Israeli Spyware Giant NSO Group Ordered to Pay Nearly $170M to Meta ⇥ politico.com

Maggie Miller, Politico:

Israeli spyware company NSO Group was ordered by a U.S. federal court on Tuesday to pay WhatsApp and its parent company Meta almost $170 million in damages after its cyber tools were used to hack around 1,400 WhatsApp accounts.

I remain confused why Apple thought this case was not worth fighting.

Meta:

In this specific case, we know we have a long road ahead to collect awarded damages from NSO and we plan to do so. Ultimately, we would like to make a donation to digital rights organizations that are working to defend people against such attacks around the world. Our next step is to secure a court order to prevent NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp again.

[…]

Finally, we’re publishing (unofficial) transcripts of deposition videos that were shown in open court so that these records are available to researchers and journalists studying these threats and working to protect the public. We intend to add official court transcripts once they become available.

If Meta so desperately wants to make this donation, it could do so at any time.

Also, while the deposition transcripts are nice to have and certainly contain revealing moments, they are incomplete. Huge chunks of time are missing. This is perhaps for confidentiality or because Meta only wants to publish salient portions, but I would prefer if more were available. Context matters.

Anyway, good for Meta for seeing this through to the end. I am sure it will spend its winnings wisely.