One invisible combat plucked in the digital landscape, where the devices we rely on turn into silent observers.
Civil rights organizations have repeatedly pointed out that a number of Israeli technology companies, many of which were established by graduates selected Information units, such as Unit 8200, Unit 81 and Mossad, are key factors in a rapidly developing global market for commercial monitoring software (spyware), as written by Jose Nino.
These companies have powerful tools that have been used against journalists, activists, political dissidents and, in several confirmed cases, people living in the United States and Europe.
Organizations, such as War on Want, point out that Israel hosts more growth companies spyware from any other country.
These include: NSO Group, Candiru, Cellebrite, Verint, NICE, Black Cube, Cytrox and Intellexa.
Of all these companies, one stands out more than any other: the NSO Group.
Based in Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, it is the most typical example of the Israeli monitoring software industry.
It was founded in 2010 by Shalev Hulio, Omri Lavie and Niv Karmi (the name came out of the originals of their names for its name, although Karmi left just a month later).
Hulio and Lavie reportedly came from Unit 8200, Israel's military intelligence service, while Karmi had served in Mossad and military intelligence.
NSO gained international fame thanks to Pegasus, a sophisticated spy software that allows discreet smartphone hacking, providing access to the user's camera, microphone, messages and location data.
In 2021, Pegasus Project, a joint investigation of Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories and more than twelve international news organizations revealed that Pegasus had been used to monitor journalists, human rights defenders and political figures.
The investigation also showed that individuals belonging to the narrow circle of murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi had been targeted by NSO clients both before and after his murder.
However, researchers failed to determine which particular customers were involved, while Hulio denied any involvement of the company in the murder.
NSO's confrontation with American technology companies ended up in the courtrooms and did not develop in its favour.
In 2019, Meta, owner of WhatsApp, filed a lawsuit against her, accusing her of taking advantage of the application's security gap to install Pegasus on about 1,400 mobile phones within a few weeks.
Among the goals were lawyers, journalists, activists, political dissidents and high-ranking government officials from various countries.
The attack could be carried out without any action by the victim (zero-click explore): a call via WhatsApp was sufficient, even if the user never answered.
In December 2024, a federal judge held the NSO responsible, while in May 2025 court forced her to pay about $167 million as compensation and another $444,000 as compensation.
In October of that year, the court reduced the amount of compensation to about $4 million, but imposed a permanent ban on NSO to attack WhatsAp again p — a development that was considered a much more serious blow to a company whose activity is based on access to information.
In November 2021 there was another significant development. On November 3, the US Department of Commerce incorporated NSO into the Entity List, effectively excluding it from access to American technology.
The Ministry justified the decision, arguing that the company's activity was contrary to «United States national security or foreign policy».
Three weeks later, Apple filed a lawsuit against NSO, accusing her of creating fraudulent Apple ID and using the Zero-click explore named FORCEDENTRY to violate user devices, including American citizens, whose mobile phones «They were watched by the NSO spyware, even when crossing international borders».
In September 2024, Apple withdrew its lawsuit and the reasons were indicative of the difficulties of the case.
As she said in court, the continuation of the procedure would oblige her to reveal critical information about the techniques she uses to deal with such attacks.
At the same time, there was a serious possibility of never obtaining the necessary evidence, as Israeli officials had seized NSO documents as early as 2020, in order not to end up in an American court.
THE Guardian revealed this case in July 2024, arguing that the seizure was intended to prevent NSO from cooperating with the US authorities and handing over evidence in the parallel trial for WhatsAp p.
In other words, Apple partially abandoned the case because significant evidence was no longer accessible, due to actions by the Israeli State.
The pressure on the NSO is not limited to the courtrooms.
Amnesty International has appealed to the Justice of Israel for the withdrawal of the company's export licence, while Citizen Lab of the University of Toronto has documented the use of Pegasus against Catalan politicians, mMember States of the European Parliament, opposing the Saudi Arabia and United States Arabic Emirates, as well as civil society organisations in the West.
