The government on Friday said there is no plan to ban “any group named NSO Group”.
This statement follows an uproar earlier this year over the alleged use of Israeli firm NSO Group’s Pegasus software to snoop on journalists, politicians and activists worldwide, including in India. However, the company had stated that its product was used “exclusively by government Intelligence and law enforcement agencies to fight crime and terror”.
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“No, Sir. There is no proposal for banning any group named ‘NSO Group’,” Minister of State of Electronics and IT Rajeev Chandrasekhar said in a written reply to the Rajya Sabha.
The Minister was replying to a question on whether the IT Ministry has banned the NSO Group in India, asked by two Rajya Sabha MPs Vishambhar Prasad Nishad and Sukhram Singh Yadav.
Asked whether the U.S. had blacklisted NSO Group and Candiru for providing the Pegasus spyware, Mr. Chandrasekhar said no such information was available with the IT Ministry.
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Last month, the U.S. Commerce Department had added NSO Group and Candiru to its trade blacklist, saying that they developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.
