The ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza against 2.3 million Palestinians, enabled by western powers led by the US, UK and Germany, is a demonstration of how dangerous spyware can become. The Israeli military uses spyware to weaponize phones in Gaza and turn them into tools of surveillance, coupled with facial-recognition technology, AI, and voice-recognition technology to generate targets for the Israeli artillery and airforce – killing tens of thousands of Palestinian civilians in the process. This proves that spyware is a weapon of war, and that it threatens not only the Palestinians in Gaza, but all of humanity.
This May, Israel’s acting ambassador to Spain used Israel’s backdoor access to the surveillance data obtained by Israeli spyware to extort the Spanish government, demanding that Spain adopt a pro-Israeli stance. “My government has not yet responded with Pegasus revelations,” said the ambassador.
Spyware is a weapon used by authoritarian and self-defined “democratic” regimes to silence dissent and opposition, target journalists and lawyers, and undermine human rights.
Israeli companies like NSO Group, Candiru, Intellexa, Paragon and others have created military-grade spyware, such as Pegasus, Predator and Graphite, which can infiltrate phones, extract private data, and even turn devices into surveillance tools. These technologies were reportedly field-tested on Palestinians by Israeli intelligence units before being commodified and marketed globally.
High-profile cases—such as the hacking of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s associates, the surveillance of Palestinian rights defenders, and the targeting of Mexican journalists—reveal how this spyware enables repression on a massive scale. The victims are often those fighting for justice, exposing corruption, or defending basic freedoms.
This is not just a technological issue—it is a moral and legal one. The unchecked sale of spyware allows governments to violate privacy, suppress free speech, and evade accountability. We cannot allow corporations to profit from tools that facilitate oppression and repression.
The European Council ignored the recommendations of the PEGA committee (the European Parliament committee to investigate spyware) to control spyware. They have been adopted with a majority of 30 out of 33 committee members, but France, Germany, Greece, among other EU states, insisted on shelving them to be able to continue to surveil their own citizens, in a glaring violation of constitutional rights.
After Israel used its spyware on the US administration, then president Biden issued executive orders and sanctioned employees of Israeli spyware companies, but it left loopholes for the companies to exploit, and the US itself kept buying Israeli spyware, such as from the company Cellebrite.
Alongside the horrors of spyware, some signs of hope appear:
The Colombian government has opened an investigation into the corrupt purchase of Pegasus by the previous authoritarian administration.
The Catalan organisation, Irídia, has filed charges against three NSO Group executives for their involvement in illegal activities against a Spanish lawyer as part of the Catalan Gate case. A European Investigation Order has been sent to Luxembourg due to the strong presence of the Israeli company there.
Journalists and civil society activists in Ghana are encouraging citizens to exercise their right to demand disclosure of the surveillance tools (mainly Israeli spyware) which is used against them.
A US court has ruled against the Israeli NSO Group for illegally spying on WhatsApp users, forcing NSO Group to pay a sum of 612 million dollars in damages - unfortunately not to the wronged users but to Meta.
Time to take action
Saturday June 21st, the summer solstice in the northern hemisphere, is the longest day of the year. We need the sunshine to expose the dark secrets which governments are keeping from us. On this day the Global Network Against Spyware (GNAS) is calling for a global day of action against spyware.
- Demand Bans: Governments must impose strict bans on the sale and use of invasive spyware.
- Corporate Accountability: Companies developing these tools must be held legally responsible for their misuse and must be subjected to divestment worldwide.
- Public Awareness: More people need to understand how spyware threatens democracy and human rights.
- Collective Action: Activists, journalists, and citizens must pressure policymakers to ban spyware before more lives are ruined.
The time to act is now. If we don’t stop the spyware trade, it will continue to empower dictators and endanger those who stand up for justice everywhere, including in “democratic” states. Let’s fight for a world where technology protects—not persecutes—people.