Let's start with the bottom line: the industrial espionage affair, ostensibly, after civilians - will have to be investigated.
Not because there is or is not really in it;
This, ostensibly, should be able to be answered by all the internal investigation teams, who have been working feverishly in the police and the prosecutor's office in recent days.
The reason for the investigation to take place is different: trust.
Without it, large sections of the public will forever suspect that someone is hiding the truth to protect themselves, or such and other interests that are important to them.
Homeland Security Minister Amar Bar-Lev already understood this.
His office has already begun work on setting up a government investigation team to investigate the case, led by a retired district judge.
The one who wanted to wait a little longer is the prime minister, Naftali Bennett.
On Tuesday, he clarified that "the things that were published are serious - if they did happen."
To the extent that the investigation reveals that this was the case, he added, "we will go all out to the broadest state commission of inquiry, which will investigate everything."
This concept, "all-in", is taken from the worlds of poker.
The gambler puts all his chips on the bet, usually to make his opponents think he has good cards in hand, without them knowing if this is also the case in reality.
Bennett is not a gambler, certainly not in this case.
He actually wanted to say the opposite: that he has nothing to hide.
And this is also the reason why an investigation is needed.
State or government - it's been less than a year.
A great many words were written this week about the difference between them.
In a nutshell: in the state the one who appoints the committee members is the president of the Supreme Court, who has no affiliation with the government, while in the government that appoints the government itself, who can appoint people who are more comfortable - but the history of Israeli commissions of inquiry
The Winograd Commission, which investigated the failures of the Second Lebanon War, did not spare its tribe from the triangle that then waged the war - Prime Minister Olmert, Defense Minister Peretz and Chief of Staff Halutz - and in fact sent them home, publicly, at least.
Towards a government investigation team.
Saturn and Bar-Lev, Photo: Oren Ben Hakon
On the face of it, in the present case the investigation should be even easier.
The details are in black or white.
Was or was not.
The gap between the information published in the Calcalist newspaper, according to which systematic extraction of information from the phones of a variety of government officials and ordinary citizens was carried out, and the police version, according to which this was done only in a few cases, and even then - only with the judge's approval.
A commission of inquiry will be able to determine, bottom line, unequivocally.
More importantly, it will be able to outline a clear path that will ensure further legal and professional oversight of this area.
When words have no value
When an affair broke out in our lives last month, the police sent all its guns, from the commissioner and staff, to the TV studios. Had to admit that in at least one case (Shlomo Pilber) information was collected in a manner that deviated from the court order.
In recent days, the police have been working differently.
She realized, belatedly, that words have no value.
Just for the facts.
Only they, and nothing but them, will determine whether the police had a pirated, wholesale and disruptive industry of systematically gathering unsupervised information, or whether anyone here had another interest in blowing up the affair at the present time.
The clear traces, in the opinion of its leaders, lead to the Netanyahu trial.
These are accusations that require confirmation;
Even if Netanyahu has a clear interest in tattooing the credibility of the police, in order to disqualify parts of his trial, and perhaps the whole, the basic question is, again - whether things are true.
If so, Netanyahu and his trial are important, but democracy and its defense are much more important.
If not, someone here will have to find out how this affair was born.
Here, too, by the way, the police have solid suspicions: an employee who was fired about six months ago from the police signet unit.
Police claim the employee did not really know details in the affair.
Who has no idea who they were following and why.
In short, that everything is nonsense, or rather - almost everything.
Journalist Amit Segal published this week that out of the 26 names published in "Calcalist", it was examined and found that spyware was attached to only three, and from which they managed to extract information from only one (known statistics in the offensive cyber worlds).
In other words, police claim, the other names simply did not exist and were not created.
NSO Cyber Company Building, Photo: APP
One story is still worth mentioning.
One of the factors that was followed was suspected by the police of pedophilia.
Public - the man was portrayed as an altruist, but on his phone - again, allegedly - were found hard, permeable, perverted materials.
