Learn about the history of the Palestinian struggle for freedom, equality and justice by exploring major events in the history of their oppression on this day of the year.
12 May
ISRAELI COMPANY AIDING WORLDWIDE REPRESSION
On this day in 2019, WhatsApp revealed that hackers were installing surveillance software on to phones through a vulnerability in its software. The Israeli NSO Group developed malicious code which regimes use to monitor dissidents and human rights campaigners. NSO’s Pegasus is a programme that turns on a phone’s microphone and camera, trawls through emails and messages and collects location data. The phone of Jamal Kashoggi’s friend was hacked in this way before Saudi agents killed Kashoggi.
شركة إسرائيلية تساعد في القمع في جميع أنحاء العالم
12 مايو
في مثل هذا اليوم من عام 2019 ، كشف واتساب عن قيام قراصنة بتثبيت برامج مراقبة على الهواتف من خلال ثغرة أمنية في برامجه. قامت مجموعة (ن.س.أو) الإسرائيلية بتطوير شيفرة خبيثة(خفية )تستخدمها الأنظمة لمراقبة المعارضين ونشطاء حقوق الإنسان. يقوم برنامج بيجاسوس من الشركة الاسرائيلية بتشغيل ميكروفون الهاتف والكاميرا ، والبحث في رسائل البريد الإلكتروني والرسائل القصيرة وجمع بيانات الموقع. تم اختراق هاتف صديق جمال خاشقجي بهذه الطريقة قبل أن يقتل عملاء سعوديون خاشقجي.
Israeli spy tech firm linked to Khashoggi murder -Times of Israel
Following international revulsion at the killing and dismembering of Kashoggi by the Saudi regime, Times of Israel reports that "Israeli cyber-intelligence firm whose technology allegedly played a role in the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi has reportedly frozen its new deals with Riyadh.
NSO's iPhone hacking tools were being operated in America. It’s the first time the NSO attack infrastructure has been revealed and comes in spite of NSO’s repeated claims its tools don’t work in the U.S. And it raises more questions about how many Americans have been snooped on by NSO’s spy tools.
Israeli spyware was used to track and eventually kill Jamal Khashoggi
Edward Snowden alleged while speaking remotely at a security conference that Saudi agents bugged the phone of Khashoggi's close associate. They tracked Khashoggi's movements before eventually killing him at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul.
Saudi critic and internet personality Omar Abdulaziz reportedly had his smartphone targeted by the Israeli spyware this year. He had been working on several projects with Khashoggi — that work included a short human-rights film and an initiative to build an online "army" inside Saudi Arabia — that may have angered Saudi authorities and Khashoggi's killing.
Facebook sued Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group for creating software tools that were allegedly used by its clients, including authoritarian regimes, to read the WhatsApp messages of journalists and human rights workers. The lawsuit says that between April and May 2019, NSO Group’s flagship product, Pegasus, was used to access WhatsApp messages on 1,400 mobile phones.
Attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, political dissidents, diplomats and other senior foreign government officials were targeted, WhatsApp-owner Facebook said in the lawsuit.
Research groups have also found that the governments of Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico used Pegasus too. And the lawsuit says that WhatsApp users in those countries were among those hacked.
According to the UK Financial Times:
The malicious code, developed by the secretive Israeli company NSO Group, could be transmitted even if users did not answer their phones, and the calls often disappeared from call logs, said the spyware dealer, who was recently briefed on the WhatsApp hack.
“NSO Group sells its products to governments who are known for outrageous human rights abuses, giving them the tools to track activists and critics. The attack on Amnesty International was the final straw,” said Danna Ingleton, deputy director of Amnesty Tech.
90-minute video: Edward Snowden on the threats from NSO, "the worst of the worst" facilitating the violation of human rights