Rights Groups Join Facebook in Lawsuit Against Zionist NSO
WEST BANK (Dispatches) – A coalition of human rights groups has joined Facebook’s legal fight against the Zionist regime’s spyware vendor NSO, saying that the company prioritizes profits over human rights, following a similar move by a number of leading tech companies, including Google and Microsoft.
The organizations, including internet rights group Access Now, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, filed an amicus brief - a supporting document filed to a court by parties not directly involved in the case - in support of Facebook’s lawsuit against NSO.
The suit says the Zionist company subverted Facebook’s WhatsApp instant messaging service to infect 1,400 "target devices” of human rights activists and dissidents worldwide, in order to steal information from the users.
Natalia Krapiva, legal counsel for Access Now, said NSO’s hacking of WhatsApp "has enormous human costs.”
"The attack invaded the victims’ privacy, damaged their reputation, and continues to endanger their work and livelihoods,” she said in a statement.
Krapiva added, "NSO actively facilitated targeting of these individuals, and the notion that they should now escape accountability in U.S. courts because they were ‘following orders’ of dictators defeats any notion of justice.”
On Monday, a group of technology giants including Microsoft Corp., Dell, Google and Cisco Systems Inc. filed a similar brief that warned that NSO’s hacking tools posed a danger to the safety of users across the internet.
The companies said they were concerned that NSO Group’s spyware tools could ultimately be obtained by "malicious actors other than the initial customer,” whom they said could use the technology to "cripple infrastructure, commit large-scale financial crime, or cause other catastrophic damage.”
Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, lodged another amicus brief, saying NSO had become "notorious for facilitating human rights abuses.”
NSO Group is well-known for selling hacking software to government clients.
According to the company’s marketing materials, once Pegasus has been covertly placed on a mobile phone, it can gather information about the device’s location, access its camera, microphone and internal hard drive, and record emails, phone calls and text messages.
The software had also been used to hack into the WhatsApp account of prominent dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.
The organizations, including internet rights group Access Now, Amnesty International, the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, filed an amicus brief - a supporting document filed to a court by parties not directly involved in the case - in support of Facebook’s lawsuit against NSO.
The suit says the Zionist company subverted Facebook’s WhatsApp instant messaging service to infect 1,400 "target devices” of human rights activists and dissidents worldwide, in order to steal information from the users.
Natalia Krapiva, legal counsel for Access Now, said NSO’s hacking of WhatsApp "has enormous human costs.”
"The attack invaded the victims’ privacy, damaged their reputation, and continues to endanger their work and livelihoods,” she said in a statement.
Krapiva added, "NSO actively facilitated targeting of these individuals, and the notion that they should now escape accountability in U.S. courts because they were ‘following orders’ of dictators defeats any notion of justice.”
On Monday, a group of technology giants including Microsoft Corp., Dell, Google and Cisco Systems Inc. filed a similar brief that warned that NSO’s hacking tools posed a danger to the safety of users across the internet.
The companies said they were concerned that NSO Group’s spyware tools could ultimately be obtained by "malicious actors other than the initial customer,” whom they said could use the technology to "cripple infrastructure, commit large-scale financial crime, or cause other catastrophic damage.”
Separately, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group, lodged another amicus brief, saying NSO had become "notorious for facilitating human rights abuses.”
NSO Group is well-known for selling hacking software to government clients.
According to the company’s marketing materials, once Pegasus has been covertly placed on a mobile phone, it can gather information about the device’s location, access its camera, microphone and internal hard drive, and record emails, phone calls and text messages.
The software had also been used to hack into the WhatsApp account of prominent dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was brutally murdered and dismembered at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018.