According to reports, there are several digital surveillance firms that make cash from the opportunity to sell governments phone-spy tech that allows spying on citizens' smartphones through backdoor and accessing private data without authorization.
Aperture Gamers reports that there are various digital security companies all over the world, ready to access any user's personal data for money. But after a security research group found malware in the iPhone of Ahmed Mansoor, a UAE-based human rights activist, the Israeli spyware firm NSA Group is the company that made it more in the news since last week.
According to digital security experts, anything is possible in the digital world. From gathering every sound, keystroke, location and message to invisibly spying on 10 iPhone owners without their knowledge, everything is just a matter of price. With the Israeli company NSO Group that will cost $650,000, plus a $500,000 setup fee.
The New York Times reports that the NSO Group took its name from the first initials of each of its three founders. The company is among those that sell surveillance tools allowing to capture any kind of activity on a smartphone, from personal contacts to the user's location. The smartphone can even transform into a secret recording device due to these spy tools.
The NSO Group has kept a low profile since it has been founded six years ago. Last month, however, security researchers found spyware created by the NSO Group trying to access the iPhone of a human-rights activist based in the United Arab Emirates. They also discovered a second target of the phone-spy tech made by the NSO Group in the person of a Mexican journalist who wrote about the Mexican government's coruption.
The company is just one of the many that operate in the field of offering digital spying tools able of tracking everything a target does on a smartphone. These companies are aggressively marketing their services to law enforcement agencies and governments around the world. The industry argues that this kind of spying is a necessity in order to help making the world a safer place by tracking drug lords, kidnappers and terrorists. However, digital privacy groups certainly have a different opinion.
