Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit has ordered an investigation into the Israel Police's alleged use of NSO Group surveillance technology against civilians without authorization. It is unclear whether NSO's now-infamous Pegasus spyware was used or if another software was employed.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
State Comptroller Matanyahu Englman and the Privacy Authority have also announced they would be investigating the matter, first reported on by financial daily Calcalist, last week.
In a four-page letter issued on Thursday, Mendelblit said he had yet to find evidence substantiating the claims made in the report, which said police monitored the leaders of a protest movement against then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, mayors, and other citizens without court approval. But Mendelblit said many questions remained unanswered, and that he was forming an investigative committee headed by a top deputy.
The specific cases mentioned by Calcalist "raise a very troubling picture," he said, but don't provide "sufficiently concrete information" to identify the cases of alleged misuse.
Mendelblit's letter came a few hours after Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai said he, too, had ordered an extensive investigation into the newspaper's claims.
The police have dismissed the report as inaccurate and said they only operate according to the law. But the publication drew an outcry from lawmakers and prompted multiple investigations by various Israeli authorities into the allegations.
In announcing his investigation, Shabtai said that immediately following the report's publication, police launched "a thorough internal investigation" that has yet to find any instances of unlawful surveillance. He called on the paper to provide "concrete details that will allow us to inspect the alleged incidents."
Shabtai said that "if it turns out that there were specific instances in which regulations were violated, the police under my command will work to improve and correct," pledging full transparency. At the same time, he defended the police's lawful use of such technologies to combat crime.
The NSO Group does not identify its clients and says it has no knowledge of who is targeted. The company says its products are intended to be used against criminals and terrorists, and that it does not control how its clients use the software. Israel, which regulates the company, has not said whether its own security forces use the spyware.
The Israeli spyware company has faced mounting scrutiny over its Pegasus software, which has been linked to snooping on human rights activists, journalists and politicians across the globe. In November, the US Commerce Department blacklisted NSO, barring the company from using certain US technologies, saying its tools had been used to "conduct translational repression."
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
