Israeli officials from across the political spectrum were outraged to learn Monday of the scope of the Israel Police's use of Pegasus, NSO Group's now-infamous surveillance technology, which reportedly extended to dozens of civilians, ranging from politicians and government functionaries to social activists and journalists.

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NSO Group's Pegasus software allows its users to remotely access mobile phones infected with the spyware. It exploits security vulnerabilities in cellular operating systems to retrieve a device's content, including text and email messages, photos, call history, and location data.

Lawmakers demanded an independent inquiry into what the police classified as "technological and data-oriented policing" but was, in fact, an intelligence phishing expedition conducted against dozens of individuals prior to any official investigation against them, without judicial warrants, and despite police officials knowing that any information obtained sans such warrants was inadmissible in court.

President Isaac Herzog issued a statement saying, "Law enforcement cannot cut corners when doing its job. When you enforce the law you must be beyond reproach. We cannot lose our democracy. We cannot lose our police and we cannot afford to have the public lose faith in either. This matter mandates a thorough investigation."

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett called the revelations in Calcalist "very serious," saying, "Pegasus and similar tools are very important in the war on terror and in the fight against serious crime, but they are not intended for widespread phishing among Israeli citizens or public figures.

"We need to understand exactly what happened. The deputy attorney general is looking into the matter. Once we know what happened we will not leave the public to wonder – we understand how serious this is."

The incidents in question allegedly took place under the command of former police chief Roni Alsheikh. Police Commissioner Yaakov Shabtai, who has already appointed a task force to examine the issue, appealed on Monday afternoon to Public Security Minister Omer Barlev to form an external review board on the matter.

"In light of recent publications regarding the use of technological systems by the Israel Police in the years prior to my command, I have asked the public security minister to order the establishment of an external, independent judicial review of the matter, to examine every aspect of this issue. This means to both regulate the use of such technology by the police and restore the public's faith in it.

"Any irregularities and failures found will be dealt with in accordance with the law," the commissioner, who is on a historic visit to the UAE, said in a statement.

Barlev has ordered the formation of a governmental commission of inquiry into the police spyware scandal and tasked it with "investigating the scope of the privacy violations against civilians."

He noted that reports of the privacy abuses "indicate that these failures – if they indeed happened – took place under previous commissioners, previous public security ministers, and previous governments. I can look Israeli citizens in the eye and promise – the commission of inquiry will review the length and breadth of these allegations.

"The police are under my responsibility and my authority. Such failures will not take place on my watch," he asserted, adding that the investigative panel "will be vested with the same authorities as a state commission of inquiry in terms of summoning witnesses, questioning them under warning, and seizing documents – regardless of how senior they may be in the political echelon, judiciary, or the Israel Police."

'We have to make sure this never happens again'

Israel Police spokesperson Eli Levi told Tel-Aviv-based 103FM Radio that the reports in Calcalist "wrong police officers. ... We need to let the commission of inquiry run its course. The police are open to any review, with full transparency. Police work in Israel has never before been called into question and if officers exceeded authority they will be prosecuted accordingly."

Levi noted that the police were "unfazed by the possibility of a commission of inquiry. We practice full transparency. Right now, we need to stop slandering the police."

Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked said, "If this is true, it is an earthquake. These acts characterize dark regimes to which we cannot be similar.

"Mass privacy violation is nothing short of lawlessness and it must end today. We have to form an external commission of inquiry. This is not the purpose for which the police procured this software. The Knesset and the public deserve answers, now."

Constitution, Law, and Justice Committee Chairman MK Gilad Kariv called for a legislative change, saying, "The current laws were drafted before anyone could even imagine what powerful tools would be at [the police's] disposal. We have to make sure that the legislation keeps up with technology and that strict oversight is in place.

Environmental Protection Minister Tamar Zandberg tweeted, "The revelations regarding this spyware leave no room for doubt: it is an earthquake that requires no less than a state commission of inquiry. The idea that a democratic state spies on its citizens as if it was a dictatorship should keep us all awake at night. There is no room for any excuse."

