Former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn Worked With Israeli Spyware Firm

During the U.S. campaign for the presidency, Michael Flynn, eventually the national security adviser to President Trump, was a consultant to an Israeli spyware firm that is now entangled in a hacking scandal in Mexico. The firm, NSO Group, created spyware technology called Pegasus that it then sold to governments “on condition that the cyber technology be used in anti-terror or anti-criminal intelligence efforts,” according to the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

But after purchasing the spyware, the Mexican government used it to hack into devices owned by anti-government activists, journalists and human rights lawyers.

The New York Times explains:

The targets include lawyers looking into the mass disappearance of 43 students, a highly respected academic who helped write anti-corruption legislation, two of Mexico’s most influential journalists and an American representing victims of sexual abuse by the police. The spying even swept up family members, including a teenage boy. …

[A]ccording to dozens of messages examined by The New York Times and independent forensic analysts, the software has been used against some of the government’s most outspoken critics and their families, in what many view as an unprecedented effort to thwart the fight against the corruption infecting every limb of Mexican society.

“We are the new enemies of the state,” said Juan E. Pardinas, the general director of the Mexican Institute for Competitiveness, who has pushed anti-corruption legislation. His iPhone, along with his wife’s, was targeted by the software, according to an independent analysis. “Ours is a society where democracy has been eroded,” he said.

The deployment of sophisticated cyberweaponry against citizens is a snapshot of the struggle for Mexico itself, raising profound legal and ethical questions for a government already facing severe criticism for its human rights record. Under Mexican law, only a federal judge can authorize the surveillance of private communications, and only when officials can demonstrate a sound basis for the request.

Flynn, the Times writes, was involved as an adviser for NSO Group almost a year:

The company is part of a growing number of digital spying businesses that operate in a loosely regulated space. The market has picked up in recent years, particularly as companies like Apple and Facebook start encrypting their customers’ communications, making it harder for government agencies to conduct surveillance.

Increasingly, governments have found that the only way to monitor mobile phones is by using private businesses like the NSO Group that exploit little-known vulnerabilities in smartphone software. The company has, at times, operated its businesses under different names. One of them, OSY Technologies, paid Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, more than $40,000 to be an advisory board member from May 2016 until January, according to his public financial disclosures.

Read more here.

—Posted by Emma Niles