"Discussions ongoing with the MOD insisting the court be closed. Our turn to argue for it to be open. Hopefully soon we can get the heart of this hearing - should NSO Group be able to keep exporting their surveillance tools with no human rights due diligence or accountability," tweeted Danna Ingleton, Deputy Director of Amnesty Tech, from the court room.

The activists are seeking to force israel’s defense ministry to revoke the export license of NSO, whose products have been used to target activists globally.

In a petition filed on 13 May 2019 at the District Court of Tel Aviv, approximately 30 members and supporters of Amnesty International Israel and others from the human rights community set out how the MoD has put human rights at risk by allowing NSO to continue exporting its products.

More advanced techniques now no longer require a target to actively click on a link in order to infect a device, explains Amnesty Tech security researcher Etienne Maynier. An attack using NSO spyware on an activist in Morocco covertly intercepted the activist’s web browsing to infect their phone with spyware.

"Instead of waiting for you to click on a link, they instead hijack your web browser’s traffic and redirect you to a malicious website which tries to secretly install spyware," says Maynier.

ILKHA