60 minutes rewind
tonight we'll take you inside the growing shadowy global market of cyber espionage we look
specifically at a controversial israeli company called the nso group valued at nearly a billion
dollars that says it developed a hacking tool that can break into just about any smartphone on earth
nso licenses this software called pegasus to intelligence and law
enforcement agencies worldwide so they can infiltrate the encrypted phones and apps
of criminals and terrorists problem is this same tool can also be deployed by a government to crush
dissent and so it is the pegasus has been linked to human rights abuses unethical surveillance
and even to the notoriously brutal murder of the saudi arabian critic jamal khashoggi
headquartered in the israeli city of herzeglia nso group operates in strict secrecy and i said
to them but co-founder and ceo shalev julio has been forced out of the shadows and not into a
good light accused of selling pegasus to saudi arabia despite its abysmal record on human rights
and the word is that you sold pegasus to them and then they turned it around to get khashoggi
khashoggi murder is horrible really horrible and therefore when i first heard there are accusations
that our technology been used on jamal khashoggi or on his relatives i started an immediate check
about it and i can tell you very clear we had nothing to do with this horrible murder it's
been reported that you yourself went to riyadh in saudi arabia you yourself sold pegasus to the
saudis for 55 million dollars don't believe newspapers is that a denial no pegasus is so
expensive because it lets authorities do what they long couldn't break into smart phones remotely
making everything in them completely visible all emails contacts and texts new old encrypted or not
pegasus allows detectives and agents to track locations listen into and record conversations
basically turning the phone against its user in the company's eight year history they have
never let cameras in but they wanted to show us they're like any high-tech company playstations
and pilates but there was a lot we couldn't show notice no faces the work is top secret
and some employees are ex-military intelligence and mossad pegasus is such a sensitive spy tool
nso has to get approval before it can be licensed to any client let alone saudi arabia from the
israeli defense ministry as though it's an arms deal why would the government of israel want
you know what seems to be an enemy to have this technology i'm not going to talk about
specific customers but can can you say that you won't and haven't sold pegasus
to a country that is known to violate human rights and imprisoned journalists and go after activists
i only say that we are selling pegasus in order to prevent crime and terror
penetrating an iphone was an issue in the terrorist attack in san bernardino california
in 2015. right now we have one down outside the car the fbi said it couldn't get into
the shooter's phone and apple refused to help over privacy concerns an issue that had come up
before intelligence agencies came to us and say we do have a problem with the new smartphones
we cannot longer get valuable intelligence they were encrypted exactly how many lives
do you think pegasus has saved ten of thousands of people really yes julio referred us to the head of
a western european intelligence agency who off camera confirmed that pegasus is a game changer
in foiling attacks by european jihadists as well as shutting down drug and human trafficking rings
but here's the question how often has pegasus also been used to go after a government's critics
if you were in saudi arabia you'd be in jail well i don't think i will be in jail i don't
think anyone will find my body like what your jamal khashoggi has faced is a saudi comic living
in london who has a popular youtube satire show that takes aim at crown prince mohammed bin salman
last year as the regime was kidnapping locking up and torturing saudi dissidents
ghanam says he and other critics abroad got text messages like this fake dhl notice that if clicked
would download pegasus onto their phones so they could be spied on and you clicked on it of course
yeah who's sending me a package now pegasus is designed to catch terrorists so who defines the
terrorists do you think i am a trottest or do i look like a tourist i don't know i don't know
what a terrorist looks like yeah but i mean the problem is the saudis consider people asking for
freedom of speech as terrorists they consider anybody who is a threat to their regime
is a terrorist what do you do when your customer has a definition of terrorist that isn't our
definition in some countries the opposition are terrorists no such thing every customer that we
sold has a very clear definition of what terrorism is and it's basically bad guys doing bad things in
order to kill innocent people in order to change the political agenda i never met with a customer
that told me that oppositions are terrorists well they're not going to tell you but if they will act
like that they will not going to be a customer there are more than 100 countries 100 countries
that we will never sell our technologies to the problem is there's there are not proper controls
around how this technology is being used based out of the ron diebert heads citizen lab a human
rights watchdog at the university of toronto where researchers like computer scientist bill marzak
say they figured out a way to detect if a phone has been targeted by pegasus which they did in
the case of ghanam al-massarir and other saudi dissidents this technology is being used by
autocratic dictators who can mount global cyber espionage operations simply by purchasing the
technology so you are saying that once they sell this technology once the israelis sell it
they know how it's being used well the question is do they care to look i think if they cared to
look they would have the opportunity to see how it was being used but shalev julio says nso is
unable to see who their clients are targeting only after there's an allegation of misuse
can nso demand target data in order to investigate and i can tell you that in the last eight years
that the company exists we only had real three cases of misuse three cases out of
thousands of cases of saving lives three were the misuse and those people or those organizations
that misused the system they are no longer a customer they will never be a customer again
the first case we uncovered in mexico but citizen lab says it was able to find many more cases
25 in mexico alone where pegasus was used to target political rivals reporters and civil rights
lawyers they also say they found the pegasus link on the phone of this human rights activist
ahmed mansour from the united arab emirates i think that people that are not part of
criminal or terrorist activities have nothing to worry about tommy shahar nso's co-president
says pegasus is used with surgical precision it's not mass surveillance technology this is
really for the bin ladens of the world but the reason that your company has been criticized and
the reason that we're here doing this interview is because countries have used your technology
on human rights activists on journalists there are allegations that are being brought there
are reports that were said and we take every such allegation very seriously
and we look into it nothing has been proven the story will continue after this
to protect against misuse she says nso has three layers of vetting potential customers
one by the israeli defense ministry a second by its own business ethics committee and thirdly
our contractual agreements have our customers signed that the only intended use of the system
will be against terrorism they sign come on you have an autocratic government and they say oh
we're not going to use it except against criminals and you just believe them no as i said the
contractual agreement comes after two layers and you know i would love for you to sit in one of
our business ethics committee we have a tough discussion because imagine a country is facing
major terrorist threats in the same time they have some corruption issues and you have to sit
in that room and weigh what is more important to help them fight terror or maybe there is a chance
that it's going to be misused it's not a black and white answer it's a tough ethic ethical question
there are other ethical questions in deploying pegasus to hone in on a target for instance
authorities often infect the phones of innocent people around them like family members it's been
reported that mexican authorities used pegasus to capture drug lord joaquin guzman better known
as el chapo by tapping the phones of a few people he talked to while he was on the land
i read it in the newspaper the same as you okay in order to catch el chapo for example
they had to intercept a journalist an actress and a lawyer now by themselves
they you know they're not criminals right right but if they are in touch with a drug lord
and in order to catch them you need to intercept them that's a decision that intelligence agencies
should get what if you can prevent the 911 terror attack and for that you had to intercept the son
the 16 years old son of bin laden would that be legit or not targeting someone's inner
circle has become an issue in the khashoggi case omar abdel aziz an influential saudi
online critic based in canada was texting with khashoggi up to his death now abdul aziz is
suing an so alleging that the saudis used pegasus to hack his phone and thereby spy on khashoggi
lev julio if his investigation explored the wider circumference around the slain journalist i can
tell you that we've checked and we have a lot of ways to check and i can guarantee to you our
technology was not used on jamal khashoggi or his relatives or the dissidents or like
i'm not going to get into specific and tell you that if we will figure out
that somebody is misused the system we will shut down the system immediately we have the right to
do it and we have the technology to do it it begs the question did you shut down the saudis
i'm not going to talk about customers and i'm not going to go into specific
we do what we need to do we help create a safer world