If this is the case - there is no justification for monitoring it, and for using any possible investigative tool in its framework.
This is exactly why Pegasus and the like were invented.
By the way, this investigation has meanwhile been suspended under the direction of the State Attorney, until the investigation into the big case is completed.
In short, the police claim that not as she shouted.
What was published did not happen, and what happened - happened with approval.
As mentioned, this is a relatively simple test.
There are several ways to do it, and you can do them all at once.
The first is to log into the police computers, and check from whom information is extracted (the professional term is called initial dump).
Each such action should be accompanied by the number of the order that allowed it, as well as its validity.
If we extract information without these credentials, it is against the law.
The second way is to approach NSO, and check with it.
Its computers (and those of any other offensive cyber company) store all data that is tracked forever in the log, without being able to delete it.
This is exactly the way NSO and the like check if their customers around the world have exceeded the licenses given to them, and have followed, for example, political rivals, journalists or human rights activists.
Just go to the company with a list of phone numbers, and check if or not there was a pumping out of them.
The third way is to check the phones of the trackers themselves.
NSO software leaves traces on the phone, even if the attacker has already been removed.
The network has detailed explanations of exactly how to do this (for example, courtesy of Amnesty International), using a tool called MVT.
There are also quite a few labs that know how to perform this test, which only takes a few hours.
Questions that require an answer
These technical tests are supposed to give a complete answer to the question of whether or not there was.
The police, as mentioned, claim that everything is (almost) nonsense.
Publicly, the narrative was established that the police had lost direction and restraint.
Is it possible?
It is possible.
Offensive cyber is a powerful and enticing tool;
Need discipline and iron nerves so as not to be tempted to use it against anyone (and suffice it to mention an employee of one of the Israeli companies, who during a service he gave in the Gulf state a few years ago followed, according to the suspicion, his company).
But even assuming power corrupts, there are three questions that need to be addressed.
The first is why should the police illegally do what they can legally do?
Judges in Israel are the most generous in the world in issuing orders.
They usually sign without asking, and even if they do - they get answers so draconian that the judge who will face them has not yet been born.
And if so (and this is also true of restraining orders), why would a police officer commit a criminal offense that leaves evidence forever - it is, after all, computers - and not go the paved and safe path?
The second question concerns those in office today.
It is not clear their interest in protecting their predecessors, the prosecution and the police.
Things will become clear, and if it is discovered that someone here has really gone crazy - everyone who touched the affair will fly home.
The Minister of Internal Security hinted at this, in a non-diplomatic manner, to Commissioner Kobi Shabtai and the head of the Investigations and Intelligence Division, Yigal Ben-Shalom, after they were repeatedly sworn in by the IDF.
If it turns out they lied, or overlapped - they're out.
The third question is who the hell imagined a pilgrimage after Avner Netanyahu, and is that possible?
Netanyahu Jr., on Saturday as the son of the then prime minister, was secured by the GSS (and his envoys in the prime minister's office). Of the GSS, this is a double earthquake: both because it indicates a lack of trust between the organizations, and also because it shows that the GSS 'information security is shaky and hacked.
By the way, senior officials from the IDF also claim this, and not only for this reason; according to them, no one would have dared to follow him illegally, and if he had been followed up - he would have followed another Netanyahu Jr., in whose context the ombudsman had already clarified Outgoing Avichai Mandelblit because he refused to give any permits.
To stand up to Washington
The NSO spyware used by the police is not called "Pegasus", but "Saipan".
There is a slight difference between them.
Pegasus, which is sold to customers abroad, knows how to bring all the information from the history of the phone stored in any cloud, even if the device itself has been replaced; in Israel, bringing the information is limited to a specific period, which is allowed by order. Other Israeli numbers (led by the defense establishment).
The police, naturally, are allowed to do this in the country.
