NSO Group, one of the well-known and controversial makers of presidency spy ware, released a new transparency report on Wednesday, as the corporate enters what it described as “a brand new part of accountability.”
However the report, in contrast to NSO’s earlier annual disclosures, lacks particulars about what number of prospects the corporate rejected, investigated, suspended, or terminated attributable to human rights abuses involving its surveillance instruments. Whereas the report accommodates guarantees to respect human rights and have controls to demand its prospects do the identical, the report supplies no concrete proof supporting both.
Consultants and critics who’ve adopted NSO and the spy ware marketplace for years imagine the report is a part of an effort and marketing campaign by the corporate to get the U.S. authorities to take away the corporate from a blocklist — technically referred to as the Entity Listing — because it hopes to enter the U.S. market with new monetary backers and executives on the helm.
Final yr, a group of U.S. investors acquired the company, and since then, NSO has been present process a transition that included high-profile personnel adjustments: former Trump official David Friedman was appointed the brand new government chairman; CEO Yaron Shohat stepped down; and Omri Lavie, the final remaining founder who was nonetheless concerned within the firm, additionally left, as Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
“When NSO’s merchandise are in the correct arms inside the correct nations, the world is a far safer place. That may all the time be our overriding mission,” Friedman wrote within the report, which doesn’t point out any nation the place NSO operates.
Natalia Krapiva, the senior tech-legal counsel at Entry Now, a digital rights organization that investigates spyware abuses, instructed TechCrunch: “NSO is clearly on a marketing campaign to get faraway from the U.S. Entity Listing and one of many key issues they should present is that they’ve dramatically modified as an organization since they have been listed.”
“Altering the management is one half and this transparency report is one other,” mentioned Krapiva.
“Nonetheless, now we have seen this earlier than with NSO and different spy ware corporations over time the place they alter names and management and publish empty transparency or ethics experiences however the abuses proceed.”
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“That is nothing however one other try at window dressing and the U.S. authorities shouldn’t be taken for a idiot,” mentioned Krapiva.
Ever because the Biden administration added NSO to the Entity Listing, the corporate has lobbied to have its restrictions lifted. After President Donald Trump took workplace once more final yr, NSO intensified these efforts. However, as of Could final yr, NSO had failed to sway the new administration.
In late December, the Trump administration lifted sanctions in opposition to three executives tied to the Intellexa spy ware consortium, in what some noticed as an indication of a shift within the administration’s angle towards spy ware makers.
A scarcity of particulars
This yr’s transparency report, which covers 2025, has fewer particulars than experiences from earlier years.
In an earlier transparency report protecting 2024, for instance, NSO mentioned it opened three investigations of potential misuse. With out naming the shoppers, the corporate mentioned it lower ties with one, and imposed on one other buyer “various remediation measures,” together with mandating human rights coaching, monitoring the client actions, and requesting extra details about how the client makes use of the system. NSO didn’t present any details about the third investigation.
NSO additionally mentioned that in 2024, the corporate rejected greater than $20 million “in new enterprise alternatives attributable to human rights issues.”
Within the transparency report revealed the prior yr, protecting 2022 and 2023, NSO mentioned it suspended or terminated six authorities prospects, with out naming them, and claiming these actions resulted in a income lack of $57 million.
In 2021, NSO said it had “disconnected” the techniques of 5 prospects since 2016 following an investigation of misuse, leading to greater than $100 million in “estimated lack of income,” and it additionally mentioned that it “discontinued engagements” with 5 prospects attributable to “issues relating to human rights.”
NSO’s latest transparency report doesn’t embrace the entire variety of prospects NSO has, statistics have been persistently current in earlier experiences.
TechCrunch requested NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier to supply related statistics and figures, however didn’t obtain solutions by press time.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a human rights group that has investigated spy ware abuses for greater than a decade, criticized NSO.
“I used to be anticipating data, numbers,” Scott-Railton instructed TechCrunch. “Nothing on this doc permits outsiders to confirm NSO’s claims, which is enterprise as standard from an organization that has a decade lengthy historical past of constructing claims that later turned out to be misrepresentation.”
