Paper short abstract:

In this paper I will explore the complex entanglement between public and private entities and the technologies that move between them in order to show how the sale of (cyber) weapons for criminal use is made possible. The intimate relationship between industry and state is instrumental here.

Paper long abstract:

In 2010 three Israeli men started a company for cyber security technologies and called it NSO. The company, which describes itself as developing ‘cyber Intelligence for global security and stability’ , is the developer of the now infamous software Pegasus, which can be used to infiltrate phones through the ‘no click’ method. It sells its software to governments only.

In 2021 Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International published an important account that reported on the misuse of Pegasus worldwide. Since, we can see daily updates of the long list of people and groups against whom the cybersecurity software had been used, from South America, the Arab world to Asia. These were not only, as NSO wrote in its reaction to the allegations, criminals and terrorists, but mostly journalists, politicians and Human Rights activists worldwide.

In this paper I will explore the complex entanglement between public and private entities (private security, military, police, government actors), and the technologies that move between them in order to show how the sale of (cyber) weapons to problematic regimes is not only a matter of a company wanting to make money. Such powerful actors can ‘get away with’ such crimes, I argue, because of the intimate relationship between, in this case, the Israeli security industry and the Israeli state. The extreme ‘blurring’ of what is and who is part of the commercial side or of the political-diplomatic side is instrumental for the normalization of such commercial activities that can produce serious Human Rights crimes.