TEL AVIV, Israel — An Israeli court heard a case Thursday calling for restrictions to be slapped on NSO Group, an Israeli company that makes surveillance software that is said to have been used to target journalists and dissidents around the world. The case, brought by Amnesty International, calls for Israel to revoke the spyware firm’s export license, preventing it from selling its contentious product abroad, particularly to regimes that could use it for malicious purposes. “They are the most dangerous cyber weapon that we know of and they’re not being properly overseen,” said Gil Naveh, spokesman for Amnesty International Israel. “That is the reason why we think that their license should be revoked.”NSO is implicated in a series of digital break-in attempts and the court case is the latest pushback against the company and its product. Last year, Facebook sued the hacker-for-hire company in U.S. federal court for allegedly targeting some 1,400 users of its encrypted messaging service WhatsApp with highly sophisticated spyware.

Source: International New York Times January 16, 2020 12:33 UTC