US MPs Ask Treasury And US State Department To Sanction Oversight Applications That Help Authoritarian Governments

Surveillance applications use spyware that is considered a threat to democracy. (photo; pixabay)

JAKARTA - A group of US lawmakers asked the Treasury and the State Department to sanction Israeli spyware company NSO Group and three other foreign surveillance companies. They stated that the NSP Group and several other companies had assisted governments of authoritarian countries to commit human rights violations.

Their letter, which was sent late Tuesday, December 14, also calls for sanctions against top executives at NSO, United Arab Emirates cybersecurity firm DarkMatter, and European online mass surveillance firms Nexa Technologies and Trovicor.

Lawmakers are calling for Global Magnitsky sanctions, which punish those accused of enabling human rights abuses by freezing bank accounts and barring executives from traveling to the United States.

The letter was signed by Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff and 16 other Democratic lawmakers. Along with other reporting on the industry, they cited a recent Reuters article indicating that NSO spyware was being used against State Department employees in Uganda.

Lawmakers say the spyware industry has become dependent on US investments and banks. "In order to meaningfully punish them and send a clear signal to this surveillance technology industry, the US government should implement financial sanctions," they wrote as quoted by Reuters.

Meanwhile, Trovicor's side wrote back to Wyden, denying that they were involved in mass surveillance and pointing out that the allegations had confused his work with the work of other companies.

"Trovicor products are not 'spyware' and are designed to be used for targeted investigations of identified individuals (as opposed to 'Bulk' surveillance)," he wrote.

DarkMatter could not be reached for comment, while NSO and Nexa did not respond to inquiries into the case.

The letter also said that the company had facilitated the "disappearance, torture and killing of human rights activists and journalists." These surveillance companies have attracted increasing attention from Washington as a barrage of media reports has tied them to human rights abuses.

"These reconnaissance mercenaries are selling their services to authoritarian regimes with long records of human rights abuses, giving tyrants immense spying power," Wyden told Reuters.

Predictably, these countries use surveillance tools to lock up, torture, and kill journalists and human rights defenders. The Biden administration has an opportunity to turn off the American dollar faucet and help put them out of business for good," Wyden said.

Meanwhile, the spokesperson for the US State and Treasury did not immediately respond to questions about this request from Wyden et al.

In November, the US Department of Commerce placed NSO on the so-called Banned Entity List, which prohibits US suppliers from selling software or services to the Israeli spyware maker without obtaining special permission.

A number of legal challenges also threaten the industry. Last week a prominent Saudi activist and the non-profit Electronic Border Foundation sued DarkMatter, accusing the group of hacking into his phone.

Apple also sued the NSO Group in November, saying it violated US law by breaking into software installed on iPhones.

A Reuters 2019 investigation, cited in the letter, also revealed a secret hacking unit within DarkMatter, known as Project Raven, which helps the UAE spy on its adversaries.

In a September settlement with the Justice Department, three members of the unit, all former US intelligence agents, admitted to violating hacking laws.