The Diplomat in Spain

Ramón C. Riva. Escudo Digital

The U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, in case No. 19-cv-07123-PJH, WhatsApp INC. as plaintiffs against NSO Group Technologies Limited as defendants, has ordered Israeli spyware company NSO Group to disclose to WhatsApp documents and code related to its notorious Pegasus spyware.

WhatsApp (Meta) has thus won a significant legal victory against Israel’s NSO Group in having to disclose the full workings of Pegasus.

Judge Hamilton has ordered NSO Group to reproduce “all relevant spyware” between 29 April 2018 and 10 May 2020 (the five-time infection of Pedro Sánchez’s mobile phone, and those of the Ministers of Defence, Margarita Robles, Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and Agriculture, Luis Planas, occurred between 2020 and 2021).

It also orders that NSO must hand over information about the “full functionality” of Pegasus, although the company has appealed arguing that it should only be required to hand over information about the installation layer of Pegasus.

This ruling provides the Audiencia Nacional with magnificent new opportunities by reopening the “Pegasus case” into the spying with Pegasus software on the prime minister’s mobile phone. The investigator José Luis Calama has taken this decision after receiving a European Investigation Order (EIO) issued by the French judicial authorities that incorporates an investigation carried out there in 2021 as a result of the multiple interceptions of mobile phones of journalists, lawyers, public figures and governmental and non-governmental associations, as well as members of the French government, ministers and deputies, with the software.

While the US court’s decision marks new jurisprudence, it is very disappointing that NSO Group is allowed to continue to keep secret the identity of its customers who are responsible for this illegitimate surveillance, and even more so when NSO Group says it only sells Pegasus to authorised government customers.