NSO Group: Now Taking Legal Action to Protect Its Image

February 28, 2022

I am not sure how long this story will be online with legal eagles from media and the intelware company NSO Group taking flight. The story is “NSO Sues Israeli Paper after Explosive Articles on Police.” [Note: The estimable Associated Press may remove the MFTV 9 story or put it behind a paywall where great content should thrive.] The original story whipped up a buzz saw of chatter about one of the more high profile surveillance systems. The Pegasus brand has been trampled by the plodding mules ridden by individuals unaware of the specialized software and services business, their customers, and the unreasonable effectiveness of zero click exploits.

The write up states that NSO Group went to court and demanded that the Calcalist be held to account for a story which is allegedly not true.

And what does NSO Group want? About $300,000 US dollars.

This is an interesting story with security and political implications. But the Kosher Mehadrin margarine on the kubaneh is the charity angle. Is that a PR move by NSO Group?

What’s fascinating to me is that the NSO Group has found a way to remain in the news despite recent events in Ukraine, financial turmoil in financial markets, and the headline making mask wearing thing.

Is this helping or hurting the intelware and policeware vendors? From what I hear, the NSO Group’s PR generating activities has not had a significant impact on vendors based outside of Tel Aviv. Israeli vendors find that some of their MBA-inspired enthusiasm for expanding their market share has been dialed back.

A bigger problem for specialized services and software companies is that knowledge has diffused widely so that start ups operated by good actors and maybe less good actors are popping up. Plus, some of the once secret systems and methods are creeping into the open source software environment.

Maybe secrecy has some value when it comes to government related activities?

Stephen E Arnold, February 28, 2022

Written by Stephen E. Arnold · Filed Under intelware, Legal matters, News, Policeware

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Stephen E. Arnold monitors search, content processing, text mining and related topics from his high-tech nerve center in rural Kentucky. He tries to winnow the goose feathers from the giblets. He works with colleagues worldwide to make this Web log useful to those who want to go "beyond search". Contact him at sa [at] arnoldit.com. His Web site with additional information about search is arnoldit.com.