Washington must wake up to the abuse of software that kills

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2018/12/12/washington-must-wake-up-abuse-software-that-kills/

By Josh Rogin
Columnist
The Washington Post
December 12, 2018

Dictators are using spyware to persecute dissidents and journalists at an 
alarming rate, while the foreign firms that sell these tools assure the 
public that everything is just fine. It's time Washington policymakers and 
lawmakers rein in the proliferation and abuse of software that ends up 
killing innocent people. This isn't just a human rights issue. It's also a 
matter of U.S. national security.

Israel-based NSO Group is only one in a growing group of companies that 
has put powerful spyware tools previously available only to a few 
governments out on the open market. Its Pegasus software, according to 
human rights groups and independent investigators, has been used in as 
many as 45 countries, often by authoritarian leaders to aid the 
persecution of dissidents, journalists and other innocent civilians.

What hasn't been previously reported is that NSO is working with a group 
of Washington-based consultants and law firms to craft its export and 
ethics policies, including Beacon Global Strategies, a consulting firm run 
by former top U.S. intelligence and national security officials. But if 
recent reports of alleged continued abuse of the software are true, the 
system NSO and its consultants have devised for preventing abuse is 
clearly failing.

"Over two years, we've shown repeated cases of abuse of NSO Group spyware 
that have been covered widely in global media," said Ronald Deibert, 
director of the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto's Munk School of 
Global Affairs and Public Policy. "The idea that NSO Group has some kind 
of due diligence mechanism that corrects or prevents these types of abuses 
is really implausible."

[...]



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