By Ryan Gallagher
The alleged theft of data from the iPhone X used by billionaire Jeff Bezos has cast an unflattering light on the swiftly growing and highly secretive cottage industry of software developers specializing in digital surveillance.
NSO Group and Hacking Team are among the most well-known surveillance companies. Both have sold tools to law enforcement agencies that are used to covertly infect targeted mobile phones and computers with spyware, which can record calls, harvest text messages, take photographs using the device’s inbuilt camera and record audio using its microphone.
But many more companies, some of them not as well known to the public, are selling similar technology across the globe, as part of an industry that isn’t well understood and often subject to minimal regulation or oversight. The hack of Bezos’s phone has renewed calls from some officials for a moratorium on sales until more rigorous global controls are enacted.
“This industry seems to just keep growing,” said Eric Kind, director of AWO, a London-based data rights law firm and consulting agency. “Ten years ago, there were just a few companies. Now there are 20 or more, aggressively pitching their stuff at trade shows around the world.”
