NSO Group’s Claim of Sovereign Immunity Will Likely Fail, Increasing Legal Pressure ⇥ codastory.com

Ellery Roberts Biddle, of Authoritarian Tech, after linking to a series of stories about the extreme oppression faced by people in China and Tigray, in Ethiopia — stories which should not be ignored, mind you — in an update about Meta’s suit against NSO Group:

This is why the legal challenge against the Israeli tech giant is so significant. After the original filing, NSO responded with its own court petition, seeking “sovereign immunity” from legal challenges in the U.S., arguing that it was merely acting as a contractor of foreign governments. But this tactic now looks likely to fail. In an amicus brief filed last week, the U.S. Justice Department issued a stern rebuke to NSO’s petition, noting that “no foreign state has supported NSO’s claim to immunity” and that NSO has “not even identified the states for which it claims to have acted as an agent.”

You have to wonder if the outcome would be different had a state stepped up to admit it used NSO Group’s spyware products — particularly a U.S. ally. Sure makes it a risky time to be in the spy-for-hire software business.