All three are part of a trend of US officials with backgrounds in espionage and hacking going to work for foreign governments with questionable human rights records, which has led to calls for more oversight in Congress.
Louzain al-HathloulA prominent Saudi political activist who pressed for an end to the ban on women driving in her country is suing three former US intelligence and military officials they say helped hack their cellphones. so that a foreign government could spy on him before imprisoning and torturing him.
The non-profit Electronic Frontier Foundation announced on 9 December that it filed suit in US federal court on behalf of Ms. Al-Hathloul against former US executives Mark Baer, Ryan Adams and Daniel Gerrick, as well as a cybersecurity company called DarkMatter. has done. United Arab Emirates.
In the lawsuit, Ms. Al-Hathloul alleged that all three oversaw a project for Darkmatter that sought to track her location and steal information as part of wider surveillance efforts targeted at dissidents in the UAE and its close ally Saudi Arabia. To hack into his iPhone. She said the hacking of her phone led to her “arbitrarily arrested by the UAE’s security services and deported to Saudi Arabia, where she was detained, imprisoned and tortured.”
“Companies that sell their surveillance software and services to repressive governments must be held accountable for the resulting human rights abuses,” said David Green, director of EFF Civil Liberties.
Darkmatter assigned him the codename of “Purple Sword”, lawsuit says, citing 2019 investigation Reuters The one who first gave the details of Ms. Al-Hathloul’s hacking.
The lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to the covert private cyber-surveillance industry, which often sells valuable hacking services to authoritarian governments that are used to secretly break into the phones and other devices of activists, journalists, political opponents and others. . Tech giant Apple last month filed a lawsuit against Israel’s NSO Group, seeking to block the world’s most notorious hacker-for-hire company from breaking into Apple’s products like the iPhone.
Mr Baird, Mr Adams and Mr Gerrick admitted in September to providing sophisticated computer hacking technology to the United Arab Emirates and almost enough to resolve criminal charges in a deferred prosecution agreement the Justice Department described as the first of its kind. agreed to pay $1.7 million. The Justice Department described each of them as former US intelligence or military personnel. Mr Baird previously worked at the National Security Agency, AP previously reported.
All three are part of a trend of US officials with backgrounds in espionage and hacking going to work for foreign governments with questionable human rights records, which has led to calls for more oversight in Congress.
Lawyers for all three did not immediately return a request for comment. Queries sent by email to officials at Darkmatter based in Abu Dhabi could not be delivered.
Arrested in 2018, Ms al-Hathloul was sentenced last year to nearly six years in prison under a comprehensive anti-terrorism law. Held for 1001 days, over time in pre-trial detention and solitary confinement, he was charged with crimes such as agitating for change, causing Internet access disorder and advancing a foreign agenda.
From behind bars, Ms al-Hathloul went on a hunger strike to protest her prison conditions and joined other female activists to testify to judges that she was tortured and sexually assaulted by masked men during interrogation. was persecuted. The women said they were hit with a cane, electrocuted and thrown into the water. Some said they were groped and threatened with rape. Saudi Arabia denies that anyone was abused.
Her case sparked an international uproar over the Saudi kingdom’s human rights record, and President Joe Biden called her “a powerful activist for women’s rights” when she was released in February.
As details of Darkmatter’s hacking campaign became public, the company’s profile has plummeted over the years, with some employees moving to a new Abu Dhabi-based firm called G42. That firm has been linked to a spy tool as well as a mobile app suspected of Chinese coronavirus tests, which US officials warned against using over concerns about patient privacy, test accuracy and Chinese government involvement .
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