{"id":302334,"date":"2025-09-08T12:00:40","date_gmt":"2025-09-08T11:00:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=302334"},"modified":"2025-09-08T13:08:15","modified_gmt":"2025-09-08T12:08:15","slug":"israeli-spyware-firms-are-fueling-the-global-surveillance-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2025\/09\/israeli-spyware-firms-are-fueling-the-global-surveillance-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Israeli Spyware Firms Are Fueling the Global Surveillance State"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The Grayzone<\/p><\/div>\n

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The Pegasus hacking tool was just the beginning. A new survey of spyware firms reveals Israeli companies are being used by agencies in Western nations to build perfect dictatorships under democratic guise.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

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31 Aug 2025\u00a0<\/em>– Last week another batch of peaceful pro-Palestine protestors were arrested by British police on suspicion of terrorism offenses, including a disabled man in a wheelchair<\/a>, as the UK continues its descent into authoritarianism on behalf of Israel.If any of these protestors had their phones on them at the time of arrest, the police will most likely have scraped them for data using sophisticated spy tech software. Protestors not arrested will have been caught on mobile cameras that sit atop police vans in the UK, and their faces, perhaps even their voices, will have been captured, analyzed and cross referenced against a police database.<\/p>\n

And in a perverse twist, this spyware technology \u2013 technology which now underpins the insidious and growing capabilities of the modern surveillance state \u2013 will most likely have been made in Israel by Israeli spies.<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s not just in the UK.<\/p>\n

Spy tech developed by former Israeli spies is being used on an industrial scale by various agencies in western democracies, from police forces to national security agencies to militaries. Some has been declared illegal, some skirts legal boundaries, and much remains hidden.<\/p>\n

The scale of usage, and the range of capabilities provided by this Israeli spy tech, is vast. From face and voice recognition software, to interception and wiretap technology, to covert location tracking, to forced data extraction from smartphones and other devices.<\/p>\n

The tech, built by software engineers who cut their teeth writing code to enable and enforce Israeli domination over, and apartheid against Palestinians, is being sold to security services, police forces and immigration agencies across the West.<\/p>\n

While much of the information in this article isn\u2019t new, it hasn\u2019t been summarized in one place before. The implications for global civil liberties of Israel\u2019s dominance in spy tech have also not been articulated, and past media coverage has sometimes omitted the Israeli link to these companies. This article will outline the primary players, the sellers and the buyers, and also identify recent contracts, previously undocumented, between Israeli spytech and Western buyers.<\/p>\n

Scandals involving Israeli spyware companies have been well documented by mainstream media, the most famous of which was the NSO Group <\/strong>affair. NSO, an Israeli firm founded by ex-Unit 8200 officers Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, was found guilty in a California court in 2019 of selling its Pegasus software to governments so they could hack WhatsApp accounts. Pegasus, which was able to execute what is known as a \u2018zero-click\u2019 attack to access a smartphone without the user knowing, was used by governments to spy on dissidents<\/a>, human rights activists<\/a> and journalists<\/a> and was likely used by Saudi agents to spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi before he was murdered. The company was eventually ordered to pay $167 million in damages to Meta<\/a>, who bought the case, and in 2021 Biden blacklisted the company, preventing it doing business the US. (The US state department, notably, went out of its way to say the US would take no action against Israel<\/a>, despite the fact that the Israeli government provide export licenses for all spyware software).<\/p>\n

Also blacklisted by Biden as part of the same executive order<\/a> was another Israeli spyware maker called Candiru<\/strong>, whose hacking software did not attract the same high-profile attention as the NSO Group. Candiru, also founded by ex-Unit 8200 intelligence <\/a>personnel, sold spyware to governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists, academics, embassy workers, and dissidents.<\/p>\n

In 2023, the Biden administration again blacklisted two Israeli spyware companies with little fanfare,<\/a> and once again without taking action against Israel. The two companies, Cytrox <\/strong>and Intellexa, <\/strong>were founded by Tal Dilian, who spent 24 years <\/em>in the IDF, rising to become chief commander of Unit 8200. In 2019, Dilian, who lives in Cyprus, was visited by a Forbes journalist<\/a>, where he demonstrated how his software could remotely hack a phone within seconds.<\/p>\n

