"I can tell you with certainty that President Macron was not a target," Chaim Gelfand, an NSO group executive, told i24 News, the Tel Aviv-based Israeli channel, on Wednesday.
"There are certain cases which have been revealed, which bother us", however added the senior official of the company which created the software Pegasus, which benefits many states.
Read also Pegasus: Macron convenes an "exceptional" defense council this Thursday morning
The organizations Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International obtained a list of 50,000 phone numbers, selected by NSO clients since 2016 for potential monitoring, and shared it with a consortium of 17 media outlets who revealed its existence on Sunday.
French President Emmanuel Macron, King Mohammed VI of Morocco and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan are on Pegasus' list of potential targets, as are more than 180 journalists, including Edwy Plenel, founder of Mediapart.
NSO regrets a "hijacking"
“We keep trying to figure out all the facts and it's been several years so it takes time to go through everything.
The fact that a journalist or an activist has been the target of a system like this is automatically considered as a hijacking, ”regretted Chaïm Gelfand.
Shortly after, the group based in Herzliya, a verdant city north of Tel Aviv, claimed to be the victim of a "vicious and slanderous" campaign, and announced in a statement that it "would no longer answer questions. of the media ”on the Pegasus case.
“NSO is a technology company.
We do not operate the systems, nor have access to the data of our customers, but they are nevertheless obliged to provide us this information in the event of investigations ”, added the group saying that the fact that a name appears on the 50,000 list "does not necessarily mean that he was targeted by Pegasus."
RSF appeals to Israeli authorities
The press freedom organization Reporters Without Borders (RSF) on Wednesday called on the Israeli government to immediately impose a moratorium on the sale of this spyware.
“Software developed by Israeli firms like NSO's Pegasus clearly implicates the State of Israel.
Even if the Israeli authorities only played an indirect role, they cannot escape their responsibility, ”RSF said in a statement.
#Pegasus, the surveillance software that has spied on thousands of journalists and human rights defenders, is made by the Israeli company NSO Group.
For RSF, # Israel cannot tolerate the export of such a liberticidal technology.https: //t.co/kEyVkL5TVv
- RSF in French (@RSF_fr) July 21, 2021
New Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who made his fortune in high technology before entering politics, defended this booming sector in Israel on Wednesday without commenting on the NSO dossier. "For every $ 100 invested in cyber defense around the world, $ 41 is invested in Israeli firms," he said, attributing the local prosperity of the sector to the elite army units that serve as incubator for local start-ups.