Anyone who thinks that the police, or any other state factor, knows how to work without offensive cyber tools - lives in a movie, and should wake up quickly.
The world's largest information collectors are the technology giants - Google, Apple, Facebook - and they have also given their nationals a powerful gift: end-to-end encrypted calls.
It is a paradise for all the bad guys of the world;
If in the past they were forced to use code words, couriers or mail June, they suddenly had the option to communicate through immune apps, or ones that obscure the written information.
This has made enforcement mechanisms blind.
Offensive cyber is designed to give them back their sight.
There is no sane citizen in the world who should oppose this.
One must, of course, make sure that everything is done legally and under supervision and given orders and with retrospective supervision and control, but a life-wanting country needs such tools, and as strong and good as possible.
Without them, terrorism and crime will be celebrated here.
The defense establishment has understood this for a long time.
Unit 8200 was one of the world pioneers in this field.
Its descendants established most of the offensive cyber companies in Israel, which is the leading world power today.
This gave Israel not only money, but also a lot of power: the Israeli government promoted relations between countries through them.
But it also gave Israel another, no less important thing: the ability to keep the best minds in the country, and to use them to improve the high-tech world in general.
The re-feeding between the security apparatus and industry also ensured that Israel would always be one step ahead of its rivals (and often also its friends).
In the Middle East it is not something that should be taken lightly.
But if you do not recover, and quickly, Israel is about to kick this bucket.
The global affairs linked to the NSO - and the accompanying US sanctions - have brought stagnation to Israel.
The Ministry of Defense's Department of Defense Export (AFI) recently announced that it restricts the sale of offensive cyber to only 37 Western countries, plus a specific country in Asia.
In this state of affairs, the societies will not be able to exist.
They will prefer to be sold to foreign parties, and be freed from the shackles of Israeli supervision.
It will be disastrous for the Israeli capabilities that will flow from here, for the minds that will flee from here and for the connections with a variety of countries, which will now have to work with other factors, for example China or Russia (which will also allow them to follow us).
To prevent this, Israel must stand up, take a breather - and face the administration in Washington.
National Security Adviser Eyal Hulta was there this week, having also visited there last month.
The main issue was the nuclear deal with Iran, but the cyber issue also came up in talks.
Meanwhile, Americans are showing toughness;
If in the beginning Israel thought it was due to the Biden administration's actual protection of human rights, as the days go by it becomes clear that this is a cynical business move: the Americans want to take over the global offensive cyber market, and for them - Israel is a nuisance.
Israel must not give in to this.
Whoever surrenders now will end up needing American companies and government approval to track down terrorists or criminals in Israel.
The defense establishment understands this well, and is looking for a variety of creative ways to preserve the knowledge and workers in Israel.
The chances of them succeeding are unclear;
Some people believe it is legally possible, and others argue that everything will leak out of here quickly.
One way or another, it will be a danger to lives and a cry for generations.
Allow the police to work
The public is having a hard time keeping track of the plethora of recent affair in the offensive cyber worlds.
Decision makers do not have the privilege of doing so.
They must address this issue, and quickly, for all its derivatives.
In the international aspect - to preserve the ability and Israeli companies alive, with relevant sales capabilities, and in the internal aspect - to allow the police to work.
Along the way, quite a few changes are required.
Existing legislation is outdated and irrelevant to modern times (and certainly not to the encrypted age), and control is far from adequate.
You can, for example, restrict certain uses - tracking the phones of public figures, human rights activists or journalists, which will require additional approvals or oversight - to ensure there are no exceptions, and inserting additional settings into the tools' software, further reducing the ability (or temptation) to exceed .
For all this to happen, an investigation is required.
Fast, sharp, with clear bottom lines, followed by legislative adjustments.
If it turns out that someone disobeyed - fly home, and if necessary, he should also go to jail.
But the capabilities themselves must be preserved;
Whoever lets the current affair hurt them, will pay a price several times higher in the future.
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