In Europe, Cyprus and Barcelona<\/a> have become hubs for ex-Unit 8200 Israelis building spyware companies.<\/p>\n

Another Israeli spy firm, Paragon Solutions,<\/strong> was identified earlier this year<\/a> as silently infiltrating and extract data from WhatsApp, Signal, Messenger and Gmail without needing user interaction. A criminal complaint against Paragon was filed in Rome after an Italian journalist was hacked by the Italian government using Paragon software. No other legal action has been taken, however. The company, founded by Unit 8200 commanders Ehud Schneorson, Idan Nurick, Igor Bogudlov, and advised by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, has not been blacklisted by the EU or the US and remains free to operate.<\/p>\n

These companies are just the tip of the iceberg, the names that skirted legal grey areas and either eventually fell on the wrong side of the law (such as it is) and into the scope of the authorities, or whose illicit spying activities were discovered.<\/p>\n

Even more insidious are the Israeli spyware companies openly contracting with Western security services and agencies to spy on and crack mobile phones and other devices. Because these companies work with lawful state agencies, they claim to have a different model than the NSO Group, Candiru and others focused on illicit hacking services. Yet in many cases their software is similar if not identical, and the full scope of their activities is unknown.<\/p>\n

Lead among these is Cellebrite,<\/strong> founded by ex-IDF soldier Yossi Carmil and staffed with dozens of ex-Unit 8200<\/a> Israeli intelligence personnel. Cellebrite\u2019s flagship tool is called the Universal Forensic Extraction Device which extracts data including contacts, locations, deleted messages, and calls from a range of devices including smartphones, pads, SIM cards, and GPS devices. In the US Cellebrite has a $30 million contract with ICE,<\/a> and a $1.6 million contract with Customs & Border Protection<\/a> to scrape the data from phones seized at the border.<\/p>\n

The surveillance firm also worked with the FBI to unlock the phone of Trump\u2019s would-be assassin Thomas Crook. And Cellebrite is looking to embed itself more deeply in the US security and surveillance state. Last year, Cellebrite was revealed<\/a> to have hired a lobbying firm and established a dedicated arm of its business to win more US government contracts, after raking in more than $18 million from US federal government contracts in 2024. In December 2023 Cellebrite boasted<\/a> it had signed a one-million dollar contract with \u201cone of the largest police departments in the country\u201d without disclosing which one. Given that they were referenced as \u201ca long-time customer,\u201d the most likely candidate is the NYPD, who have been documented as working with Cellebrite for years.<\/a><\/p>\n

On top of this, my research has found that Cellebrite has active contracts with a host of US federal agencies, from the Navy, to the DEA, the Coast Guard, to the Fish and Wildlife Service.<\/a> A number of US embassies also contract with Cellebrite including the US embassies in Lima, Bogota and Asuncion. US Special Operations Command<\/a>, the agency which oversees the various special operations programs across the US military branches, also pays for Cellebrite tools, as does Global Strike Command<\/a>, the US Air Force unit responsible for nuclear attacks.<\/p>\n

Cellebrite is just as active in the UK. In 2020 the company signed a three-year, two million pound contract<\/a> with London\u2019s Metropolitan police for Cellebrite\u2019s premium product. The Met said the Cellebrite software is the only one on the market \u201cthat meets Met police requirements,\u201d particularly its ability to crack Android phones. It\u2019s not clear if this contract was renewed.<\/p>\n

In 2018 Police Scotland signed a \u00a3370,000 contract with Cellebrite<\/a> to provide 41 mobile \u2018cyber kiosks\u2019 to be rolled out across Scotland, enabling on-site phone cracking. And in 2022 North Wales Police paid Cellebrite over a quarter of a million pounds<\/a> for a suite of tools which enabled \u2018password bypass\u2019 and \u2018brute forcing\u2019 of phones.<\/p>\n

