The NSO company, to which Pegasus was accustomed, was at the center of Calcalist’s newspaper publications, according to which it was used unusually by the police, who used it to infiltrate the cell phones of various people.
Announced that it filed today (Sunday) a defamation lawsuit against the Calcalit newspaper in the Magistrate’s Court in Rishon Lezion. The warning letter states that “it seems that this is not a journalistic investigation but a one-sided, biased and false publication, received in public in circumstances that raise a real concern that its purpose is to serve completely foreign purposes to the essence of professional, responsible and impartial journalism.” The company is claiming a total of NIS 1 million or, alternatively, compensation for defamation without proof of damage (NIS 50,000) double four times.
According to the report, “the affair known as the ‘NSO affair’ or the ‘NSO and the police investigation’ raises questions about the manner and nature of Calcalist’s series of investigations, first and foremost, due to the fact that no evidence was presented to substantiate the serious allegations.” NSO does not operate the systems in its customers’ hands and is not exposed to information, the customer systems are only on the customer’s site and have never been operated in NSO-controlled “cloud architecture”; contrary to the lie the newspaper chose to publish, By the customer and the customer has no option to change or delete the documentation. “
The lawsuit was filed following a letter of warning sent by the company to Calcalist newspaper on February 10, 2022, and according to the company, the newspaper’s decision was not to respond or publish a correction article for the lies published on the day, this morning the company filed a defamation lawsuit in Rishon Lezion.
NSO emphasizes in its claim that it does not operate the systems in its customers’ hands and is not exposed to information, the customer systems are exclusively at the customer’s site and have never been operated in NSO-controlled “cloud architecture”; Of all actions performed by the customer and the customer has no option to change or delete the documentation. “
It was further alleged that the findings of the investigation team headed by the Deputy Speaker of the Government, published in an interim report dated 21.2.2022, completely contradict the allegations described in the article dated 10.2.2022: The investigation team confirmed that the internal database of the system sold to the police ; Although the user can delete records in the system’s user interface as part of maintenance operations, the company also has the ability to retrieve deleted data (in the user interface) from a layer of the system that is accessible to the company and only “and contains the logs themselves which document each operation performed by the customer”, “The thorough investigation that has been done drops the ground beneath the additional attempt to blame the company and its employees and is further proof that not every journalistic investigation with sensational headlines about NSO is indeed based on evidence.” The company states that the lawsuit was filed solely for the purpose of investigating the truth and presenting it publicly, and therefore any compensation that is decided will be transferred to the benefit of associations for the welfare of Holocaust survivors and victims of sexual assault.