Israel's attorney general ordered the investigation last
month in the wake of the unsourced reports by the Calcalist business daily,
which said police spied on politicians, protesters and even members of former
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner circle, including one of his sons.
The paper said police used Pegasus, a controversial spyware
programme developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, without obtaining a court
warrant.
In its announcement, the Justice Ministry said the
investigation led by the country's deputy attorney general found no evidence to
support the claims.
“There is no indication that police deployed Pegasus
software without a court order against people on the list published in the
media,” it said, adding that NSO and government security experts assisted in
the probe.
The investigation found that police received authorisation
to spy on the phones of three of the people on the list, but only one was
successfully infiltrated. It said investigators looked into the use of a second
type of spyware used by police and also found no signs of wrongdoing.
The Calcalist reports prompted a public uproar. The current
prime minister, Naftali Bennett, said the allegations were “very serious,” and
Netanyahu, who is on trial for alleged corruption, demanded a “strong and
independent investigation” while trying to cast doubt on the charges against
him. The country's public security minister, who oversees the police force, has
also formed a high-level government commission of inquiry.
Police officials, both former and current, have denied any
wrongdoing. Those denials, along with the lack of evidence uncovered so far,
have begun to draw scrutiny on Calcalist's reports.
Its reporter, Tomer Ganon, has stood by his work. Over the
weekend, he said he would continue to protect his sources. “I risked my good
name not because of naivety, but because I checked the facts,” he wrote on
Twitter.
Pegasus is a powerful tool that allows its operator to
infiltrate a target's phone and sweep up its contents, including messages,
contacts and location history.
For NSO, which has faced mounting criticism over Pegasus,
Monday's report was a rare piece of good news. It said it hoped the conclusions
“will result in reporting that no longer relies upon misinformation and
political organizations issuing biased and prejudiced reports.”
NSO has been linked to snooping on human rights activists,
journalists, and politicians in countries ranging from Saudi Arabia to Poland
to Mexico to the United Arab Emirates. In November, the U.S. Commerce
Department blacklisted the company, saying its tools had been used to “conduct
transnational repression.”
NSO says it sells the product only to government entities to
fight crime and terrorism, with all sales regulated by the Israeli government.
The company does not identify its clients and says it has no
knowledge of who is targeted. Although it says it has safeguards in place to
prevent abuse, it says it ultimately does not control how its clients use the
software.
NSO said the misuse of spyware “is a serious matter and all
credible allegations must be investigated.” It called for “an international
regulatory structure” to be put in place to “oversee issues raised by the
misuse of cyber intelligence tools.”