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How the U.S. Government Bought Israeli Spyware

(New York Times) Mark Mazzetti and Ronen Bergman - A secret contract was finalized on Nov. 8, 2021, between a company that has acted as a front for the U.S. government and the American affiliate of the Israeli NSO Group. It gave the U.S. government access to one of its most powerful weapons - the Landmark geolocation tool that can covertly track mobile phones around the world without the phone user's knowledge or consent. Only five days earlier, the Biden administration had announced it had placed NSO on a Commerce Department blacklist. The secret contract - which the New York Times is disclosing for the first time - still appears to be active. The contract stated that the "United States government" would be the ultimate user of the tool. As reported last year, the FBI purchased access in 2019 to NSO's Pegasus, which invades mobile phones and mines their contents. The secret November 2021 contract used the same small New Jersey-based government contractor that the FBI used two years earlier to purchase Pegasus. L3Harris, the American defense giant, had discussions with Commerce Department officials about buying NSO's hacking tools and there was a draft agreement in place before the White House publicly objected.
2023-04-05 00:00:00
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