Also interested in the company’s services were numerous other federal agencies, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Drug Enforcement Agency, the U.S. Secret Service, and the U.S. military’s Africa Command, the newspaper reports. The FBI also purchased Pegasus from the NSO Group, the Times reports.
As the Times investigation breaks, the NSO Group is still embroiled in countless ongoing controversies that span the globe. And there’s no telling when the allegations will stop.
On Friday morning, news broke that an NSO scandal is now brewing in Finland, where the nation’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs has reported that the phones of multiple Finnish diplomats are believed to have been infected with Pegasus. Only a day ago, it was revealed that a top Human Rights Watch official, Lama Fakih, the U.S.-Lebanese Director of Crisis and Conflict and head of the HRW Beirut office, had also been targeted. In Poland, an ongoing crisis spurred by revelations that Pegasus was used to target a slew of politicians has now boiled over into a full-blown inquiry by the Polish senate to determine whether the spyware was used to help manipulate the nation’s 2019 election. And, in Hungary, several human rights activists targeted by Pegasus have announced their plans to unleash a “legal blitz” aimed at the Hungarian government (which is alleged to have hacked them), as well as NSO itself. Then there are the murky allegations within Israel, the company’s home country: claims that Israeli police used Pegasus to spy on Israeli civilians domestically—including several politicians.