Israel’s Public Defense Office demands that Ministry of Justice stop using spyware against citizens until legislation is passed

Israel’s Public Defense Office has demanded that the Ministry of Justice "order the police to stop the use of spyware for criminal investigations, until it is regulated in legislation and to impose restrictions on its use even after it is regulated.”

This is according to a letter recently sent by Chief Public Defender Anat Meyassed Cnaan to the Deputy Attorney General Amit Marari. In addition, the public defense asked the Ministry of Justice to act immediately so that all the suspects in which spyware was used against them in their investigations would be notified on the matter.

Amir Marari.

According to the Defender's letter, their appeal was in part due to the Marari Report, released last year, which investigated the use of spyware by police, including NSO’s Pegasus, and found that information was extracted from mobile devices in violation of the law, as well as serious failures in supervision and control procedures by police.

About six months following the publication of Calcalist’s investigations into the police's use of spyware and offensive cyber tools developed by NSO and other companies against citizens, an investigative team headed by Deputy Attorney General Amit Marari, published a report, confirming the core findings revealed by Calcalist.

In addition to the Marari report, the letter states that there have been subsequent reports of similar misconduct which demonstrate "that the scope of the use of spyware was more extensive than was revealed to the investigative team.”

“The public defender's position is in accordance with the law,” the letter reads, “which does not allow conducting a search (overt or covert) and collecting computer data, but only listening to communication between computers, and, therefore, the Israel Police is not authorized to use spyware as a means of investigation against citizens."