EU Should Sanction NSO Group, Rights Groups Say
The European Union should impose sanctions and export restrictions on Israel-based NSO Group over accusations that the company provided spyware to hack human rights activists and journalists, more than 80 human rights groups and other activists wrote to the EU.…
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In a Dec. 3 letter, the groups said NSO Group’s Pegasus Spyware was reportedly used to hack the devices of Palestinian human rights activists, “further evidence of a pattern of human rights abuses facilitated by NSO Group through spyware sales to governments that use the technology to persecute civil society and social movements in many countries around the world.” The groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, pointed to the U.S. Commerce Department’s November decision to add NSO Group to the Entity List (see 2111030010). “The EU should follow suit and urgently put NSO on its global sanction list and take all appropriate action to prohibit the sale, transfer, export, import and use of NSO Group technologies, as well as the provision of services that support NSO Group's products until adequate human rights safeguards are in place,” said the letter, which was addressed to EU member states and Josep Borrell, the EU’s foreign policy chief. The NSO Group didn’t immediately comment.