Apparently, NSO Group didn’t take Apple’s lawsuit as a suggestion that maybe pulling back on hacking human rights activists isn’t well-received everywhere.
Two points:
-
NSO isn’t hacking anybody. They license their tools to governments, who are doing the hacking. Maybe NSO shouldn’t be dealing with governments that spy on human rights activists, but that would probably exclude every country on the planet.
-
They probably believe (as I do) that Apple has no standing for a lawsuit. It’s like General Motors suing me because I planted a bug in somebody’s Chevrolet. The only legitimate plaintiff is the person who was bugged, not the company that made his car.
(update: Actually, it’s more like GM suing the manufacturer of the bug that I planted in somebody’s car.)
True—I should have said that maybe NSO Group should be working a little harder to live up to the claims on its website:
At NSO, we are dedicated to ensuring licensed customers use our products only for their lawful and necessary purposes of preventing and investigating terrorism and serious crime. That’s why our sales approval process has always gone significantly beyond the regulatory protocol, taking every reasonable measure to ensure our technology is used as intended.
I recently thought about Apple’s lawsuit against the NSO Group but couldn’t find any indication of it on what I believe is the correct US District Court. Does anyone else know how to find the actual court filings? Or has nothing really happened?
I did find this CJR article about the situation, which talks about how WhatsApp needed permission from the Supreme Court for its similar case to continue.