A former Trump official will be the new chief of notorious Israeli spyware maker NSO Group as the company tries to save its tarnished image after a string of high profile surveillance scandals.
Trump’s former U.S. ambassador to Israel (and one time bankruptcy lawyer), David Friedman, will be Israeli spyware maker NSO Group’s new executive chairman.
NSO is best known for its product Pegasus which can hack into any phone to turn it into a spying device. The product and NSO itself have been the subject of accusations that span a decade.
In 2018, Amnesty International claimed that its staff members were targeted by a malware attack using NSO software. In 2021, Amnesty said that the software was used to hack into the devices of Palestinians working for civil society organizations in the West Bank. Around the same time, an investigation claimed that an Emirati agency used NSO’s Pegasus to target the phone of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi’s wife just months before his assassination in October 2018.
The accusations have since continued. Earlier this year, Amnesty International published a report saying that two investigative journalists from a Serbian network were targeted with Pegasus in February 2025.
The Biden administration took legal action against the company in 2021 when the Department of Commerce blacklisted it for knowingly supplying software to foreign governments to be used to target dissidents.
Then in 2024, a U.S. federal court found NSO liable for reverse engineering Meta’s WhatsApp to hack into the phones of more than 1,400 attorneys, journalists, human rights activists, and government officials around the world, including some U.S. diplomats. Last month, a federal judge granted WhatsApp’s request to have NSO’s products blocked on WhatsApp, but according to Friedman, NSO is appealing that decision.
Despite all the financial struggles that came with the years of legal and ethical controversies over its surveillance practices, NSO is determined to renew its business and get in the U.S. government’s good graces. The company got sold last month to an American investor group led by Hollywood producer Robert Simonds, who is behind famous movies like Happy Gilmore, Bad Moms and Hustlers. The new American owners, who hold a controlling stake in the firm, made the decision to bring in Trump-ally Friedman to lead the company.
Friedman’s goal is to have NSO ink partnerships with the Trump administration.
“If the administration, as I expect they’ll be, is receptive to considering any opportunity that might keep Americans safer, it will consider us,” Friedman told the Wall Street Journal, adding that he is aiming to attract American law enforcement agencies as customers.
Technically, NSO would be barred from any partnerships with government agencies due to a 2023 executive order signed by then-President Biden. According to the order, government agencies and departments are banned from using any commercial spyware that have been misused to enable human rights abuses.
But there is precedent for the contrary. The Trump administration is no stranger to partnerships with Israeli spyware companies that have murky reputations.
Under Trump’s rule, ICE has gone full speed ahead with a $2 million contract with Israeli spyware firm Paragon, a company whose products were used by the Italian government to spy on journalists and migrant rights activists.
The deal was first signed in late 2024, but was blocked until a compliance review could determine whether it adhered to Biden’s executive order. That block was lifted a few months ago. In the time between the block being enacted then lifted, Paragon got acquired by a Florida-based private equity firm.
English (US) ·