[ozymandias12]

NSO gets the mic because its the biggest commercial name, there are several other companies that fly under the radar with similar technologies.

I like what some other user proposed here: military grade classification. Tada. Now sanctions apply to both sellers and users of this crap.

[ttctciyf]

I think there is a licensing procedure in the UK and Germany (Gamma Group) and Israel (NSO), and lip-service to the idea that it's forbidden to sell to repressive regimes, already.

The big deal with the NSO story is the 50K target names, I think, and it is a big deal, but you'd expect in a supposedly oppositional paper like the Grauniad, that there'd be some mention of the current UK government's spotty record in this very department, and a sense of the history of the abuse of this technology. I'd have a hard time believing that any of this is news to the journalists reporting the story.

[mike_d]

Countries have very little interest in regulating these groups because of the value of fourth-party collection.

If Israel for example provides software to Morocco that is used to spy on Algeria, Israel gets free intelligence on Algeria. It is even more valuable than directly spying on Algeria because it is absolutely deniable and may target foreign spies or terrorists that might not have been on Israel's radar to start with.

While spying on journalists and NGOs is horrific from a human rights perspective, it is sadly of little significance to how the intelligence game is played.