Meta bans Israeli spy firms accused of attacking thousands of people
Occupied Palestine (QNN)- Facebook has banned Israeli “spy-for-hire” companies from its platforms and will send warning notices to 48,000 people who the company believes were targeted by malicious activity, following a months-long investigation into the “cyber mercenary” industry.
“The global surveillance-for-hire industry targets people across the internet to collect intelligence, manipulate them into revealing information and compromise their devices and accounts,” says the report by Meta Platforms, the parent of Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. “While cyber mercenaries often claim that their services and surveillance-ware are intended to focus on criminals and terrorists, our investigation found they in fact regularly targeted journalists, dissidents, critics of authoritarian regimes, families of the opposition and human rights activists around the world.”
It’s all part of a sprawling industry “that provides intrusive software tools and surveillance services indiscriminately to any customer — regardless of who they target or the human rights abuses they might enable,” Meta’s report says.
Among the surveillance companies that Facebook named in its investigation and banned from its platforms are; Black Cube, an Israeli company that gained notoriety after it emerged that the disgraced media mogul and convicted sex offender Harvey Weinstein had hired them to target women who had accused him of abuse.
Cobwebs was also among the banned firms, and it is another Israeli company that Facebook said enabled its clients to use public websites and dark web sites to trick targets into revealing personal information. The company also reportedly works for US clients, including a local police department in Hartford, Connecticut.
Meta’s investigation comes as the company is facing intense scrutiny in Washington and around the world following accusations by a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, that it enabled the spread of hate speech and disinformation.
The rise of private surveillance has come to public attention most prominently through the Israeli firm NSO, which the US government has blacklisted over allegations that its Pegasus software has been used to target journalists and others. The software quietly infects smartphones and can turn on cameras, voice recorders and location services without the users knowing.
