Lawmakers Call for Magnitsky Sanctions Against NSO, Other Spyware Companies
A group of Senate and House Democrats called on the Biden administration to designate more spyware technology companies for human rights abuses, saying the designations will complement existing export restrictions meant to curb their sales of surveillance technologies to authoritarian governments. In a Dec. 15 letter to the Treasury and the State Department, the lawmakers said the U.S. should specifically impose Global Magnitsky sanctions against United Arab Emirates-based DarkMatter (see 2110220033), Israel-based NSO Group and European companies Nexa Technologies and Trovicor. The sanctions should target the companies as well as their CEOs and other senior executives, the letter said, adding that they all have sold surveillance technologies and services to help governments commit human rights violations.
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The sanctions would build on the Biden administration's efforts to impose export restrictions on surveillance technology companies, including its November addition of NSO Group and three others to the Entity List (see 2111030010). While those restrictions are “worthy of praise,” they’re not enough to stop the companies from selling their goods to overseas developers and sourcing hardware and software from foreign suppliers, the lawmakers said.
But surveillance companies "depend on the U.S. financial system and U.S.-based investors, particularly when they eventually wish to raise billions by listing on the stock market,” said the letter, signed by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks of New York, Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden of Oregon, and 16 other Democrats. “To meaningfully punish them and send a clear signal to the surveillance technology industry, the U.S. government should deploy financial sanctions.” A Treasury spokesperson declined to comment. The State Department didn’t comment.