police. This Monday, the Israeli daily Calcalist made new revelations about the large-scale use by the Israeli police of the Pegasus spy technology, marketed by the Israeli company NSO. The newspaper notably publishes a list of a dozen names of political figures who have been victims. According to the revelations of several Israeli media, key witnesses in the trial of former Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu would also be concerned. These revelations follow a series of articles by journalist Tomer Granon, which led to the opening of a judicial inquiry on January 20.
Following the release of Monday’s revelations, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett promised “answerin the face of the scale of cyber espionage accusations. “We will not leave this unanswered. The alleged facts are very serious“, he said in a press release, considering however that the Pegasus software was a tool “important in the fight against terrorism“. Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked also spoke out on social media, saying the revelations were a “earthquakefor the Jewish state.
Last week, the Israeli police admitted to having used these spying technologies. Israeli police commander Yaakov Shabtaï then indicated that he had asked the Minister of Public Security, Omer Bar-Lev, to create an external and independent investigation in order to “restore public confidence” and “regulate the use of technology by the police“.
Israeli public figures are not the only ones to have been spied on. Anonymous protesters who took part in the 2020 anti-Netanyahu demonstrations were tracked by the police, who had access to their phones without them being able to notice it. Hundreds of phones have been spied on. Once installed, the software makes it possible to copy all messages, including those exchanged on secure applications, to tap the phone, or even to access the user’s geolocation. The software has also been used for “phishing” purposes, the phishing of information from a suspect’s phone even before there is evidence of a crime.
Warrantless cyber surveillance
The problem? The use of such a monitoring tool requires judicial authorization, which must first be granted by a court. But such warrants were never sought by the Israeli police. This cyber surveillance was mobilized to obtain information on Israeli citizens even before an investigation was opened against them. The personal data collected are therefore not subject to any control or supervision by a judge, concerning their collection and use. Therefore, the information collected cannot be used in court without having been later laundered, a practice that the police would have mobilized according to several Israeli media.
It was in 2013 that the Israeli police acquired the Pegasus software, which would have cost them tens of millions of shekels. But when Roni Alsheikh took over as head of the Israeli police, its use intensified particularly from 2015. Former deputy head of internal intelligence, the Shin Bet, he then imported the techniques and culture of espionage specific to the latter. The orders to use the NSO software would therefore have been given by high-ranking police officers. According to Calcalist, most of the executors were members of the special police cyber operations unit within SIGINT, whose entire activities are classified.
Several Israeli parliamentarians call for the creation of a parliamentary commission. Major issues are raised by the latter, in particular the fact that the private company Pegasus can have access to sensitive information stored in the computers of the police since Pegasus provides technical assistance to its customers.
The NSO group has not yet confirmed having sold the software to the police, officially developed to fight against terrorism. In a press release, the owner of Pegasus claims to be “in no way involved in the operation of the system once sold to government customers“. In 2021, a consortium of journalists revealed that this software, sold to several states such as Morocco, had made it possible to spy on politicians, including heads of state, journalists, and activists across many countries.