Kent Police, the police force whose armed police recently threatened<\/a> with arrest people for holding Palestine flags, signed a one year contract<\/a> with Cellebrite last year. And this year, two additional UK police forces have signed contracts with Cellebrite. In February the City of London Police, the police for London\u2019s financial district and distinct from the Met Police, paid one hundred thousand pounds for Cellebrite tools.<\/a> And in April Leicestershire Police signed a one-year contract with Cellebrite<\/a> that cost them \u00a3328,700. Cellebrite also has a contract<\/a> with the UK\u2019s Department for Transport.<\/p>\n

In the UK, Cellebrite is an approved supplier under what is known as the \u2018Digital Forensics Dynamic Purchasing System\u2019 which, according to the body responsible <\/a>for signing commercial deals for UK police forces \u201cenables the streamlined procurement across UK forces for Cellebrite tools.\u201d<\/p>\n

How widespread the use of Cellebrite tools is by UK police forces is unknown. Freedom of Information Requests have previously found<\/a> twenty six of the UK\u2019s forty seven police forces admitted using the technology, with others planning to trial it. More recent FOI requests to UK police forces this year concerning their use of Cellebrite, from South Wales<\/a> to West Yorkshire<\/a>, have been denied on so-called \u2018national security\u2019 grounds.<\/p>\n

Cellebrite has boasted of its work enabling the Israeli genocide of Gaza, saying it has been \u2018instrumental\u2019<\/a> in providing phone hacking services to Israeli intelligence since October 7th.<\/p>\n

Arguably even more sophisticated tools are offered by Israeli spy tech firm Cobwebs Technologies<\/strong>, founded by former IDF Unit 8200 officers Omri Timianker<\/a>, Udi Levy, and Shay Attias and which employs a number<\/a> of ex-Unit 8200 on its staff. Among the services offered by Cobwebs (sold to a company called PenLink in 2023 but retaining the CobWebs team) is an AI-powered service enabling facial and image recognition across social media and the deep web, and a feature called WebLoc that enables the tracking of mobile phone movements in a specific area selected by the user. This capability, known as geofencing, is enabled by in-app advertising which pulls personal data from smartphones, data which is then sold to spy tech companies like Cobwebs for integration into tools like WebLoc. A now-deleted 2019 press release<\/a> details in corporate tech speak the services offered by the company. Cobwebs previously signed a $2.7 million contract with ICE, has an active $3.2 million contract with the US Department of Homeland Security<\/a> and last June entered into a huge $5.3 million contract<\/a> with the Texas Department of Public Safety. A 2024 report also found that the LAPD has been using Cobwebs\u2019<\/a> suite of surveillance and tracking tools for a number of years.<\/p>\n

In 2020 the company opened an office in London<\/a> with the intent to provide its spy tech to UK police and security services, but no public information on UK bodies working with Cobwebs is available.<\/p>\n

Another Israeli spy tech firm working with western security services, police forces and government agencies is Cognyte<\/strong>. <\/strong><\/em>The firm, spun out of another Israeli spy tech company called Verint, is led by Elad Sharon, Gil Cohen and Ronny Lempel, all of whom are IDF and Unit 8200 graduates. CEO Sharon\u2019s LinkedIn banner is a Cognyte-branded image proclaiming the company stands with Israel.<\/p>\n

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Cognyte makes \u201cnetwork intelligence\u201d tools <\/a>that hoover up huge quantities of information, including anything running through 4G\/5G towers, telecom metadata, messaging platforms, phone calls and network signals, to spot patterns and anomalies in communications. This gets fed into a data platform \u2018solution\u2019 that enables users to connect dots and analyse information. This is all supposedly legal, but information on the nature of the work and the agencies contracting with Cognyte is scarce. Cognyte announces the awards but never the end users.<\/p>\n

What we do know is that in the last 18 months, western law enforcement agencies, national security agencies and militaries have signed deals with Cognyte worth collectively close to $60 million. These include a $20 million, three-year deal with a national security agency in Europe<\/a>, a $3 million agreement<\/a> with a US police department and a $10 million contract with a European military<\/a> announced just last week. The press release for the military deal explained<\/a> how \u201cCognyte continues to deliver field-proven solutions that empower frontline military teams with the actionable intelligence they need to operate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two buyers I have identified, listed on a US government procurement website<\/a>, are the US Secret Service and the US embassy in El Salvador.<\/p>\n

