The attacks add to a growing catalog of shame for spyware-maker NSO Group.
Dozens of women journalists and human rights defenders in Bahrain and Jordan have had their phones hacked using NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, according to a report by Front Line Defenders and Access Now.
The report adds to a growing public record of Pegasus misuse globally, including against dissidents, reporters, diplomats, and members of the clergy. It also threatens to increase pressure on the Israel-based NSO Group, which in November was placed on a U.S. trade blacklist.
“When governments surveil women, they are working to destroy them,” wrote Marwa Fatafta, Middle East and North Africa policy manager at Access Now, in a statement accompanying the report. “Surveillance is an act of violence. It is about exerting power over every aspect of a woman’s life through intimidation, harassment, and character assassination. The NSO Group and its government clients are all responsible, and must be publicly exposed and disgraced.”
NSO Group was placed on the trade blacklist after a consortium of journalists working with the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories reported multiple cases in which journalists and activists appear to have been targeted by foreign governments using the spyware. (NSO denied the allegations.) The same month, researchers from Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab said they found Pegasus on the phones of six Palestinian human rights activists. Last week, another Citizen Lab report found that dozens of Salvadoran human rights activists’ phones had been hacked using Pegasus.
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