A popular human rights organization is calling for the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate four lobbyists connected to the Israeli technology firm NSO Group. The NSO Group’s infamous Pegasus spyware has been used by authoritarian governments to surveil dissidents and activists.
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), a nonprofit aimed at fulfilling the mission of slain Washington Post journalist Jamal Kashoggi, claim that four lobbyists (Brian Finch, David Tamasi, Steve Rabinowitz, and Timothy Dickinson) violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA) by misrepresenting the Israeli government’s relationship with NSO Group. According to DAWN, the lobbyists also provided misleading information about the company to lawmakers and journalists, while downplaying or omitting NSO’s connections to human rights abuses.
The Israeli government’s relationship with NSO is well-documented. It sold NSO the export license that it needed to work with foreign governments, despite a previous pledge to refrain from selling technology to governments that commit human rights abuses. In 2020, then-Israeli Minister of Defense and current Alternate Prime Minister, Naftali Bennett publicly celebrated the fact that NSO had worked with the Israeli military to track COVID exposure among the country’s population. Earlier this year Israel blocked Ukraine from acquiring Pegasus spyware over concerns that the move would anger Russia.
“Despite the well-documented human rights abuses committed with NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware, these four lobbyists and their firms have chosen to contribute to the company’s abuses by misleading public officials about its deservedly maligned reputation,” reads a statement put out by DAWN Director of Israel-Palestine Advocacy Adam Shapiro. “Our investigation shows that the four lobbyists and NSO Group are misleading Congress, the Biden administration, and the American public by failing to register the Israeli government’s control of the company in their FARA registration forms.”
In 2021 the French nonprofit Forbidden Stories coordinated multiple investigations into a data leak connected to the Pegasus spyware. The technology, which allows users to extract data from iPhone and Android devices, had been used by at least 20 governments to target more than 180 journalists and activists. In more than one case, the hacking preceded killings. For instance, the family of Jamal Khashoggi had apparently been surveilled before and after his death, while the Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda was targeted by the malware just weeks before his 2017 murder.
“The Pegasus Project lays bare how NSO’s spyware is a weapon of choice for repressive governments seeking to silence journalists, attack activists and crush dissent, placing countless lives in peril,” said Secretary General of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard after the investigations were made public. “These revelations blow apart any claims by NSO that such attacks are rare and down to rogue use of their technology. While the company claims its spyware is only used for legitimate criminal and terror investigations, it’s clear its technology facilitates systemic abuse. They paint a picture of legitimacy, while profiting from widespread human rights violations.”
This wasn’t the first time that the NSO technology had made international headlines. In 2019 Facebook sued the company after nearly 1,400 WhatsApp users were hacked via Pegasus. Those hacks also included a number of journalists and activists.
The NSO Group has consistently denied any wrongdoing and claimed the Forbidden Stories investigations were full of “wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories.” However, this didn’t stop the U.S. government from blacklisting the company in November 2021. The Biden administration’s Commerce Department said that the move was part of an effort to “stem the proliferation of digital tools used for repression.” According to a July 2022 report in ProPublica by Uri Blau NSO has initiated vast lobbying campaign to get themselves removed from the blacklist, but have remained unsuccessful thus far.
“The fact that four separate lobbying firms that registered as FARA agents on behalf of NSO Group each misrepresented the true nature of the company suggests that this was not accidental or an oversight, but rather a coordinated or directed effort to mislead the FARA Unit, the Department of Justice, and the American people.”
Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN)
“NSO has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past year in payments to lobbyists, public relations companies and law firms in the U.S., in the hope of reversing the Biden administration’s November decision, according to public records filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act and conversations with people familiar with the effort,” writes Blau. “These firms have approached members of the U.S. House and Senate, as well as various media outlets and think tanks across the U.S., on NSO’s behalf.”
According to DAWN, three of the lobbyists (Tamasi, Rabinowitz, and Dickinson) filed to register with NSO after Biden placed it on the blacklist, while one (Finch) had joined prior to the announcement.
“From the available evidence, including credible and detailed media reporting, court filings, and information the company and its lobbyists promote about NSO Group, it is clear that NSO Group is controlled and/or directed by the Israeli government and possibly also its foreign government clients,” reads DAWN’s complaint to the Justice Department. “The fact that four separate lobbying firms that registered as FARA agents on behalf of NSO Group each misrepresented the true nature of the company suggests that this was not accidental or an oversight, but rather a coordinated or directed effort to mislead the FARA Unit, the Department of Justice, and the American people.”
If the complaints are investigated and verified, the lobbyists could face up to five years in prison and $250,000 fines.
The four lobbyists DAWN claims have violated the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA)—by misrepresenting the Israeli governments’ relationship with NSO Group (the supplier of Pegasus spyware)—are just the tip of the iceberg. Zionist politicians, academics, journalists, political pundits, talk-show hosts, film & television writers, directors, producers and countless other pro-Israel influence-peddlers work in every sphere, in every locality, and at every stratum of American society. Zionist agents are working round-the-clock defending Israeli policies and practices, posting pro-Israel misinformation and disinformation every day—and long into the night—on digital news sites like Mondoweiss. Washington lobbyists are just one case in point of the Jewish State’s total penetration of U.S. society. Zionist agents, fifth columnists, fellow travelers and sympathizers inhabit every nook and cranny of the U.S. commonwealth. There is no place, high or low, where they are not found spreading their nasty pro-Zionist, anti-Palestinian, Islamophobic propaganda.
In this post I will share one example of how Zionist agents exploit the Wikipedia website to disseminate their distorted view of the world and spread pro-Israel propaganda. Two weeks ago I read Philip Weiss’s Wikipedia biography and was surprised to find numerous stridently antisemitic statements which were falsely attributed to him. These quotes were taken from articles published in the Washington Post and the Stanford Review. When I located and read these two articles, I found that the authors had used each other as the source for their quotes without referencing the original source. Neither listed the title or date of the Mondoweiss article where Philip had supposedly made these antisemitic statements. Accordingly, it is impossible for the reader of either article to track down the alleged quotations. This is an old trick used by unprincipled writers to dupe readers and smear a political adversary.
This is a direct quote from the Stanford Review article: “Mondoweiss has become popular in anti-Israel circles, but often publishes astonishingly anti-Semitic material, using classic anti-Semitic imagery such as depicting Jews as spider[s], cockroaches, or octopuses with tentacles controlling others, and Holocaust inversion” (“Stanford’s Most Radical Professor Strikes Again,” Kaufman, Elliot, April 12, 2016). Needless to say, I removed these false antisemitic statements attributed to Weiss in his Wikipedia biography and reported the author of the Wikipedia biography to other Wikipedia editors on the Wikipedia website.