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Israel tried to frustrate US lawsuit over Pegasus spyware, leak suggests

Officials seized documents from NSO Group in effort to stop handover of information about notorious hacking tool, files suggest

The July 2020 seizures were made after Israeli officials and the company appear to have discussed how to respond to WhatsApp’s requests for NSO to disclose internal files about its spyware, raising questions about whether they coordinated to conceal certain information from US legal proceedings. At an urgent meeting with NSO, Israeli officials presented the company with an order issued by a Tel Aviv court granting the government powers to execute a search warrant at its office, access its internal computer systems and seize files. Scott Horton, a US lawyer and adjunct professor at Columbia Law School, said these were “strange procedures to be taking in relation to a private entity”, suggesting NSO was in fact an “integral part of the Israeli defence establishment and they are trying to shield [this] from public discovery”.

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