Suzanne Smalley
When a federal judge recently ruled that a major spyware manufacturer should be held liable for the phone hacks its technology allows, privacy advocates cheered. But within hours of the first-of-its-kind decision, close observers of the commercial surveillance marketplace were asking what impact the ruling might have on the company’s continued operations and on the industry as a whole.
The answer could be: not that much.
The closely-watched case began in 2019 when the Meta-owned messaging platform WhatsApp sued NSO Group — which makes the powerful zero-click spyware Pegasus — for allegedly hacking devices belonging to 1,400 of its users, including journalists, human rights defenders, dissidents and diplomats.
Late last month, a federal judge in California stunned spyware manufacturers and human rights activists alike when she concluded that NSO violated both computer hacking laws and WhatsApp’s terms of service when it allegedly repeatedly breached the messaging platform to infect victims’ devices with Pegasus.
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