Blue and White MK Eitan Ginzburg said, "This is a difficult day for democracy. The police's ability to monitor anyone without evidence of a criminal offense and without a court order is appalling. Only an independent commission of inquiry can find out what was going on and until that happens, the commissioner must pull the plug on any use of this software."

Likud MK Miki Zohar tweeted, "This government commission of inquiry is a joke. They want to bury the story even though it is the most serious violation of Israeli democracy since the inception of the state."

Religious Zionist Party leader Bezalel Smotrich said that Alsheikh and any other police officer involved in the hacking "should be arrested without delay and interrogated by an independent counsel with the broadest possible jurisdiction. Simultaneously, a state commission of inquiry must be formed to understand how something like this could have happened in the first place and make sure it never happens again."

The Movement for Quality Government in Israel welcomed the decision to form a commission of inquiry into the explosive allegations, calling the move "vital."

The Privacy Protection Authority echoed the statement, saying that the implication of the allegations, if true, would be "beyond far-reaching."

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Poland's most powerful politician has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied that it was being used to target his political opponents.

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Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland's ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that the software, Pegasus, is now being used by secret services in many countries to combat crime and corruption. He noted that Pegasus represents a technological advancement over earlier monitoring systems, which did not allow the services to monitor encrypted messages.

"It would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of tool," Kaczynski said in an interview to be published in the Monday edition of the weekly Sieci, excerpts of which were published Friday by the wPolityce.pl news portal.

The interview follows exclusive reports by The Associated Press that Citizen Lab, a cyber watchdog group at the University of Toronto, found that three Polish government critics were hacked with NSO's Pegasus spyware.

On Thursday, Amnesty International independently verified the finding by Citizen Lab that Sen. Krzysztof Brejza had been hacked multiple times in 2019 when he was running the opposition's parliamentary election campaign. Text messages stolen from Brejza's phone were doctored and aired by state-controlled TV as part of a smear campaign in the heat of the race, which the populist ruling party went on to narrowly win.

Brejza now maintains that the election was not fair since the ruling party would have had access to his campaign's tactical thinking and plans.

The revelations have rocked Poland, drawing comparisons to the 1970s Watergate scandal in the United States and eliciting calls for an investigative commission in parliament.

Kaczynski said he sees no reason to set up such a commission, and he denied that the surveillance played any role in the outcome of the 2019 elections.

"There is nothing here, no fact, except the hysteria of the opposition. There is no Pegasus case, no surveillance," Kaczynski said. "No Pegasus, no services, no secretly obtained information played any role in the 2019 election campaign. They lost because they lost. They shouldn't look for such excuses today."

The other two Polish targets confirmed by Citizen Lab were Roman Giertych, a lawyer who represents opposition politicians in a number of politically sensitive cases, and Ewa Wrzosek, an independent-minded prosecutor.

Kaczynski's allies had previously denied that Poland purchased and used Pegasus.

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Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the Citizen Lab-AP findings "fake news" and suggested a foreign intelligence service could have done the spying – an idea dismissed by critics who said no other government would have any interest in the three Polish targets.

Deputy Defense Minister Wojciech Skurkiewicz in late December said "the Pegasus system is not in the possession of the Polish services. It is not used to track or surveil anyone in our country."

Media reports say Poland purchased Pegasus in 2017, using money from the so-called Justice Fund, which is meant to help the victims of crimes and rehabilitate criminals. According to investigations by the TVN broadcaster and Gazeta Wyborcza daily, it is used by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, a special service created to combat corruption in public life that is under the political control of the ruling party.

"The public money was spent on an important public purpose, related to the fight against crime and the protection of citizens," Kaczynski said.

Dozens of high-profile cases of Pegasus abuse have been uncovered since 2015, many by a global media consortium last year, with the NSO Group malware employed to eavesdrop on journalists, politicians, diplomats, lawyers and human rights activists from the Middle East to Mexico.

