The Mexican attorney general's office says it is investigating a ~$23M purchase of Pegasus by the prior administration and whether the NSO sold it legally
Reuters : Tweets: @richards1052 Tweets: Tikun Olam / @richards1052 : For years, Mexico bought & used @NSOgroup's Pegasus spyware to track journalists, lawyers and families seeking information on their murderered children. Corrupt AG who bought Pegasus absconded to Israel, which gives this criminal refuge. https://www.reuters.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
The probe lands after years of documented Pegasus abuse in Mexico: reporting traced how the country became the spyware's first client and most prolific user, with infections reaching Alejandro Encinas while he investigated military abuses and, as far back as 2017, advocates for Mexico's soda tax. What was previously a story of covert targeting is now being examined through the transaction itself — who authorized the ~$23M purchase and on what legal basis NSO sold it.
First-order effects
- Officials from the prior administration now face a formal criminal investigation over the purchase, shifting the political cost of the spyware program onto named former decision-makers.
- NSO's sales practices come under direct legal scrutiny in a major client state, testing whether its exports to Mexico were approved and executed lawfully.
Second-order effects
- Israel, which licenses NSO's exports and per the related coverage gave refuge to the former official who bought Pegasus, faces pressure over how its approval regime permitted a sale used against journalists, lawyers, and victims' families.
- Other governments named in the global Pegasus reporting — the CIA, UAE, and Saudi Arabia among them — can expect their own purchases to be reframed as audit targets rather than security secrets.
Third-order effects
- If client states keep converting spyware use into criminal and legislative investigations, commercial cyberarms deals shift from unreviewable executive purchases to transactions requiring documented legal authorization — reshaping how NSO and its peers can sell.
- Domestic accountability probes of this kind give victims' families and civil society a procedural path to expose targeting that technical forensics alone never resolved.
The trend: Governments that bought NSO's Pegasus are turning the scrutiny inward, transforming spyware from a covert instrument of state power into the subject of domestic criminal investigation.