UN rapporteur condemns UK hosting of Israeli spyware firm

The UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression David Kaye criticised the UK government for hosting NSO Group, an Israeli surveillance and spyware company, who is allegedly selling its technology to repressive regimes to snoop on journalists and human rights activists, The Guardian reports. Kaye warned that steps taken to evaluate the human rights records should be disclosed by the industry.The Guardian has earlier reported that the UK the government will host the Israeli firm as an exhibitor at the closed-door Security and Policing Home Office event in March. The NSO Group is being sued by Facebook over allegations it helped to develop and deploy malware used to spy on over a thousand WhatsApp users, and was linked by the UN report to the hack of the phone of Amazon’s boss Jeff Bezos. The NSO Group has denied all the claims.