Six Countries Named as 'Likely' Purchasers of Paragon's Cellphone Spyware

The governments of Australia, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Israel, and Singapore "are likely customers of Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions," reports TechCrunch, "according to a new technical report by a renowned digital security lab." On Wednesday, The Citizen Lab, a group of academics and security researchers housed at the University of Toronto that has investigated the spyware industry for more than a decade, published a report about the Israeli-founded surveillance startup, identifying the six governments as "suspected Paragon deployments."

At the end of January, WhatsApp notified around 90 users that the company believed were targeted with Paragon spyware, prompting a scandal in Italy, where some of the targets live... Paragon's executive chairman John Fleming told TechCrunch that the company "licenses its technology to a select group of global democracies — principally, the United States and its allies." Israeli news outlets reported in late 2024 that U.S. venture capital AE Industrial Partners had acquired Paragon for at least $500 million upfront....

Among the suspected customer countries, Citizen Lab singled out Canada's Ontario Provincial Police (OPP), which specifically appears to be a Paragon customer given that one of the IP addresses for the suspected Canadian customer is linked directly to the OPP.
In a related development the Guardian reports that a prominent activist in Italy "has warned the international criminal court that his mobile phone was under surveillance" when he was providing them confidential information about torture victims in Libya.

Both articles submitted by long-time Slashdot reader ISayWeOnlyToBePolite.

Must not be very good

[alvinrod]

If the U.S., UK, Russia, China, or Germany aren't using it I doubt that it's very good spyware. I'm less worried about the spyware that someone has reported on then all of the spyware that they haven't.

Re:

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

India is supposed to be using it. I think Germany would be ashamed to descend to that level, echoes of the STASI.

Re:

[alvinrod]

If you think Germany isn't above spying on its own (or anyone else's) citizens because of past history you're delusional. The U.S. is supposed to be the country of limited government and individual liberty, but we're even worse. What ought to upset you is that the population is becoming more conditioned to accept this and that in the future neither country will be different from China if this allowed to continue.

Germany is obviously policing the speech and conduct of their citizens, and you can receive a

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Yeah I would say past history is exactly the reason Germany has those hate-speech laws. Agree or disagree with the law and it's reach but they have a reason to be wary of how hatred spreads in their society, couple of oopsies in the 20th century to say the least.

For the US, well, we voted to have jackboots show up to our doors. They told us they wanted to do it and said "Yes! It'll be against people i don't like so thats A-OK"

Re:

[alvinrod]

You've clearly learned nothing from history. Germany enacted many laws that were designed to prohibit the speech of the Nazi party. Unfortunately they gained power and used those same laws to crush anyone opposed to them. You have a terribly naive view that laws will only ever be used to punish the bad guys. You seem to understand how the U.S. came to enshrine precursors to those same laws, but fail to imagine that they might be used against you because of course you're a good person. A sufficiently immoral

Re:

[jacks smirking reven]

Yeah, I tend to agree with you, as an American but I am not going to ascribe every bit of American style free-speech (which also has exceptions and very real problems) onto other nations despite that own history you say I am ignorant of.

I enjoy the way we do free speech but I am not ignorant of it's many problems it side effects to our society. I think the benefit of that is worth the cost, but that's for America. What works here doesn't work everywhere.

The important questions are the state of German democ

Re:

[Vlad_the_Inhaler]

You have a terribly naive view that laws will only ever be used to punish the bad guys.

I lived in Germany for a while in the early 1980s, specifically in Berlin. I remember a demonstration against Nazis during that time (it must have been 1981) where some of the demonstrators were carrying banners showing the "Nazi cross" with a red line through it. The police arrested some of them for carrying Nazi symbols.
I'm not sure how far they got with that in the courts (I had left by then), but it was a clear stat

Re:

[Rujiel]

Israel gets to piggyback the US' spying apparatus even more than Five Eyes ever did.. just look at Wiz getting purchased by Google. Now those Unit 8200 goons get to have access to everyone's information. No conflict of interest of course

How does Apple not know what holes to plug?

[RemindMeLater]

Are there seriously 0-day flaws in iOS that Apple doesn't know about?

Honest Government Ads

[Shakes Fist]

I'd love to see HGA reporting this https://www.youtube.com/@theju... [youtube.com]