Pegasus snooping row: govt has no plans to ban Israel's NSO Group, Parliament told

The Narendra Modi government has informed the Parliament that it has no plans to ban Israel’s NSO Group, which has been at the centre of a global controversy over the alleged misuse of its Pegasus spyware to tap phones of journalists, activists, and politicians.

The Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology informed the Parliament on Friday that it had no information on whether the United States has blacklisted the NSO group.

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There is also no proposal to ban the group in India, Minister of State for Information and Technology, Rajeev Chandrashekhar, said in response to a question by Samajwadi Party MPs Vishambhar Prasad Nishad and Chaudhary Sukhram Singh Yadav.

Making clear that the State cannot get “a free pass every time the spectre of ‘national security’ is raised”, the Supreme Court in October ordered a “thorough inquiry” into allegations of unauthorised surveillance using the Pegasus spyware.

In November, the US Department of Commerce had blacklisted the two Israeli companies, the NSO group and Candiru which is considered its competitor in the cyber-surveillance market, adding them to the list of foreign establishments that engage in malicious cyber activities.