[News] Spyware Surveillance of Palestinian Human Rights Defenders

[Anti-Imperialist News]

addameer.org <https://www.addameer.org/news/4564> Spyware Surveillance of
Palestinian Human Rights Defenders
November 8, 2021
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After the Israeli designation of six of the leading Palestinian civil
society organizations; Addameer Prisoner Support and Human Rights
Association, Al-Haq Law in the Service of Man (Al-Haq), Bisan Center for
Research and Development, Defense for Children International-Palestine, the
Union of Agricultural Work Committees, and the Union of Palestinian Women's
Committees, as "terror organizations" in a latest bid to delegitimize their
image and isolate them from their partners and solidarity networks, Front
Line Defenders (FLD) reveals today that there has been a systematic
underground campaign of spyware surveillance aimed at infiltrating
Palestinian human rights defenders and lawyers' devices. The penetrating
and monitoring of the devices of human rights defenders violates not only
the privacy rights of human rights defenders and lawyers but also the
countless victims that have been in any sort of communication with them.
The six organizations strongly condemn the arbitrary, oppressive, and
distressing revelations of spyware surveillance mass operation and call for
a firm response, including concrete actions from the international
community.\

*Pegasus Spyware Surveillance of Palestinian Human Rights Defenders*

On 16 October 2021, Al-Haq contacted FLD on suspicion of the spyware
infection of the iPhone device of one of its staff members. FLD technical
investigation found that the device had been infected in July 2020 with
Pegasus spyware marketed by the Israeli NSO Group. Further forensic
investigation-peer-reviewed by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International's
Security Lab - of 75 iPhone devices belonging to Palestinian human rights
defenders and employees of civil society organizations revealed that at
least five additional devices were also tapped into. Amongst them, Ghassan
Halaika, Jerusalem-based field researcher at Al-Haq; Ubai Al-Aboudi,
Executive Director at Bisan Center for Research and Development; and Salah
Hammouri, lawyer and human rights defender.

*"When Pegasus is installed on a person's phone, an attacker has complete
access to a phone's messages, emails, media, microphone, camera, passwords,
voice calls on messaging apps, location data, calls, and contacts. The
spyware also has the potential to activate the phone camera and microphone
and spy on an individual's calls and activities." *(FLD, 8 November 2021).

Joint investigation of FLD, Citizen Lab, and Amnesty International's
Security Lab confirmed with high confidence that the infection emanated
from Pegasus Spyware pertaining to the Israel-based Pegasus spyware, which
has been used as a mass surveillance tool to target and facilitate
systematic repression of human rights activists, lawyers, journalists, and
political figures, as disclosed by the global Pegasus Project that analyzed
more than 50,000 phone numbers in July 2021. After the scathing revelations
made by the Pegasus Project, the NSO Group ironically alleged that the
Pegasus spyware's use was limited to government intelligence and law
enforcement agencies for counter-terrorism and crime-fighting purposes.

On 3 November, the US Department of Commerce announced the placement of NSO
Group on its "entity list," effectively banning the business, noting that
"these tools have also enabled foreign governments to conduct translational
repression [and that] such practices threaten the rules-based international
order." Notably, despite agreements with the United States and France to
not surveil their citizens, in the case of Ubai Al-Aboudi, and Salah
Hammouri, the company has breached these agreements consecutively.
Shrinking Our Space, Violating our Right to Privacy On 19 October, the
Israeli Minister of Defense designated six organizations of the Palestinian
civil society as "terror organizations" under Israel's domestic
Anti-Terrorism Law 5776-2016. Two weeks later, on 3 November, the Israeli
military commander in the West Bank issued five separate military orders
announcing the organizations as "unlawful" under the Defence (Emergency)
Regulations 1945, which Britain had notably repealed shortly before the end
of the Mandate and which Israel has illegally resurrected to implement
numerous persecutory acts against the protected Palestinian population.

This announcement outlawing the vital work of the Palestinian organizations
places them at imminent risk of forcible closure and their employees at
risk of arbitrary arrests and detention. Further, it represents an alarming
effort to criminalize and undermine their efforts in furthering the
realization of Palestinian human rights and the pursuit of accountability
through international mechanisms by discrediting their essential work,
isolating them from the international community, and eventually cutting
their sources of funding. In practice, the designations laid against the
Palestinian organizations empower Israel to shut down their offices, seize
their assets, including bank accounts, and arrest and detain their staff
members.

The parallel timelines of the FLD investigation and the Israeli
designations are concerning. The Israeli Minister of Defense's designations
of the civil society organizations only days after the initiation of this
investigation may amount to an attempt at preemptively withholding evidence
of surveillance and covering up surreptitious spyware actions.

The systematic surveillance of Palestinian human rights defenders comes in
addition to an already unacceptable endless list of coordinated actions led
by Israeli governmental bodies and their affiliates to instigate and
perform systematic and organized smear, intimidation, and persecution
campaigns against Palestinian civil society. Over the past decades, such
techniques have included defamation campaigns aimed at labeling human
rights defenders as "terrorists," incitement to racial hatred and violence,
hate speech, arbitrary arrests, torture and ill-treatment, death threats,
travel bans, residency revocations, and deportations.

