A House Democrat who’s been at the forefront of congressional efforts to scrutinize the federal government’s use of commercial spyware wants the Commerce Department to brief Capitol Hill amid apprehension that the Trump administration might further embrace the technology.
Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa., sent a letter to the department Thursday seeking a briefing on several developments stemming from Immigration and Customs Enforcement acknowledging its use of Paragon’s Graphite spyware, as well as an American company purchasing a controlling stake in Israel’s NSO Group. The Commerce Department sanctioned NSO Group under former President Joe Biden after widespread abuse allegations, including eavesdropping on government officials, activists and journalists.
“The Trump Administration appears to be broadly receptive to using commercial spyware to infiltrate cell phones and allowing U.S. investment in sanctioned spyware companies like NSO Group,” Lee wrote in her letter to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, which CyberScoop is first reporting.
NSO Group’s new executive chairman, David Friedman, is a former Trump ambassador to Israel and was his bankruptcy attorney. He has said in November that he expects the administration will be “receptive” to using NSO Group tech.
“Given those close ties between NSO Group and the Trump Administration, and the serious concerns about how NSO’s technology could be used to spy on Americans, we write to request information regarding the purchase of NSO Group by an American company and the potential usage of NSO Group spyware by federal law enforcement,” wrote Lee, who sits on the Oversight and Government Reform panel and is the top Democrat on its Federal Law Enforcement Subcommittee.
Lee was one of the authors of a recent Democratic letter seeking confirmation of ICE’s use of Paragon’s Graphite, which ICE acknowledged. But they criticized the administration for not answering all their questions, in addition to being outraged.
In her latest letter, Lee asked the Commerce Department to brief Oversight and Government Reform Committee staff about internal department deliberations, Commerce communication with the White House and any outside conversations — including with Friedman — about government use of NSO Group technology or any other commercial spyware, and American investment in NSO.
NSO Group “appears to view the Trump administration as friendly to its interests in the United States, pitching itself as a vital tool for the U.S. government to safeguard national security,” Lee wrote, citing company court filings that it “is reasonably foreseeable that a law enforcement or intelligence agency of the United States will use Pegasus.”
The Biden administration sanctions, and court losses in a case against Meta, represented setbacks for NSO Group’s ambitions. And prior to the U.S. investment firm controlling stake purchase last fall, the Commerce Department under Trump rebuffed efforts to remove NSO Group from its sanctions list.
But the tens of millions of dollars worth of investment, following news that Israel had used Pegasus to track people kidnapped or murdered by Hamas, was a boon.
NSO Group maintains that its products are designed only to help law enforcement and intelligence fight terrorism and crime, and that it vets its customers in advance as well as investigates misuse. News accounts and other investigations have turned up a multitude of abuses.
There have been scattered reports of U.S. flirtation with using NSO Group technology. The FBI acknowledged it had bought a Pegasus license, but stopped short of deploying it. The Times of London reported that “it is believed” the Central Intelligence Agency used Pegasus spyware as part of a rescue mission last month for a U.S. airman downed in Iran.
You can read the full letter below.
The post One House Democrat is pressing Commerce on the government’s spyware use appeared first on CyberScoop.
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