A US appeals court has said Facebook can pursue a lawsuit accusing Israel’s NSO Group of exploiting a bug in its WhatsApp messaging app to install malware allowing the surveillance of 1,400 people, including journalists, human rights activists and dissidents.
In a 3-0 decision on Monday, the Ninth US Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco rejected privately owned NSO’s claim that it was immune from being sued because it had acted as a foreign government agent.
Facebook, now known as Meta Platforms Inc, in October 2019 sued NSO for an injunction and damages, accusing it of accessing WhatsApp servers without permission six months earlier to install its Pegasus malware on victims’ mobile devices.
Pegasus turns phones into pocket spying devices, giving users total access to the target’s phone contents without them knowing.
NSO has said that Pegasus helps law enforcement and intelligence agencies fight crime and protect national security. It was appealing a trial judge’s refusal in July last year to award it “conduct-based immunity,” a common law doctrine protecting foreign officials acting in their official capacity.
Upholding that ruling, Circuit Judge Danielle Forrest said it was an “easy case,” because NSO’s mere licensing of Pegasus and offering technical support did not shield it from liability under federal law, which took precedence over common law.
“Whatever NSO’s government customers do with its technology and services does not render NSO an ‘agency or instrumentality of a foreign state,’” Forrest wrote. “Thus, NSO is not entitled to the protection of foreign sovereign immunity.”
In Mexico, prosecutors said that they had detained a man accused of spying on a journalist using the Pegasus software.
The suspect, identified as Juan Carlos “G,” is thought to be the first person arrested in Mexico for using the software.
He was detained in the central city of Queretaro on charges of illegally monitoring communications and transferred to a prison in Mexico City, the attorney general’s office said.
The suspect’s actions against the unnamed journalist were aimed at “limiting and undermining her freedom of expression,” it said in a statement.
In July, an international media investigation called the Pegasus Project revealed that 25 journalists in Mexico were among the targets of NSO clients.
One of them, Cecilio Pineda, was murdered in March 2017.
Meanwhile, an investigation by a European rights group published on Monday found that Pegasus was used to hack the phones of staff of Palestinian civil society groups targeted by Israel.
The revelations by Frontline Defenders — backed by Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab — mark the latest development in the widening controversy surrounding six prominent Palestinian groups designated as “terrorist” organizations by the Israel Ministry of Defense last month.
Israel says the designated Palestinian groups work in collaboration with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist group labeled a terrorist organization by many Western states.
There has been widespread criticism of the terrorist designation slapped on the groups Addameer, Al-Haq, Bisan Center for Research and Development, Defense for Children International — Palestine, the Union of Agricultural Work Committees and the Union of Palestinian Women’s Committees.
The Frontline Defenders investigation found that six devices used by employees of the targeted groups “were hacked with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware,” including US citizen Ubai al-Aboudi, head of the Bisan Center, and French national Salah Hammouri, a researcher at Adameer.
Amnesty International’s Security Lab and Citizen Lab upheld those findings.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
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