In a statement released on Monday, spyware manufacturer Paragon said the Italian government had refused to assist it in looking into whether its equipment had been used to spy on a journalist.
According to the statement that Haaretz originally published, Paragon said that the company severed its ties with its Italian government clients as a result of this rejection.
According to the statement, “the corporation provided the Italian government and parliament with a means of ascertaining whether its system had been utilized against the journalist in contravention of Italian law and the conditions of the contract.” “Paragon canceled its contracts in Italy since the Italian authorities decided not to move forward with this option.”
TechCrunch received confirmation from Paragon that the statement was true. When TechCrunch reached out to John Fleming, the executive chairman of Paragon, for comment, WestExec Advisors employee Emily Horne said that the company is “pointing any media requests” to the remarks in the Haaretz report.
This is the first time a spyware provider has publicly stated it cut ties with a specific customer after reports of abuse.
The charge from the spyware manufacturer is the most recent development in a scandal that began in January when WhatsApp disclosed a widespread hacking campaign that targeted its users. The messaging app behemoth claimed to have warned over 90 users that Paragon, a business co-founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak (pictured), had installed spyware on them. In the U.S. and Europe, Paragon, which has a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has promoted itself as a purportedly more responsible vendor than its industry predecessors.
The journalist that Paragon mentioned in the statement is Francesco Cancellato, the director of the news website Fanpage, who was the first to come forward and claim to have gotten a notification from WhatsApp.
Paragon’s remark is in response to a report released last week by COPASIR, an Italian parliamentary committee that looked into the nation’s spyware problem. The committee found no proof that Italy’s two intelligence services, AISI and AISE, which it acknowledged were Paragon clients, had targeted Cancellato.
According to unnamed sources cited by Italian news wire ANSA, the Italian government rejected Paragon’s statements hours after Haaretz published them, claiming that the decision to suspend and ultimately terminate the contract with Paragon was a mutual one.
According to the sources, the Italian government agency in charge of AISE and AISI, the Department of Information for Security (DIS), rejected Paragon’s request to examine the logs on the agencies’ Graphite spyware systems because doing so would have jeopardized national security by disclosing private information to a foreign private company. According to the sources, letting Paragon assist would have damaged Italian intelligence services’ standing with their international counterparts.
TechCrunch’s requests for comment were not answered by COPASIR or the Italian government, which is headed by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Cancellato made a video on Fanpage in response to Paragon’s comments. Who in this tale is telling lies? “Paragon or COPASIR?” he asked.
All we need to do to find out is request that Paragon formally identify the spy on Fanpage. They claimed to be able to learn? Cancellato stated, “We want them to inform us once and for all.”
Ciro Pellegrino, a Fanpage reporter, claimed in late April that he had been notified by Apple that he was the victim of government surveillance. Pellegrino’s case was not mentioned in COPASIR’s investigation.
However, COPASIR confirmed that other victims of Paragon spyware were legitimately targeted, such as David Yambio, the president and co-founder of Refugees in Libya, a non-governmental organization operating in Italy, and Luca Casarini and Beppe Caccia, who are employed by the Italian nonprofit Mediterranea Saving Humans, which rescues immigrants who attempt to cross the Mediterranean Sea.
According to COPASIR, all of them were legitimately looked into for their alleged illegal immigration-related activities.
However, Mattia Ferrari, a priest who works on the Mediterranea Saving Humans rescue ship and who also received a notification from WhatsApp, was found to be unsurveilled by COPASIR.
The contents of the hearing that COPASIR had with Paragon representatives on April 9 to defend its work in the inquiry were declassified, the organization said in a statement to ANSA on Monday. According to the statement, Paragon’s comments caught COPASIR off guard.
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