Critics pan spyware maker NSO’s transparency claims amid its push to enter US market

NSO Group, 1 of the astir well-known and arguable makers of authorities spyware, released a caller transparency report connected Wednesday, arsenic the institution enters what it described arsenic “a caller signifier of accountability.”

But the report, dissimilar NSO’s erstwhile yearly disclosures, lacks details astir however galore customers the institution rejected, investigated, suspended, oregon terminated owed to quality rights abuses involving its surveillance tools. While the study contains promises to respect quality rights and person controls to request its customers bash the same, the study provides nary factual grounds supporting either. 

Experts and critics who person followed NSO and the spyware marketplace for years judge the study is portion of an effort and run by the institution to get the U.S. authorities to region the institution from a blocklist — technically called the Entity List — arsenic it hopes to participate the U.S. marketplace with caller fiscal backers and executives astatine the helm.

Last year, a radical of U.S. investors acquired the company, and since then, NSO has been undergoing a modulation that included high-profile unit changes: erstwhile Trump authoritative David Friedman was appointed the caller enforcement chairman; CEO Yaron Shohat stepped down; and Omri Lavie, the past remaining laminitis who was inactive progressive successful the company, besides left, as Israeli paper Haaretz reported.

“When NSO’s products are successful the close hands wrong the close countries, the satellite is simply a acold safer place. That volition ever beryllium our overriding mission,” Friedman wrote successful the report, which does not notation immoderate state wherever NSO operates.

Natalia Krapiva, the elder tech-legal counsel astatine Access Now, a integer rights enactment that investigates spyware abuses, told TechCrunch: “NSO is intelligibly connected a run to get removed from the U.S. Entity List and 1 of the cardinal things they request to amusement is that they person dramatically changed arsenic a institution since they were listed.” 

“Changing the enactment is 1 portion and this transparency study is another,” said Krapiva.

“However, we person seen this earlier with NSO and different spyware companies implicit the years wherever they alteration names and enactment and people bare transparency oregon morals reports but the abuses continue.” 

“This is thing but different effort astatine model dressing and the U.S. authorities should not beryllium taken for a fool,” said Krapiva.

Ever since the Biden medication added NSO to the Entity List, the institution has lobbied to person its restrictions lifted. After President Donald Trump took bureau again past year, NSO intensified these efforts. But, arsenic of May past year, NSO had failed to sway the caller administration.

In precocious December, the Trump medication lifted sanctions against 3 executives tied to the Intellexa spyware consortium, successful what immoderate saw arsenic a motion of a displacement successful the administration’s cognition toward spyware makers.

A deficiency of details

This year’s transparency report, which covers 2025, has less details than reports from erstwhile years. 

In an earlier transparency report covering 2024, for example, NSO said it opened 3 investigations of imaginable misuse. Without naming the customers, the institution said it chopped ties with one, and imposed connected different lawsuit “alternative remediation measures,” including mandating quality rights training, monitoring the lawsuit activities, and requesting much accusation astir however the lawsuit uses the system. NSO did not supply immoderate accusation astir the 3rd investigation. 

NSO besides said that during 2024, the institution rejected much than $20 cardinal “in caller concern opportunities owed to quality rights concerns.” 

In the transparency report published the anterior year, covering 2022 and 2023, NSO said it suspended oregon terminated six authorities customers, without naming them, and claiming these actions resulted successful a gross nonaccomplishment of $57 million.

In 2021, NSO said it had “disconnected” the systems of 5 customers since 2016 pursuing an probe of misuse, resulting successful much than $100 cardinal successful “estimated nonaccomplishment of revenue,” and it besides said that it “discontinued engagements” with 5 customers owed to “concerns regarding quality rights.”

NSO’s newest transparency study does not see the full fig of customers NSO has, statistic person been consistently contiguous successful erstwhile reports.

TechCrunch asked NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier to supply akin statistic and figures, but did not person answers by property time.

John Scott-Railton, a elder researcher astatine The Citizen Lab, a quality rights enactment that has investigated spyware abuses for much than a decade, criticized NSO. 

“I was expecting information, numbers,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “Nothing successful this papers allows outsiders to verify NSO’s claims, which is concern arsenic accustomed from a institution that has a decennary agelong past of making claims that aboriginal turned retired to beryllium misrepresentation.”