NSO Group Gave Pegasus Spyware Demo To the NYPD

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An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: A section of the New York Police Department (NYPD) focused on intelligence gathering received a demo of NSO Group's controversial Pegasus spyware product, according to an email obtained by Motherboard. The news provides more insight into Israeli company NSO Group's push into the surveillance market in the United States, and specifically its pitching of the company's technology to American police forces. The findings come after the New York Times reported that the FBI bought a Pegasus license in 2019 for evaluation purposes.

"There will be a demo of the attached investigative software at the Rutgers School of Criminal Justice," James Sheehan, a program manager from the Northern New Jersey-Newark/Jersey City UASI, wrote in the August 2015 email. The UASI is the Urban Area Security Initiative, a program administered by the Department of Homeland Security which brings together bodies from law enforcement, fire service, public health, and more to address threats of terrorism and other issues. "The audience is the UASI/CorrStat region and NYPD intel," Sheehan continued. Recipients on Sheehan's email inviting people to attend included representatives from the Bergen County Prosecutor's Office, Jersey City's public safety agency, and the Paterson Police Department, a city of just over 150,000.

Attached to Sheehan's email was a brochure for Pegasus, NSO Group's hacking product, which advertised the tool's ability to obtain a target's calls, contacts, emails, WhatsApp messages, track their location, and more. The brochure contains a logo for WestBridge, NSO Group's North American branch. "Turn Your Target's Smartphone into an Intelligence Gold Mine," the Pegasus brochure reads. "NYPD intel" likely refers to the NYPD's Intelligence Bureau. Its mission is to "detect and disrupt criminal and terrorist activity through the use of intelligence-led policing. In combination with traditional policing methods, uniformed officers and civilian analysts in the Intelligence Bureau collect and analyze information from a variety of sources in order to advance criminal and terrorist investigations," according to the NYPD's website.