The Polish hacks are considered particularly egregious because they occurred not in a repressive autocracy but in a European Union member state.

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The Indian Army has deployed four Israel Aerospace Industries-produced Heron drones to surveil Chinese military movements in the Ladakh sector, a report by India Today stated on Tuesday.

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The paper said that after "China's attempts to alter the status quo along the Line of Actual Control, India increased its deployment of troops after April 2020." Two months later, in June of that year, 20 Indian soldiers were killed in clashes with China over the disputed Himalayan region.

"The four drones were deployed along the LAC in Ladakh for surveillance," according to India Today.

The Israeli-made drones were acquired under "emergency financial powers granted by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led government to the defense forces," it stated. "The Indian forces will soon acquire the Predator drones from the US, which will further boost the unmanned surveillance and strike capabilities of the country."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The application allows users in quarantine to supply updates about their location, and matches the user's address with their physical location, or the physical location of their device. The only information passed along to the government is the location from where the report was sent, the time, and the telephone number of the quarantined user.

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Synel stressed that the app cannot access any hardware on user's phones, because it is based on GPS data.

In March, the company reached out to the relevant ministries and offered them the use of its app, but the government did not express an interest. Now that the second wave has arrived, with an increasing number of Israelis testing positive for COVID and being ordered to quarantine themselves, Synel has repeated its offer.

"Today, in the midst of the second wave, with tens of thousands of citizens in quarantine, as a proud Israeli business concerned about the health of the public, we are again reaching out and offering effective, immediate help in enforcing quarantine for thousands of Israelis," the company stated in a letter to the government.

Currently, despite movement tracking measures, Israeli COVID patients are largely responsible for policing their own quarantine. The more Israelis are assigned to quarantine, the harder it is for the authorities to ensure that they are following instructions.

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The Shin Bet's surveillance technology has been used on and off to track carriers since March, and the Knesset in a late-night decision approved the measure through Jan. 20, 2021, the Knesset news agency reported.

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The security agency tracks location data of confirmed carriers for 14 days before they were diagnosed. That data is used to identify anyone with whom they came into contact, which proponents say is crucial to infection chains.

The surveillance has drawn challenges from privacy watchdog groups, and the Supreme Court cited worries over dangers to individual liberty in demanding Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government regulate the surveillance through legislation.

The new law includes additional oversight, requiring the government to renew its request every three weeks, and it can be used only when new daily cases exceed 200. Those ordered into isolation can appeal if they believe the data was inaccurate.

The Knesset also instructed the Health Ministry to roll out an upgraded cell phone app that can be downloaded by the public to help track infection.

Israel reopened schools and many businesses in May, lifting restrictions that had flattened the infection curve after a partial lockdown imposed in March.

But a second-wave surge has many public health experts saying the government moved too quickly while neglecting to take the necessary epidemiological steps to control the pandemic once the economy reopened.

Israel, with a population of 9 million, reported about 1,500 new infections on Monday. In total, it has reported 415 deaths from the virus.

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The satellite was launched successfully by the Defense Ministry and Israel Aerospace Industries following years of research and development, and a working schedule that in recent months had to be adapted to restrictions created by the coronavirus pandemic.

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IAI officials said they viewed the satellite's launch as a top priority. This is due to the fact that "Ofek 16" is designed to provide the Israeli defense establishment with a higher than ever resolution camera in space.

Amnon Harari, head of the Ministry's Space and Satellite Administration, noted on Monday that the latest spy satellite joins a series of similar ones in orbit, including the "Ofek 5," launched in 2002, which remains operational to this day. The first of the "Ofek" (the Hebrew word for "horizon") series was launched in 1988.

"The group of satellites are being used to monitor any threats to the State of Israel, which as you know are sometimes far away and immediate, so they require constant monitoring," he said.

According to IAI's Space Division chief, Shlomi Sudri, "Ofek 16" has an advanced electro-optical (camera) sensing system that will "enhance the strategic intelligence capability of the State of Israel."

