2/ After years of every trick & delay tactic it only took a California jury a day of deliberation to see the heart of the matter:
NSO makes millions hacking mostly-🇺🇸American tech companies... so that dictators can hack dissidents.
Their conduct deserved to be punished.
NSO makes millions hacking mostly-🇺🇸American tech companies... so that dictators can hack dissidents.
Their conduct deserved to be punished.
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The damages ($167,254,000 punitive, $440K+ compensatory) is big enough to make your eyes water.
The case is ALSO a blow to NSO's secrecy, with their business splashed all over a courtroom.
This will scare customers.
And investors.
Good.
catches NSO Group hacking its users with #Pegasus.
They investigated.
We @citizenlab.ca helped to investigate the targets & get in touch with the activists journalists & civil society members that were targeted
We identified at least 100.
Prior to it, NSO acted the playground bully.
Targeting victims that dared speak up & researchers like us.
Suddenly, the bully met their match.
To the eternal credit of Meta & WhatsApp leadership, they stuck the fight out & carried it across the finish line.
No parliamentary hearings, no hearings in congress, no serious investigations.
For years, WhatsApp's lawsuit helped carry momentum & showed governments that their tech sectors were in the crosshairs from mercenary spyware too...
A LOT of cases were first surfaced from these notifications.
With dissidents around the world suddenly learning that dictators were snooping in their phones...with NSO Group's help.
One of NSO's many tactics was to leverage the case to badger us researchers to try and extract information.
It never worked, but it laid bare the tactics that these firms prefer...instead of coming clean.
https://theintercept.com/2024/05/06/pegasus-nso-group-israeli-spyware-citizen-lab/
The bulk of the cash should be distributed to the actual victims in all this.