In February 2019, Al-Haq submitted a report on Israel's surveillance
industry to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of
the Right to Freedom of Opinion and Expression. Drawing on the surveillance
apparatus used in the apartheid wall and operated by Elbit and the Mabat
2000 surveillance project in the Old City of Jerusalem, the submission shed
light on the interrelations between the Israeli military and the Israeli
private surveillance industry. It further addressed the alarming use of
Pegasus spyware to muffle human rights defenders in various countries,
including Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, and the
United Arab Emirates.

*Persecution of Human Rights Defenders, A Tenet of Israel's Apartheid*

To begin, Israel, as a State party to the International Covenant on Civil
and Political Rights (ICCPR), has obligations under Article 19 to protect
everyone's rights to privacy, opinion, and expression and everyone's right
to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart
information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers and through any
media of his choice. The right to freedom of opinion and expression is also
ensured under Article 19 of the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and
Article 5 of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms
of Racial Discrimination.

Further, Article 17(1) of the ICCPR provides that "[n]o one shall be
subjected to arbitrary or unlawful interference with his privacy, family,
home or correspondence." In terms of surveillance, the UN Human Rights
Committee has warned that "Attacks on a person because of the exercise of
his or her right to freedom of expression may not be justified by Article
19 (3)" and has underscored the importance of protecting "persons who
engaged in the gathering and analysis of information on the human rights
situation and who published human rights-related reports, including judges
and lawyers" .2 Further, States obligations to protect human rights
defenders, amongst others, from third party interference is provided for
under Article 2 of the ICCPR, which imposes an obligation on States to
respect and to ensure to all individuals within its territory and subject
to its jurisdiction the rights recognized in the Covenant. While Article II
(c) of the Apartheid Convention prohibits the crime of apartheid, "Any
legislative measures and other measures calculated to prevent a racial
group or groups from participation in the political, social, economic and
cultural life of the country…, in particular by denying to members of a
racial group or groups basic human rights and freedoms, including…. the
right to freedom of opinion and expression, and the right to freedom of
peaceful assembly and association".

Business companies do not operate in a human rights-free vacuum. The UN
Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights codify States' duties to
protect and corporate responsibility to respect human rights in the course
of corporate activities. In particular, business companies must implement
"policies and processes appropriate to their size and circumstances,
including (b) a human rights due diligence process to identify, prevent,
mitigate and account for how they address their impacts on human rights,"
as per Principle 15. To that extent, according to Principles 17 to 21,
human rights due diligence requires that the company carries out proper and
regular human rights impact assessments, reported, and integrated into the
company's code of conduct. In conflict-affected areas, this requirement for
due diligence is heightened. Israel, accordingly, has a responsibility to
prevent companies such as Pegasus domiciled under its jurisdiction from
carrying out grave violations of human rights law in its surveillance of
Palestinian human rights defenders in the occupied territory.

*#StandWithTheSix, before They, Become Hundreds*

It comes with great concern that two weeks after the sinister designation
of six Palestinian civil society organizations as "terrorist
organizations," at least six Palestinian human rights defenders are found
to have had their most fundamental freedoms infringed by surveillance
practices that have infiltrated all aspects of their private and
professional life and the lives of all the victims they serve, in addition
to endless communications with international and national officials,
journalists, lawyers, and colleagues. This latest revelation shows, once
again, the extent of Israel's failure to regulate an egregious surveillance
industry in its territory, allowing private human rights-violating
surveillance industry to operate with impunity. Such impunity is a global
human rights issue that requires a concerted global response on behalf of
the international community as a whole.

In light of the unprecedented gravity of Pegasus Spyware multilayered
intrusion into Palestinian human rights defenders' space and privacy, the
six organizations urge the international community to provide immediate
protection of all the identified victims of this Spyware surveillance
infiltration and the immediate cessation of any ongoing spyware
infiltration.

We further urge the international community to take immediate actions to
bring Israel, the home State for Pegasus Spyware, into compliance with its
obligations under international law, in particular:

● Require an immediate moratorium on the sale, transfer, and use of all
forms of surveillance technology, particularly NSO Group's Pegasus spyware,
until a full independent investigation of its operation within Palestine is
carried out by the UN, in order to identify the scope of its surveillance
activities carried out against Palestinian human rights defenders, and
their ties to the Israeli government;

● Require a full audit of Israeli companies manufacturing surveillance
equipment, and define their connections to the Israel governmental bodies,
as well as their involvement in human rights violations in Palestine and
globally; and

● Demand the designing and implementation of a strict regulatory framework
to prevent, mitigate and redress the human rights impacts of the
surveillance industry, and ensure their compliance and conformity with
international human rights law, especially with the principle of human
rights due diligence enshrined in the UN Guiding Principles on Business and
Human Rights.

The six organizations call on:

● The UN Human Rights Office to report on mass surveillance companies
operating with Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territory,
and include them in the UN Database on Business Activities;

● All States to immediately freeze their business agreements on weapons and
surveillance equipment with Israel and demand that Israel report on its
ties to its surveillance industry;

● The Prosecutor's Office of the International Criminal Court to include
the surveillance of Palestinian human rights defenders into its current
investigation on the situation in the State of Palestine, as a means of
persecution of those defenders who oppose its apartheid regime; and

● Human Rights Defenders and civil society members to take steps to reveal
and hold accountable any similar spyware operations worldwide.
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