Similar to Cellebrite and Cobwebs, a search on LinkedIn for ex-Unit 8200 who now work at Cognyte brings up dozens of names.<\/a><\/p>\n

The company that Cognyte was spun out of, Verint,<\/strong> is also Israeli, founded by former intelligence officers and has also worked with Western security agencies. In 2014 Verint built<\/a> Switzerland\u2019s wiretap and surveillance infrastructure, and in 2017 was paid $35 million by the US Department of Defense<\/a> to work on a major undisclosed project. In 2018 Verint scored part of a 50 million pound deal to <\/a>provide UK police with new cyber intelligence capabilities. Verint has since pivoted its business model to focus on customer engagement platforms, with much of the military and security spytech spun out into Cognyte.<\/p>\n

Another Israeli company that has partnered with British police forces is Corsight AI <\/strong>which has sold its facial recognition technology<\/a> to the Essex Police. Corsight\u2019s software, which enables the identification and cross referencing of people\u2019s faces, was perfected first on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank. According to the linked article, the technology has been deployed during the genocide of Gaza. The founder and chairman of Corsight\u2019s parent company, Cortica,<\/strong> is Igal Raichelgauz<\/a>, a former Israeli intelligence officer. Corsight has also sold its facial recognition to Sao Paulo\u2019s military police<\/a> and to Bogota\u2019s metropolitan police.<\/p>\n

Israeli facial recognition company, Briefcam,<\/strong> also has contracts with UK police forces as well as police departments in the US. In the UK, Cumbria police use Briefcam\u2019s<\/a> analytics system in their county-wide network of CCTV, but claim to have disabled the facial recognition component. In France, Briefcam had its contracts cancelled in 2023 after it was revealed scores of police forces across the country<\/a> were using them illegally in breach of French privacy laws. Police in Brussels and Warsaw<\/a> also use Corsight facial recognition, and in the US Chicago, Springfield and Beverly Hills PD<\/a> have confirmed their usage of Corsight.<\/p>\n

NICE, an Israeli company founded by ex-IDF soldiers<\/a>, has captured the market for identifying financial fraud, serving 85% of the Fortune 500 and a number of European regulators. A multi-billion dollar company, it has also provided surveillance tools for cities including license plate recognition, face capture,<\/a> as well as hand held GPS-based video terminals and mobile video sensors to track citizens. A 2015 Buzzfeed investigation<\/a> found NICE was supplying secret surveillance software to a number of countries.<\/p>\n

A dishonorable mention must go to Israel\u2019s Black Cube<\/strong>, founded by ex-Unit 8200 intelligence spooks Dan Zorella and Avi Yanus.<\/strong> Black Cube was notoriously hired by Hollywood rapist Harvey Weinstein<\/a> (a man who said he was<\/a> \u201cIsraeli in his heart and mind\u201d) to spy on and gather information about his accusers. BlackCube has been implicated in a number of spying scandals and in the past has employed western diplomats<\/a> including Vivian Bercovici, Canada\u2019s former ambassador to Israel.<\/p>\n

What this compendium demonstrates is that Israel and its apartheid economy sits at the center of the drive towards a fully surveilled, zero-dissent world. Across the globe, Israeli spyware is ushering in a distinct 21st century fascism that fuses new technologies of control to a tried-and-tested framework that seeks to spy, suppress and dominate. Under the guise of citizen safety and crime fighting, Israeli tech is smoothing the gears of authoritarianism.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s permanent war and apartheid economy, and the spy tech firms run by Israeli intelligence operatives that emerge from this economy, are the single biggest threat to civil liberties in the world today. And it\u2019s no surprise that Israel has cornered this market. Israel churns out individuals and projects directed for dominance because Israelis are raised in and surrounded by a military culture of impunity. A culture where technology is created only to dominate, test subjects are abundant and rules of engagement non-existent.<\/p>\n

In buying and relying on the tools of an apartheid state for security and law enforcement technology, we see how Israel\u2019s apartheid and genocide itself becomes indispensable to Western governments in their drive towards complete security states.<\/p>\n

Go to Original – thegrayzone.substack.com<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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