Social media powerhouse Meta (the parent company of WhatsApp) has been awarded $168 million in damages by a US federal jury in California. This verdict concludes a 6-year legal battle against the Israeli spyware firm NSO Group, which is known for its Pegasus surveillance software. The jury’s decision includes $444,719 in compensatory damages and a substantial $167.3 million in punitive damages.
The case originated from a 2019 lawsuit filed by WhatsApp, alleging that NSO exploited a vulnerability in the app’s voice calling feature to install Pegasus spyware on around 1,400 users’ devices. The targets included journalists, human rights activists, and government officials.
WhatsApp contended that NSO’s actions violated the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, California’s Comprehensive Computer Data Access and Fraud Act, and breached WhatsApp’s terms of service.
Meanwhile, throughout the lawsuit, NSO Group maintained that it sold Pegasus exclusively to government clients for lawful surveillance purposes. However, the court found evidence suggesting that NSO played an active role in deploying the spyware, undermining its defense. Also, Judge Phyllis Hamilton criticized NSO for obstructing the legal process by failing to provide essential evidence, including the source code of Pegasus, leading to sanctions against the company.
“The jury’s verdict today to punish NSO is a critical deterrent to the spyware industry against their illegal acts aimed at American companies and our users worldwide. This trial also exposed that WhatsApp was far from NSO’s only target — this is an industry-wide threat, and it’ll take all of us to defend against it. The fight isn’t over. Our next step is to secure a court order to prevent NSO from ever targeting WhatsApp again,” Will Cathcart (head of WhatsApp) stated in response to the verdict.
At the same time, NSO Group has indicated plans to review the verdict and consider an appeal. Previously, the US government has taken measures against NSO Group, including adding the company to its Entity List in 2021 (effectively banning US companies from supplying NSO).
The latest verdict against NSO Group in the United States comes at a time when the Israeli spyware firm is involved in multiple legal challenges and controversies across various jurisdictions around the world. For example, in 2024, the UK High Court permitted journalist Rania Dridi to initiate legal action against the United Arab Emirates, alleging her mobile device was targeted with Pegasus spyware.
Also in 2021, the Supreme Court of India appointed an expert committee to investigate allegations of Pegasus spyware usage against Indian citizens. The committee’s report (released in 2022) found no conclusive evidence of Pegasus infections but did detect malware in some devices. Even in a second such instance, analyses by Amnesty International in late 2023 revealed that prominent journalists, including Siddharth Varadarajan and Anand Mangnale, had been targeted with Pegasus spyware.
Content originally published on The Tech Media – Global technology news, latest gadget news and breaking tech news.