While no further details were provided about that system, it's worth noting that on previous Israeli satellites, an advanced camera system called "Jupiter," made by Elbit Systems, had been installed.

According to Elbit's website, the camera enables investigations of "very high-value targets," and it provides higher definition images of small and discrete vehicles, objects, and structures. It also can be used for "more detailed operational planning" and "more enhanced battle damage assessment," meaning looking at the damage caused to enemy targets.

It doesn't seem to be a stretch of the imagination to conclude that such a satellite will help Israel track Iran's nuclear program with new technology, as well as monitor Iran's malign activity throughout the Middle East –particularly the trafficking of weapons to Iran's proxies like Hezbollah – and activities in Syria.

'At the forefront of technological capabilities'

The "Ofek 16" satellite represents remarkable cooperation among various defense companies. IAI is the prime contractor and responsible for the Shavit space launcher, while Rafael Advanced Defense Systems and Tomer, a government-owned company, built the launch engines. The Defense Ministry's Space Administration led the development and production.

Defense Minister Benny Gantz paid tribute to the "people who have been investing in these systems and advancing breakthrough capabilities over the years. We will continue to strengthen and maintain Israel's capabilities on every front, in every place."

In 2016, Israel launched its "Ofek 11" satellite, which overcame early technical problems to become fully operational. Two years earlier, in 2014, Israel launched the "Ofek 10" satellite, which uses a radar system rather than a camera to monitor events of interest. Its SAR (synthetic aperture radar) payload has advanced day and night photography capabilities, and works in all weather conditions.

Once the "Ofek 16" is deemed fully operational, the Defense Ministry will hand over the satellite's controls to the Israel Defense Forces' 9990 visual intelligence Unit.

Israel invests hundreds of millions of shekels per year in its space and satellite industries, which in turn fuels new technology.

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The Jewish state belongs to a small club of 13 countries in the world that is able to build and launch its own satellites – one that includes the United States, Russia, China, Iran, France, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.

According to the Defense Ministry, "the investment of the State of Israel in space technology is considered essential and strategic for intelligence purposes. This is a multi-year investment, which requires a multitude of resources, consistency, and professionalism. The goal is to ensure that the Israeli satellite program will remain at the forefront of technological capabilities and will continue to produce advanced satellites, which will maintain Israel's intelligence and technological superiority."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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"Iran's army has downed an unknown drone in the port city of Mahshahr," the semi-official Tasnim news agency said earlier Friday.

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Other Iranian news outlets carried the same report, without elaborating on whether it was a military or civilian drone.

The Students News Agency ISNA and the Young Journalists Club (YJC), affiliated to Iran's state broadcasting, said "an unknown flying object" had been shot down by the Iranian army, adding that the report had yet to be confirmed by Iranian officials.

Iran's Arabic-Language al-Alam TV channel said "residents of Imam Khomeini port city heard the sound of a missile being fired on Friday morning."

In June, Iran shot down an unmanned US surveillance drone, which the elite Revolutionary Guards said was flying over southern Iran. Washington said the US drone had been shot down by Iran in international airspace over the Strait of Hormuz in the Gulf.

Relations between Iran and the United States have worsened since last year when US President Donald Trump pulled out of Tehran's 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and re-imposed sanctions on the country.

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In a lawsuit filed in federal court in San Francisco, messaging service WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook Inc (FB.O), accused NSO of facilitating government hacking sprees in 20 countries. Mexico, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain were the only countries identified.

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WhatsApp said in a statement that 100 civil society members had been targeted, and called it "an unmistakable pattern of abuse."

NSO denied the allegations.

"In the strongest possible terms, we dispute today's allegations and will vigorously fight them," NSO said in a statement. "The sole purpose of NSO is to provide technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime."

WhatsApp said the attack exploited its video calling system in order to send malware to the mobile devices of a number of users. The malware would allow NSO's clients – said to be governments and intelligence organizations – to secretly spy on a phone's owner, opening their digital lives up to official scrutiny.

