The deal between defense contractor L3Harris and cyberweapon maker NSO reportedly failed after talks were exposed
A US defense contractor that tried to purchase the infamous Israeli firm behind the Pegasus spyware, claimed it had the backing of the US intelligence community, the New York Times has reported. Talks are said to have collapsed after the media exposed them last month.
The Sunday report offered new details about the bid by L3Harris to acquire the embattled Israeli firm NSO, which was blacklisted by the US Department of Commerce in November last year.
Washington imposed sanctions after years of reports that the Israeli company’s flagship product, Pegasus, was used by clients to spy on foreign officials, journalists and human-rights activists, which significantly hurt the NSO business.
According to the Times, L3Harris negotiators claimed to have the quiet backing of the US intelligence community to purchase NSO. It was supposed to help with the US approval of the deal despite the Israeli company being on the blacklist. American executives made the claim while meeting Amir Eshel, the director general of the Israeli defense ministry, who would have to sign off on the proposed acquisition.
Company officers said that the US government would allow the deal to go through under certain conditions, Times sources said. They asked the NSO’s collection of ‘zero-day’ exploits and Pegasus source code to be offered to the members of the Five Eyes intelligence-sharing group, which incorporates the US, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The Israeli government was split on the proposal, with the Ministry of Defense supporting it and the intelligence community objecting, the report said. The military also wanted to keep authority to issue export licenses for NSO services. The Times noted that NSO was treated by Israel as a de facto “arm of the state.” The firm took on as clients those nations that the Israeli government wanted to bolster relations with, including Saudi Arabia.
The talks were first reported last month by the website Intelligence Online, with a joint report by Haaretz, The Washington Post and The Guardian partially confirming its content. The Times and Washington Post said days after the exposure the talks had been canceled, though according to the Times, “there have been attempts to resuscitate the negotiations”.
US officials told both newspapers they were not aware of any support from within the American government for L3Harris’ bid to purchase NSO.
“After learning about the potential sale, the [intelligence community] did an analysis that raised concerns about the sale’s implications and informed the administration’s position,” the Times cited a source as saying.
The newspaper said questions remained “about whether parts of the US government … had seized an opportunity to try to bring control of NSO’s powerful spyware under US authority” with or without White House knowledge.
L3Harris makes billions each year from federal and state government contracts. The Pentagon is its primary source of contracts, but it has also provided services to the FBI and local police forces in the US, the Times said.
In 2018, the American firm purchased Australian spyware firm Azimuth Security. Two years prior Azimuth had helped the FBI unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino shooters, ending the agency’s stand-off with Apple over its refusal to provide the government access to the device. The company’s role was not revealed until last year.
UNITED NATIONS, Jul 11 (IPS) – The writer is Director, Population Division of the United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs.What does a young girl from Juba, in South Sudan, an 8-year-old boy living in the slums of Mumbai, in India, a young mother from the south of Lima, in Peru, and an 83-year-old man enjoying retirement in the suburbs of Stockholm, in Sweden, have in common?
It looks like commitments by Sweden and Finland to fight militant groups brought Turkey to drop objections to those countries joining NATO. But it’s still not quite a closed issue in Turkey.
Former US president bashed Tesla CEO over his botched Twitter deal
The world’s richest man has “got himself a mess” with a “rotten contract” to purchase Twitter that he is now trying to terminate, former US president Donald Trump said at a weekend rally as he touted his alternative Truth Social network, calling it “hot as a pistol.”
During a campaign-style rally in Anchorage, Alaska on Saturday, Trump declared that one of the “highest priorities under a Republican Congress will be to stop left-wing censorship and to restore free speech in America,” before tearing into Tesla and SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
“He’s got himself a mess… So he’s another bullshit artist but he’s not going to be buying [Twitter],” Trump said, after mistakenly calling the tech mogul “Leon.” Trump also recalled how Musk allegedly “told me he voted for me,” only to recently claim he is not sure he ever voted for a Republican.
Trump on Elon Musk: “You know, he said the other day, Oh, I’ve never voted for a Republican. I said, I didn’t know that, he told me he voted for me. So he’s another bullshit artist.” pic.twitter.com/1cBiZsX1BJ
The former US leader, whover, aknowledged that Musk “might later” change his mind again and purchase Twitter afterall. “Who the hell knows what’s going to happen?”
The billionaire and self-proclaimed “free-speech absolutist,” Musk, first disclosed a large purchase of Twitter shares in early April, before proposing to buy the platform outright, vowing to improve the platform by “defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.” The company’s board at first sought to fight off the hostile takeover with “poison pills,” but eventually accepted his offer on April 25.
However, on Friday he abruptly canceled the $44 billion deal, accusing the social media company of “material breach of multiple provisions” of the merger agreement. The company threatened to sue Musk to compel him to go through with the deal, or pay a $1 billion break-up fee.
“He’s got a pretty rotten contract. I looked at his contract, not a good contract,” Trump claimed.
Trump was banned almost simultaneously from Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and other mainstream social media platforms while still in office, supposedly out of concern that his tweets about alleged voter fraud in the 2020 election would pose the “risk of further incitement of violence.”
“I would reverse the permanent ban,” Musk said shortly before the deal was first put on hold in May, calling it a “morally bad decision… and foolish in the extreme.”
Trump, however, has insisted he will not return to Twitter even if his account, which had around 89 million followers, is reinstated. He said he will instead use his own platform, Truth Social, which he once again promoted during the Saturday rally, calling it “hot as a pistol.”
Over the last 10 years, the number of people around the world who have been forced to flee their homes and become displaced in their own countries, has more than doubled. In the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), the increase in internally displaced persons (IDPs) has been particularly stark, as Resident Coordinator Bruno Lemarquis, the senior UN official there, explains.
