Mobile phone with NSO logo (Photo: Flash 90, Jonathan Zindel)
The Constitution Committee held another charged discussion today and is expected to vote on a draft resolution drafted by MK Simcha Rotman calling for the establishment of a government commission of inquiry headed by a judge in the NSO affair, according to which the police planted the spyware without opening an investigation and without legal approval to do so. Rothman: "Without a commission of inquiry with investigative powers, by an independent body, the fear of using the excess information extracted by the police will never be reduced."
MK Yoav Segalovich (Yesh Atid) said in the discussion that "beyond supervision and control, I am troubled by the fact that the tools have not yet resumed operation. There is no legal problem in running the tools under the established rules. In 2007, I was on the other side of the table as head of the Investigations and Intelligence Division, and the chairman of the committee was the late David Rotem. As a uniformed man, I was urgently called to the riot of God regarding the Communications Data Law – at the time they called it "Big Brother" and I remember saying in the committee and to the level in charge – as head of the investigations division, I have a role that was appointed to reach the truth and bring criminals to justice and save lives, and you the Knesset will decide – the Knesset is the sovereign and the police are the executive body."
Segalovich added: "The question is what prices are paid because in the end these are the balances. You can police without technology and without the Communications Data Law, but one thing you can't – you can't take the professionals we send to this job. We have a responsibility on both sides of the equation – we have a responsibility in fighting crime, so that citizens do not live in fear, it has a price, and we almost never put this side of the equation on the table."
Video: Deputy Attorney General of Criminal Justice discusses the NSO affair report (Photo: Justice Ministry Spokesperson's Office)
Pegasus is spyware, a spyware of NSO based in Herzliya (also known as offensive cyber), used by intelligence and investigation agencies all over the world (see also below) that proactively gains access to all your materials on a smartphone. The spyware, once implanted in the target's smartphone, can also secretly open the camera or microphone and make a live recording in real time (again, without you being aware of it), and of course, the researcher using Pegasus also has access to all your call logs, your location, so that at any given moment the phone is on you can know where you are and more.
A Calcalist investigation from January 2022 revealed that the police made considerable use of Pegasus, despite previous assurances by NSO officials that Pegasus was not used against Israeli civilians. The disturbing part is that, according to the article, the police also secretly tracked and hacked into the phones of people who were not suspected of committing crimes: a sitting mayor and Black Flag protest activists.
The conclusions of the final report, headed by Deputy Attorney General Amit Marari, on the NSO affair, indicate that there was no indication that the Israel Police had penetrated the mobile phones of targets whose names were published in the media without a judicial warrant, using the Pegasus software, as alleged. At the same time, isolated cases were found in which the judicial order issued did not match the listening operation carried out by the police. However, in these cases, the infection attempt was unsuccessful, and in any case no results were obtained.
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