At the same time, Microsoft, the Google, the Cisco and other major technology companies supported Apple's initial appeal, describing NSO's tools as a threat not only to users, but also to internet security itself.
The NSO It dominates the headlines, but it is not the only case.
The Candiru, a highly secretive company based in Tel Aviv joined the same List of Entities of the US Department of Commerce on the same day as NSO in 2021, due to the sale of spy software used against journalists, political dissidents and human rights defenders.
Joint research Citizen Lab and Microsoft It charted more than 750 online sectors associated with the Candiru infrastructure.
Imitating organisms
Many of these areas... created to imitate organizations whose victims considered reliable, such as Amnesty International, the Black Lives Matter movement, the World Health Organization, and various media.
Microsoft recorded at least a hundred victims, including politicians, human rights activists, academics and diplomatic missions in Spain, the United Kingdom and the Middle East.
However, the market for monitoring technologies is not limited to remote spyware.
Cellebrite, an Israeli company specializing in digital forensic tools, develops technology to unlock mobile phones and export data.
Her tools are used by thousands of police agencies worldwide, including in the United States, where her client is the Immigration and Customs Agency (ICE).
The company's critics argue that its equipment can be used as easily against political dissidents as against criminals.
Amnesty International documented that Serbian authorities used Cellebrite tools to unlock a journalist's and activist's phones during their detention and then installed spyware on their devices.
Later, the Citizen Lab He identified traces of the use of Cellebrite's technology in confiscated mobile activists in Russia, Jordan and Kenya, which had been unlocked while their owners were in custody due to their opposition action.
Similar incidents were recorded in both Botswana and Myanmar, where media devices were violated after they published reports critical of their governments.
Cellebrite has stated that it is interrupting cooperation with clients who abuse its tools.
However, researchers argued that the Russian authorities continued to use its technology even after the company left the Russian market.
Prior to the introduction of Cellebrite on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in 2021, human rights and press freedom organisations called on the competent regulatory authorities to postpone public registration until the company demonstrated that it had discontinued sales to governments that abuse their authority.
Since then, Cellebrite has announced that she has ceased working with clients in Russia, Belarus, Serbia, Hong Kong, Bangladesh and Myanmar, following revelations of abuses.
Nevertheless, its critics argue that the application of its own rules only takes place when the violations are public.
The presence of Israeli telecommunications companies extends far beyond spyware companies and has been significantly consolidated in the American telecommunications infrastructure.
Verint companies, former Comverse Infosys, and NICE Systems came from the ecosystem of Israeli intelligence services and have occasionally been at the heart of the American public debate due to their role in legal communications interception systems.
In his book The Shadow Factory (2008), research journalist James Bamford argued that Israeli companies provided an important part of the equipment and wiretap software used on the American telephone network, while pointing out Verint's close ties to the FBI's Central Bureau of Stealing.
His most famous wording states that «almost the entire United States telecommunications system is monitored through two Israeli companies with possible ties to Israeli intelligence services, without substantial congressional supervision».
Bamford names Verint and Narus.
This position is a personal claim of the author, made in 2008 and has not been confirmed independently.
Nevertheless, it reflects the timeless concerns about the possibility of foreign influence or monitoring through critical telecommunications infrastructure in the United States.
Verint also faced serious corporate problems.
Her parent company, Comverse, collapsed following a stock options backdating scandal.
The then CEO, Kobe Alexander, fled to Namibia before eventually being extradited and pleaded guilty.
At the same time, reports reported that Verint and other companies in the same area provided monitoring systems to authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, including Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.
The international presence of the Israeli surveillance technology industry is not limited to its commercial activities, but is the subject of a wider geopolitical debate on the export of monitoring technologies and their integration into critical digital infrastructures.
Critics argue that the extensive presence of such companies creates risks to privacy, national security and democratic accountability, in particular when such technologies are used without sufficient transparency or effective supervisory mechanisms.
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