NSO Group, one of the most famous and controversial makers of government spyware, released a new transparency report on Wednesday as the company enters a “new phase of accountability.”
But the report, unlike NSO’s previous annual disclosures, lacks details about how many customers the company has rejected, investigated, suspended or fired for human rights violations involving its surveillance tools. The report includes promises to respect human rights and put controls in place to require customers to do the same, but provides no concrete evidence to support either.
Experts and commentators who have been tracking NSO and the spyware market for years believe the report is part of an effort and campaign to get the U.S. government to remove the company from its block list (technically known as the Entity List), as it hopes to enter the U.S. market with new financial backers and management at the helm.
A group of American investors acquired the company last year, and since then NSO has undergone a transition that has included some high-profile personnel changes. Former Trump administration official David Friedman has been named the new executive chairman. CEO Yaron Shohat resigns. As reported by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, the last founder still involved with the company, Omri Ravi, has also left.
“The world is a safer place when NSO’s products end up in the right hands, in the right countries. That has always been our overriding mission,” Friedman wrote in the report, without mentioning the countries in which NSO operates.
Natalia Krapiva, senior technical legal counsel at Access Now, a digital rights organization that investigates spyware abuse, told TechCrunch. “NSO is clearly campaigning to be removed from the U.S. Entity List, and one of the key things they have to show is that they have changed dramatically as a company since going public.”
“The change in leadership is one part and this transparency report is another part,” Krapiva said.
“Yet over the years, we have seen that NSO and other spyware companies change names and management teams, issue empty transparency and ethics reports, and yet continue to be exploited.”
inquiry
Are you familiar with NSO Group? Or is it another spyware maker? You can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely from any non-work device on Signal (+1 917 257 1382) or on Telegram, Keybase and Wire @lorenzofb, or email.
“This is just another attempt at accounting fraud, and we should not make fun of the US government,” Krapiva said.
Since the Biden administration added NSO to the Entity List, the company has been lobbying to have the restrictions lifted. NSO stepped up these efforts after President Donald Trump took office again last year. However, as of May last year, NSO was unable to sway the new government.
In late December, the Trump administration lifted sanctions on three executives associated with the Intellexa spyware consortium, a move seen by some as a sign of a change in the administration’s attitude toward spyware makers.
lack of details
This year’s transparency report covers 2025 and has fewer details than previous years’ reports.
For example, in a previous transparency report covering 2024, NSO said it had opened three investigations into potential abuse. The company did not name the customers, but said it had severed relationships with one customer and imposed “alternative remedial actions” on others, including requiring human rights training, monitoring customer activities, and requesting detailed information about how customers use the system. NSO did not provide information regarding the third investigation.
NSO also said it has rejected more than $20 million in new business opportunities during 2024 “citing human rights concerns.”
In a transparency report published last year covering 2022 and 2023, NSO anonymously said it had suspended or fired six government customers and claimed these actions had resulted in $57 million in lost revenue.
In 2021, NSO announced that it had “disconnected” the systems of five customers since 2016 following an investigation into abuse, resulting in “an estimated revenue loss of more than $100 million,” and also said it had “discontinued contracts” with five customers due to “human rights concerns.”
NSO’s latest transparency report does not include the total number of NSO customers, a statistic that has been consistently present in previous reports.
TechCrunch reached out to NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier for similar statistics and numbers, but did not receive a response by press time.
John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has investigated spyware abuse for more than a decade, criticized NSO.
“I was hoping for information and numbers,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “There is nothing in this document that would allow outsiders to verify NSO’s claims, which is normal business for a company that has been making claims for a decade that were later found to be misstatements.”
