Eventhough Modi-led-central government has been denying allegations surrounding Pegasussnooping, the Israeli authorities have started inspecting the offices ofsurveillance outfit NSO Group to investigate the misuse of company's spyware byseveral government clients, The Guardian reported.
Officialsfrom the Defence Ministry visited the company's offices near Tel Aviv onWednesday, at the same time when Defence Minister Benny Gantz arrived in Parisfor a pre-arranged visit, in which he discussed the Pegasus revelations withhis French counterpart.
FrenchPresident Emmanuel Macron is one of the highest profile figures whose phonenumbers appeared on a leaked databse of 50,000 numbers that are believed tohave been selected as candidates for possible surveillance by the clients ofNSO, the report said.
Hespoke to Israel Prime Minister Naftali Bennett last week to stress theimportance of "properly investigating" the project's findings.
Earlymedia reports described the moves on NSO's offices as a raid, but the companysaid in a statement that the authorities had "visited", rather than"raided" its premises.
TheNSO said it had been informed in advance that Defence Ministry officialsresponsible for overseeing commercial exports of sensitive cyber-exports wouldbe doing an inspection. "The company is working in full transparency withthe Israeli authorities," it added, as per the report.
TheDefence Ministry said in a tweet that the visit conducted by several statebodies was related to disclosures stemming from the Pegasus project -- aconsortium of 17 media outlets, including The Guardian, which revealed lastweek that government clients around the world have used the hacking softwaresold by NSO to target human rights activists, journalists and lawyers.
Asthe scale of the disclosures has become clearer, diplomatic pressure hasmounted on Israel to explain the nature of the relationship between NSO and thestate under the tenure of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the reportsaid.
Thewider Pegasus project investigation found that the Israeli government gave theNSO explicit permission in 2017 to try to sell the hacking tools to SaudiArabia in a deal reportedly worth at least $55 million, the report said.
Gantztold French Defence Minister, Florence Parly, on Wednesday that Israel isinvestigating the matter "with the utmost seriousness", according toa statement from the Israeli Defence Ministry.
Priorto their Paris meeting, French government spokesperson Gabriel Attal had saidthat Parly was keen to "question her counterpart about the knowledge theIsraeli government had of the activities of NSO's clients" and whatmeasures would be put in place "to prevent a misuse of these tools thatare highly intrusive".
Gantzhad previously defended export licences for the hacking tools, saying in aspeech at a cyberware conference in Tel Aviv last week that "countriesthat purchase these systems must meet the terms of use", which are solelyfor criminal and terrorism investigations.