Spyware firm NSO Group is marketing software that uses mobile phone data to monitor and predict the spread of COVID-19, says some countries are testing it
A controversial Israeli cyber-security company is marketing software that uses mobile phone data to monitor and predict the spread of the coronavirus. Tweets: @paul__johnson , @roryireland , @angryukstaffer , @ruskin147 , and @kiwanja Tweets: Paul Johnson / @paul__johnson : Helping to battle the global pandemic: step forward NSO Group, the Israeli cyber-security company. -Software will ‘work best if mobile phone operators provide records of every subscriber in country’ By @BBCRoryCJ http://www.bbc.co.uk/... Rory Byrne / @roryireland : Can't see what the problem of letting a dodgy Israeli spyware company loose on a countries network data might be...surely it wouldn't be calling home also... https://twitter.com/... Angry UK Staffer / @angryukstaffer : NSO Group involved in the hacking of many human rights activists of Saudi Arabia and UAE, is marketing software that uses mobile phone data to monitor and predict the spread of the coronavirus. @ideagov @oamaz7 @iyad_elbaghdadi @georgegalloway https://www.bbc.co.uk/... Rory Cellan-Jones / @ruskin147 : Coronavirus: Israeli spyware firm pitches to be Covid-19 saviour. NSO Group offering tool which would see governments scrape vast amounts of mobile network data to monitor citizens infected with the virus https://www.bbc.co.uk/... Ken Banks / @kiwanja : That time a surveillance company suddenly developed a conscience. Let's not normalise this kind of behaviour in the guise of ‘doing good’. #coronavirus https://www.bbc.co.uk/...
Context & Ripple Effects
NSO Group, best known for Pegasus spyware sales to Gulf states worth hundreds of millions of dollars detailed by Haaretz sources, is repositioning its surveillance stack as pandemic response: software that ingests mobile phone records — reportedly working best when operators hand over every subscriber's data — to monitor and predict coronavirus spread, with some countries already testing it.
The pitch landed amid immediate scrutiny. Weeks later a researcher found NSO's contact-tracing system, codenamed Fleming, exposed unprotected online an exposure NSO dismissed as a demo, and researchers later reported the firm used location data from thousands of unsuspecting people while pitching the same tracing tech to governments and journalists per TechCrunch. The episode set up the argument Snowden would later make for an outright spyware trade ban.
First-order effects
- Governments testing the tool gain population-scale movement tracking under a public-health banner, while their mobile operators face pressure to surrender full subscriber-level records as the software's stated optimal input.
- NSO gains a new sales narrative that recasts a firm criticized for spyware abuse as a crisis vendor, opening health-ministry budgets alongside its existing intelligence-agency customer base.
Second-order effects
- Human-rights critics and journalists who flagged the firm's spyware record extend that scrutiny to the COVID product, forcing NSO to defend epidemiological claims rather than just deny misuse allegations.
- Rival surveillance vendors get a template: any crisis that legitimizes bulk location data invites repackaged monitoring products, raising the competitive stakes for telecom-data intermediaries.
Third-order effects
- If emergency deployments normalize operator-level data sharing, pandemic-era surveillance infrastructure risks persisting past the crisis — the pattern Snowden's 'they sell the virus' framing targets, and one later validated when Citizen Lab found Pegasus on a device inside UK No. 10.
- The commercial spyware industry's expansion into public health strengthens the case for export controls and trade bans on offensive cyber tools, shifting the debate from misuse by customers to the legitimacy of the vendors themselves.
The trend: Commercial spyware firms are diversifying into crisis-driven mass-data products, using emergencies to legitimize surveillance capabilities that outlast the emergency itself.