On Wednesday, Israel’s justice minister announced that a full investigation would be conducted into allegations that spy software Pegasus was used to spy on Israeli citizens, including those who protested against former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the aftermath of revelations last year that NSO’s Pegasus surveillance product was used to spy on journalists and dissidents worldwide, Pegasus has remained a source of global controversy.
The business daily Cakcalist reported that police in Israel also used Pegasus for snooping on Israeli citizens who were at the forefront of last year’s anti-Netanyahu protests. Israeli police have categorically denied the report. Other Israeli citizens were also allegedly spied upon. Netanyahu’s critic, Public Security Minister Omar Barlev, who took office as part of a new government that ousted him in June, offered a more nuanced defence.
Security forces in Israel have wide latitude to conduct surveillance with judicial approval. According to Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, an expert at the Israel Democracy Institute think tank, ‘you can’t really ask a court to authorize Pegasus’ because Israeli law doesn’t permit such invasive surveillance of its citizens. ‘It is now clear that the current Protection of Privacy Law is not capable of handling today’s realities,’ she said.
What is ‘balance’?
The justice ministry and the state comptroller’s office both said they were investigating the Calcalist reports. In an announcement, the Privacy Protection Authority, a division of the ministry, declared that using Pegasus to monitor Israeli citizens would constitute a ‘serious violation of privacy’.
Matanyahu Englman, the comptroller, announced on Tuesday that he would include the latest Pegasus allegations in his ongoing investigation into law enforcement’s use of surveillance technology. He would specifically investigate the ‘balance’ between the ‘usefulness’ of surveillance tools in investigations and ‘violations of the right to privacy’.
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