“I’m shocked, shocked, to find that gam­bling is going on in here.”
The iron­ic line by the cor­rupt police­man Louis as he accepts his win­nings in ‘Casablan­ca’, echoes in denials that Israeli intel­li­gence has access to infor­ma­tion gath­ered by users of  the Israeli-run NSO Group’s ‘Pega­sus’ spyware.
Israel’s spies tap even the most mun­dane poten­tial sources of intelligence.
I’m a case in point.

‘Pega­sus’ is “weapons grade” soft­ware that can steal “emails, call records, social media posts, user pass­words, con­tact infor­ma­tion, pic­tures, videos, sound record­ings and brows­ing his­to­ries” from cell­phones with­out the own­er ever know­ing. Its tar­gets include journalists.

In 1983, before any of that exist­ed, I inter­viewed six Israeli sol­diers held by the Pop­u­lar Front for the Lib­er­a­tion of Pales­tine (PFLP) in Lebanon’s Bek­ka Valley.
(NOTE: Before the inter­view it was made clear to the pris­on­ers that in terms of the Gene­va Con­ven­tion we could not and would not inter­view, video­tape or iden­ti­fy them with­out their express consent.)
The POWs want­ed to be on air in hope their fam­i­lies in Israel would see them.

                 EVASIVE TACTICS, ISRAELI PERSISTENCE

We filed the sto­ry from Dam­as­cus, and the next day cam­era­man Paul Vit­toroulis, sound­man Georges Ioan­nides and I took a cir­cuitous route to Beirut to avoid check­points con­trolled by allies of the Israeli mil­i­tary, which at that time occu­pied a large swathe of Lebanon.
Nice try.
With­in min­utes of our arrival at the Com­modore Hotel in West Beirut, the Israelis phoned and asked me to come to an office they had in East Beirut for “a chat” about where I’d just been.
I polite­ly declined, on the basis that to do so would be tan­ta­mount to spy­ing, which I would no more do for them than I would for the PFLP.
Two weeks lat­er, then-CBS News vice-pres­i­dent John Lane phoned me at my home in Athens. The Israeli ambas­sador in Wash­ing­ton had asked the own­er of CBS, William S. Paley, to ask me to go to their con­sulate in Athens for “a chat”.
Again, I declined. John said that was fine.

Even if I’d been will­ing to talk to them, I doubt there was much, if any­thing I could have told Israeli intel­li­gence that they didn’t already know. While in the Bek­ka Val­ley we were under the com­plete con­trol of the PFLP, who were para­noid about secu­ri­ty. I wasn’t even allowed to do an on cam­era in front of a tree, because, a PFLP min­der claimed: “The Israelis might be able to iden­ti­fy it”.
Nor did I know the pre­cise loca­tion of the inter­view, which cer­tain­ly wasn’t where the pris­on­ers were nor­mal­ly held.
But, quite right­ly under the cir­cum­stances, the Israelis want­ed every snip­pet of intel­li­gence they could get.

                              ANYTHING AND EVERYTHING

‘Pega­sus’ gath­ers infor­ma­tion and secrets like a miles-long drift net catch­es fish. Every­thing in its reach is hauled in.
Tim­o­thy Sum­mers, a for­mer cyber­se­cu­ri­ty engi­neer at a U.S. intel­li­gence agency describes it as “elo­quent­ly nasty” software.
Its cre­ators report­ed­ly served in an elite Israeli mil­i­tary cyber intel­li­gence unit. The Israeli Defence Min­istry must approve the licens­ing of NSO prod­ucts to for­eign governments.
If the tech giant Huawei works with Chi­nese mil­i­tary intel­li­gence, as West­ern gov­ern­ments charge, it beg­gars the imag­i­na­tion that NSO doesn’t have a sym­bi­ot­ic rela­tion­ship with Israeli intelligence.

                        A WHO’S WHO OF THE UN-SALUBRIOUS

Cer­tain­ly NSO doesn’t seem to be shy about its clients. Among them are:
Azer­bai­jan — no free elec­tions, no inde­pen­dent news media, no impar­tial court sys­tem, run for the last 30 years by a fam­i­ly under inter­na­tion­al sanc­tions and crim­i­nal indict­ments for theft of the country’s wealth and money-laundering.
Hun­gary — Prime Min­is­ter Vik­tor Orban has been accused of homo­pho­bia, Islam­o­pho­bia, and pro­mot­ing anti-Semi­tism and anti-Roma sentiment.
Bahrain and the Unit­ed Arab Emi­rates — which do not per­mit polit­i­cal dis­sent, or hold real elections.
Sau­di Ara­bia — mur­der­ers of jour­nal­ist Adnan Khashog­gi, ser­i­al sup­pres­sors of human rights, and women.
Also on NSO’s books are India, Kaza­khstan, Mex­i­co, Moroc­co and Rwan­da, all of whom have less than shin­ing records when it comes to adher­ing to nor­mal laws of indi­vid­ual pri­va­cy and a tru­ly free Press.

NSO Group insists it is “on a life-sav­ing mis­sion” and its tech­nolo­gies have bro­ken up drug, sex and child-traf­fick­ing rings and helped pre­vent acts of ter­ror­ism. Chief exec­u­tive Shalev Hulio claimed to have “shut down sys­tems for cus­tomers who have mis­used the system.”
If ever there was a clas­sic case of “shut­ting the barn door…”
Or, as the philoso­pher Goethe more elo­quent­ly put it: “Tell me with whom you asso­ciate, and I will tell you who you are.”
The great thinker might also have includ­ed “who you resemble”.

Cov­er­ing a protest march in South Africa in the tur­bu­lent 1980s, I was detained by a hulk­ing white South African police offi­cer. He shoved me into a small room, slammed me against a met­al lock­er and screamed “I’ll f******* kill you.” He also plant­ed dam­ag­ing evi­dence in my car.
The secu­ri­ty police­man who arrived to release me after a CBS lawyer inter­vened took my note­book and pho­to­copied every page.
I protest­ed as a mat­ter of prin­ci­ple, even though he was wast­ing his time. My speed-writ­ing/short­hand is inde­ci­pher­able to any­one but me, and even I strug­gle sometimes.
Today, the South African regime could find out all my sources by being a Pega­sus client.

And for what’s it’s worth and take it as you will, in Greek mythol­o­gy, Pega­sus, the winged horse, was the bear­er of the thun­der­bolts of Zeus, king of the gods.

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