BREAKING: jury awards massive $167 million in punitive damages against spyware company NSO Group.

It turns out that the regular people on a jury think it is evil when you help dictators hack dissidents.

After years of every trick & delay tactic it only took a California jury ONE DAY of deliberation to get this Monsanto-scale verdict. Precedent-setting win against notorious #Pegasus spyware maker.

BACKSTORY:

Rewind to 2019. About this time (April-May) #WhatsApp catches NSO Group hacking its users with #Pegasus.

They investigated.

We at Citizen Lab helped to investigate the targets & get in touch with the activists journalists & civil society members that were targeted

We identified at least 100. And got in touch. It was a tremendous push of sleepless days. But it made it so clear just how much harm was being done.

Then, In October 2019 WhatsApp sued.

Prior to the lawsuit, NSO had acted the playground bully.

Targeting victims that dared speak up & researchers like us.

Suddenly, the bully wasn't so surefooted. Like the scene in a high school movie where the cousin shows up in the beat up car & collars the bully.

You might not remember, but in 2019 no country had sanctioned NSO Group... No parliamentary hearings, no hearings in congress, no serious investigations.

For years, WhatsApp's lawsuit helped carry momentum & showed governments that their tech sectors were in the crosshairs from mercenary spyware too...

Credit due to Meta & WhatsApp leadership on this one, they stuck the fight out & carried it across the finish line.

NOTIFICATIONS MATTER

WhatsApp's choice to notify targets was also hugely consequential.

A lot of cases were first surfaced from these notifications.

With dissidents around the world suddenly learning that dictators were snooping in their phones...with NSO Group's help.

A SIDEBAR: HARASSING RESEARCHERS

One of NSO's many tactics was to leverage the case to badger me & us Citizen Lab researchers to try and extract information.

It never worked, but it laid bare the tactics that these firms prefer...instead of coming clean.

ROLE OF CIVIL SOCIETY

Ultimately, we wouldn't be here without civil society investigations of mercenary spyware... and alarm raising.

And victims choosing to come forwads.

Thankfully today there's a whole accountability ecosystem growing around this work.

Dozens of orgs engaging.

Numbers are growing.

IS THERE GONNA BE IMPACT? YES

NSO Group emerges from the trial severely damaged.

The damages ($167,254,000 punitive, $440K+ compensatory) is big enough to make your eyes water.

NSO'S BUSINESS IS NOW ALL OVER THE NET

The case is also a blow to NSO's secrecy, with their business splashed all over a courtroom.

WhatsApp just published NSO's depositions, exposing an unprecedented amount of info on a spyware company's operations:

So what is this about?

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