Source: Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression
by Eli Kronenberg
“In the last decade, the rise of the mercenary spyware industry has created a potent new weapon for authoritarian regimes bent on silencing dissent. Represented most prominently by the Israeli-based NSO Group and its flagship spyware Pegasus, surveillance malware is often sold to the world’s most repressive governments with little thought given to the nature of its eventual use. Regimes like those in Saudi Arabia and Egypt have long track records of suppressing political opposition and independent journalism. When they acquire state-of-the-art surveillance technology, the result is a crackdown on free expression worldwide, carried out using the devices in our very pockets. And because the surveillance is secret and largely undetectable, it impacts anyone with a reason to suspect that the government might not like what they have to say.” (07/25/25)
https://www.thefire.org/news/mercenary-spyware-industry-menace-global-free-expression