A sharp dispute broke out between senior cabinet ministers and Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara over legislation concerning spyware tracking of corruption offenses committed by elected officials, Reshet Bet Radio reported Wednesday morning.
The dispute between Ministers Itamar Ben Gvir and Yariv Levin and the AG is delaying legislation regarding the use of Pegasus and other spyware programs by police against major crime families in Israel. The main point of contention concerns the inclusion of bribery offenses among the cases in which spyware may be used.
Named after the winged horse of Greek mythology, Pegasus was developed by Israel’s NSO Group to be covertly and remotely installed on mobile phones running iOS and Android. While NSO Group markets Pegasus as a product for fighting crime and terrorism, governments around the world have routinely used the spyware to surveil journalists, lawyers, political dissidents, and human rights activists. The sale of Pegasus licenses to foreign governments must be approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense.
As of March 2023, Pegasus operators were able to remotely install the spyware on iOS versions through 16.0.3 using zero-click exploit chains. Zero-click attacks are typically highly targeted and can have devastating consequences without the victim even knowing that something wrong is lurking in the background of their phone.
While the capabilities of Pegasus may vary over time due to software updates, Pegasus is generally capable of reading text messages, call snooping, collecting passwords, location tracking, accessing the target device’s microphone and camera, and harvesting information from apps.
Since the explosion of the Pegasus scandal in January 2022, there has been no legal arrangement that allows the police to use this type of surveillance technology in criminal investigations. The AG has been blocking police use of spyware even as the carnage in the Arab sector, involving mostly crime families, has reached an unprecedented height.
Another dispute between the AG and Ben Gvir and Levin has to do with the government’s commission of inquiry on police use of spyware. In response to a petition to the High Court of Justice against creating the commission, the AG wrote: “The committee appointed by Justice Minister Levin is operating illegally. The government must not interfere in criminal trials, disrupt them, or delay them, not even through a committee working on its behalf.”
The AG’s position, as revealed by the petition, was that the commission can be established, but its scope may not include pending cases, because this would allow the political echelon to interfere in cases that are still ongoing.
The cases Baharav-Miara wants shielded concern the four-pronged prosecution of Prime Minister Netanyahu, which allegedly involved illegal police use of spyware. The AG is well aware that should this police illegal activity be exposed, it would degrade the charges Netanyahu is currently facing. Israel’s judicial system does not have a “fruit of the poison tree” doctrine, but poison is poison, and overzealous prosecutors who are caught with their fingers in the Pegasus would lose a lot of the force of their arguments.
Minister Levin demands that spyware legislation that includes bribery offenses must also include an oversight mechanism to make sure that this tool is not misused – as it has been used allegedly in the Prosecution’s and AG Mandelblit’s attempt to topple Netanyahu.
Officials in Minister Ben Gvir’s circle are accusing the AG of delaying and significantly harming the war against the rising crime, in particular in Arab society. They also accuse the AG of preventing the urgent use of the spyware by police, after adjustments that cost millions of dollars had been made to these technological tools at her request.
The same sources added that the AG understands that legislation that would include bribery offenses without oversight would not be approved by the Knesset, but she persists in her demand to include those offenses in the legislation, thus delaying it.
Otzma Yehudit plans to promote a private bill on the issue authored by MK Zvika Vogel through the ministerial committee on legislation at the upcoming winter session, permitting police to use spyware and omitting bribery offenses.
