Israel provides Saudi Arabia with new technology to spy on the opposition



Jeremy Salt



The Israeli Security Agency (NSA), an Israeli company specializing in spyware development, announced last year that it had conducted advanced negotiations to sell smartphone surveillance and penetration systems to Saudi intelligence services.

Although Saudi Arabia and Israel do not officially maintain diplomatic relations, business is going well between the two countries. It even seems that Riyadh has a very pronounced penchant for Israeli high technology, especially that of keeping an eye on human rights activists. The daily Haaretz reported on Sunday that an Israeli cyber security company has negotiated a multi-million dollar agreement to provide Saudi Arabia with technology that will allow the Kingdom to hack into mobile phones and listen to conversations from people using their mobile devices.

Representatives of the NSO technologies group – a company known for its Herzliya-based spyware Pegasus – held a series of meetings in 2017 in Vienna and at least one Gulf country during which a $55 million contract was negotiated to provide Arabia with Pegasus 3 software, according to the same source.

“Following the various meetings in Europe, the Saudis tried to organise a meeting in Riyadh – through Cyprus – with an Israeli businessman who markets defence-related technologies and who participated in negotiations with NSO in Vienna. After the Israeli Ministry of Defense – which oversees the sale of the country’s security technologies abroad – refused to approve the trip, the businessman in question reportedly accompanied NSO founder Shalev Hulio during three days of meetings in a Gulf country in June 2017 during which the terms of an agreement were finalized,” the Israeli media said.

According to Haaretz, taken over by the I24news website, it has not been specified whether or not the agreement has been concluded. “However, the negotiations took place at a time when Riyadh has been severely repressing dissidents since Crown Prince Mohammed Ben Salmane took power in June 2017,” it is added.

Last September, a University of Toronto research group, Citizen Lab, reported that at least 36 governments were using the services of the NSO group. Infections due to Pegasus software have been discovered in Canada, Great Britain, France, Algeria and Morocco, in addition to Turkey, Lebanon, Egypt, Qatar and Bahrain, Citizen Lab reported.

According to the Israeli newspaper, negotiations took place in Vienna, the Austrian capital, in June 2017, a few months before Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched a campaign against his opponents in the kingdom and abroad.

According to Haaretz, Israeli businessmen representing the NSA attended the negotiations, as well as Abdullah al-Mulihi, a close associate of the former Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Turki al-Faisal, and Nasser al-Qahtani, who appointed himself deputy head of the Saudi intelligence service.





The newspaper pointed out that the meeting was not the first and only one, but that there were other meetings in Cyprus through intermediaries.

The newspaper quotes the Israeli company as saying that it operates in accordance with the law and that its techniques are used to fight violence, crime and terrorism.

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During the negotiations, the company promoted the Pegasus 3 program, which is able to penetrate mobile phones without the victim being aware of the penetration or sending something on their phone.

According to the French newspaper Le Figaro, the famous American educator Edward Snowden and the Canadian research institute Citizens Lab confirmed that Saudi Arabia had used Pegasus III to monitor the movements of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who had been liquidated at the Saudi Arabian consulate in Istanbul.

About a month ago, the Israeli daily Jerusalem Post announced that Israel had sold $250 million worth of spy devices to Saudi Arabia, claiming that these systems were the most sophisticated spy weapons manufactured by Israel and were being sold for the first time to an Arab country.

On October 3, the Times of Israel website confirmed that Saudi authorities had used Israeli pirate technology to spy on political activists and opponents abroad.



