A huge victory for privacy advocates had just occurred. Several former executives of the NSO Group - Shalev Hulio, Omri Lavie and Yuval Somekh, were indicted for their role in disseminating Pegasus to Catalan Pro-Independence activists.
A provincial court in Barcelona has ordered that three former senior executives at NSO Group, a prominent spyware manufacturer, be indicted for their alleged role in a high-profile hacking scandal in which at least 63 Catalan civil society members were targeted with the company’s surveillance technology.
Phones belonging to the 63 victims — all of whom were connected to the Catalonia independence movement — were allegedly targeted and in some cases infected with NSO’s powerful zero-click Pegasus spyware.
I used to work in a Catalan pro-independence newspaper during all of this and was responsible of IT and security, and had to deal with the owner’s phone a couple times because of Pegasus. Good that there’s something being done about it.
Since Catalonia’s relations with Federal Spain have always been icy at best, I wonder if this might get Spain to ease up on NSO Group and have an adverse effect for a while.
But nevertheless, it is good to see at least some legal bodies taking action on them. I doubt it will make a dent, but seeing as Pegasus has been used against Catalan activists, it makes total sense. Bit by bit.