WhatsApp is used by some 1.5 billion people monthly and has often touted a high level of security, including end-to-end encrypted messages that cannot be deciphered by WhatsApp or other third parties.

Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity research laboratory based at the University of Toronto that worked with WhatsApp to investigate the phone hacking, told Reuters that the targets included well-known television personalities, prominent women who had been subjected to online hate campaigns and people who had faced "assassination attempts and threats of violence."

Neither Citizen Lab nor WhatsApp identified the targets by name.

Governments have increasingly turned to sophisticated hacking software as officials seek to push their surveillance power into the furthest corners of their citizens' digital lives.

Companies like NSO say their technology enables officials to circumvent the encryption that increasingly protects the data held on phones and other devices. But governments only rarely talk about their capabilities publicly, meaning that the digital intrusions like the ones that affected WhatsApp typically happen in the shadows.

Lawyer Scott Watnik called WhatsApp's move "entirely unprecedented," explaining that major service providers tended to shy away from litigation for fear of "opening up the hood" and revealing too much about their digital security. He said other firms would be watching the progress of the suit with interest.

"It could certainly set a precedent," said Watnik, who chairs the cybersecurity practice at the Wilk Auslander law firm in New York.

The lawsuit seeks to have NSO barred from accessing or attempting to access WhatsApp and Facebook's services and seeks unspecified damages.

NSO's phone hacking software has already been implicated in a series of human rights abuses across Latin America and the Middle East, including a sprawling espionage scandal in Panama and an attempt to spy on an employee of the London-based rights group Amnesty International.

NSO came under particularly harsh scrutiny over the allegation that its spyware played a role in the death of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul a little over a year ago.

Khashoggi's friend Omar Abdulaziz is one of seven activists and journalists who have taken the spyware firm to court in Israel and Cyprus over allegations that their phones were compromised using NSO technology. Amnesty has also filed a lawsuit, demanding that Israel's Defense Ministry revoke NSO's export license to "stop it profiting from state-sponsored repression."

NSO has recently tried to clean up its image after it was bought by London-based private equity firm Novalpina Capital earlier this year. In August, NSO co-founder Shalev Hulio appeared on "60 Minutes" and boasted his spyware had saved "tens of thousands of people." He provided no details.

NSO has also brought on a series of high-profile advisers, including former Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge and Juliette Kayyem, a senior lecturer in international security at Harvard University. Last month, NSO announced it would begin abiding by UN guidelines on human rights abuses.

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"She died a needless death, and that made me realize that I want to go into the defense and security field. When I help one soldier, one family, I feel good about myself. I lost something I wasn't supposed to lose," Cohen says.

After completing degrees in nonscientific areas – humanities and business administration – Cohen began creating products to help protect security forces and civilians. He founded T9 Design and opened a factory in Raanana, where he manufactures tactical textiles for the IDF as well as various other safety technology. Most of his company's products are designed for the military and made available for civilian use after a certain amount of time.

"Today, we're the second-biggest company in the field of tactical operational solutions. Everything is made in Israel. My life story led me to take pride in what I do, with my own two hands."

This past year, Cohen has expanded his horizons and begun working on a way of combatting agricultural terrorism. He came up with anti-theft fake rocks. His company sends teams to sample the ground in a given field, and based on the rocks or fauna they find, build similar rocks, fake trees, or bushes that include hidden cameras and surveillance equipment, as well as motion sensors and alarms.

The security rocks were originally developed for use by the IDF and the Defense Ministry. Each system takes up to 45 days to manufacture. Once in place, the systems can track suspects' cars; groups of vandals who operate at night; and spot invasive animals. The company is now making the technology available to farmers to help them combat agricultural crime.

"The thieves have learned to avoid cameras," Cohen explains. "We created a platform that will provide farmers with a concealed solution to the plague of agricultural crime. The new development will be the farmers' eyes in the field and allow them to set up defenses and concealed surveillance."

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