NSO Group, some of the well-known and controversial makers of presidency spyware and adware, released a new transparency report on Wednesday, as the corporate enters what it described as “a brand new part of accountability.”
However the report, in contrast to NSO’s earlier annual disclosures, lacks particulars about what number of clients the corporate rejected, investigated, suspended, or terminated as a result of human rights abuses involving its surveillance instruments. Whereas the report incorporates guarantees to respect human rights and have controls to demand its clients do the identical, the report gives no concrete proof supporting both.
Specialists and critics who’ve adopted NSO and the spyware and adware marketplace for years consider the report is a part of an effort and marketing campaign by the corporate to get the U.S. authorities to take away the corporate from a blocklist — technically known as the Entity Listing — because it hopes to enter the U.S. market with new monetary backers and executives on the helm.
Final yr, a gaggle of U.S. buyers acquired the corporate, and since then, NSO has been present process a transition that included high-profile personnel modifications: former Trump official David Friedman was appointed the brand new government chairman; CEO Yaron Shohat stepped down; and Omri Lavie, the final remaining founder who was nonetheless concerned within the firm, additionally left, as Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported.
“When NSO’s merchandise are in the best palms inside the best international locations, the world is a far safer place. That may all the time be our overriding mission,” Friedman wrote within the report, which doesn’t point out any nation the place NSO operates.
Natalia Krapiva, the senior tech-legal counsel at Entry Now, a digital rights group that investigates spyware and adware abuses, advised TechCrunch: “NSO is clearly on a marketing campaign to get faraway from the U.S. Entity Listing and one of many key issues they should present is that they’ve dramatically modified as an organization since they had been listed.”
“Altering the management is one half and this transparency report is one other,” mentioned Krapiva.
“Nonetheless, we’ve seen this earlier than with NSO and different spyware and adware corporations through the years the place they modify names and management and publish empty transparency or ethics studies however the abuses proceed.”
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“That is nothing however one other try at window dressing and the U.S. authorities shouldn’t be taken for a idiot,” mentioned Krapiva.
Ever because the Biden administration added NSO to the Entity Listing, the corporate has lobbied to have its restrictions lifted. After President Donald Trump took workplace once more final yr, NSO intensified these efforts. However, as of Might final yr, NSO had failed to sway the new administration.
In late December, the Trump administration lifted sanctions towards three executives tied to the Intellexa spyware and adware consortium, in what some noticed as an indication of a shift within the administration’s perspective towards spyware and adware makers.
A scarcity of particulars
This yr’s transparency report, which covers 2025, has fewer particulars than studies from earlier years.
In an earlier transparency report masking 2024, for instance, NSO mentioned it opened three investigations of potential misuse. With out naming the shoppers, the corporate mentioned it lower ties with one, and imposed on one other buyer “various remediation measures,” together with mandating human rights coaching, monitoring the client actions, and requesting extra details about how the client makes use of the system. NSO didn’t present any details about the third investigation.
NSO additionally mentioned that in 2024, the corporate rejected greater than $20 million “in new enterprise alternatives as a result of human rights issues.”
Within the transparency report printed the prior yr, masking 2022 and 2023, NSO mentioned it suspended or terminated six authorities clients, with out naming them, claiming these actions resulted in a income lack of $57 million.
In 2021, NSO said it had “disconnected” the techniques of 5 clients since 2016 following an investigation of misuse, leading to greater than $100 million in “estimated lack of income,” and it additionally mentioned that it “discontinued engagements” with 5 clients as a result of “issues relating to human rights.”
NSO’s latest transparency report doesn’t embody the overall variety of clients NSO has, statistics which were persistently current in earlier studies.
TechCrunch requested NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier to offer related statistics and figures, however didn’t obtain solutions by press time.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a human rights group that has investigated spyware and adware abuses for greater than a decade, criticized NSO.
“I used to be anticipating info, numbers,” Scott-Railton advised TechCrunch. “Nothing on this doc permits outsiders to confirm NSO’s claims, which is enterprise as typical from an organization that has a decade-long historical past of constructing claims that later turned out to be misrepresentation.”
