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	"title": "Judge says maker of Pegasus spyware does not need to provide sought-after Israeli witnesses in WhatsApp case",
	"llm_title": "",
	"authors": "",
	"file_creation_date": "0001-01-01T00:00:00Z",
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	"plain_text": "Judge says maker of Pegasus spyware does not need to provide\r\nsought-after Israeli witnesses in WhatsApp case\r\nBy Suzanne Smalley\r\nPublished: 2024-08-02 · Archived: 2026-04-05 13:23:00 UTC\r\nThe federal judge presiding over a long-running court battle between the Israel-based spyware manufacturer NSO\r\nGroup and the Meta-owned WhatsApp messaging platform on Thursday denied a WhatsApp appeal to allow it to\r\ndepose additional witnesses in Israel and subject them to turn over documents in discovery.\r\nThe decision could be significant in the aftermath of last week’s revelations that the Israeli government sought to\r\ninfluence the case by reportedly seizing NSO Group documents, issuing a gag order to prevent Israeli press\r\ncoverage of the seizure and editing court filings produced by the spyware purveyor. NSO Group’s zero-click\r\nPegasus spyware is considered by privacy experts to be the most advanced spyware technology available today,\r\nand is sold to governments worldwide.\r\nIn denying the WhatsApp request, Northern California federal judge Phyllis Hamilton said the three current\r\nexecutives NSO Group selected to testify are sufficient sources of information on the company’s practices relating\r\nto its Pegasus product.\r\nCurrently, NSO CEO Yaron Shohat, vice president of research and development Tamir Gazneli and vice president\r\nof client executives Ramon Eshkar are scheduled to be deposed in the case. \r\nWhatsApp argued to the court that those witnesses will not give a full picture of the hacks or how Pegasus is sold\r\nand deployed.\r\n“NSO claims, without support, that the three current executives that it has hand-selected for depositions …\r\npossess such vast knowledge about NSO’s attack on WhatsApp’s servers and its users that the depositions of the\r\n[additional] NSO witnesses would be duplicative,” WhatsApp argued in an earlier court filing.\r\n“NSO’s initial disclosures showed that certain of the NSO witnesses know about the topics that Plaintiffs seek to\r\nexplore during depositions, and that the three current executives that NSO now offers for depositions do not,” it\r\nadded.\r\nHamilton overruled WhatsApp, saying that “the discovery sought can be obtained from deponents who have\r\nalready agreed to appear.”\r\nThe judge’s Thursday order also overruled an NSO Group attempt to depose a digital forensic researcher working\r\nfor the Citizen Lab, whose experts helped WhatsApp identify civil society victims of the Pegasus infections of\r\nsome 1,400 WhatsApp users in 2019.\r\nHamilton also denied an NSO Group request to obtain pre-litigation communications between WhatsApp and\r\nCitizen Lab.\r\nhttps://therecord.media/maker-of-pegasus-spyware-deposition-whatsapp-lawsuit\r\nPage 1 of 3\n\nThe Citizen Lab has become a nemesis of NSO Group’s because it has led many investigations documenting\r\nPegasus infections on civil society phones (NSO Group says its product is only sold to governments to use for law\r\nenforcement and intelligence investigations).\r\nThroughout the lawsuit NSO Group has consistently sought to depose experts from The Citizen Lab and has asked\r\nthat the organization turn over all documents relating to its Pegasus investigation even though the digital forensic\r\nresearch institute is not a party to the case.\r\nNo previous article\r\nNo new articles\r\nSuzanne Smalley\r\nis a reporter covering digital privacy, surveillance technologies and cybersecurity policy for The Record. She was\r\npreviously a cybersecurity reporter at CyberScoop. Earlier in her career Suzanne covered the Boston Police\r\nDepartment for the Boston Globe and two presidential campaign cycles for Newsweek. She lives in Washington\r\nwith her husband and three children.\r\nhttps://therecord.media/maker-of-pegasus-spyware-deposition-whatsapp-lawsuit\r\nPage 2 of 3\n\nSource: https://therecord.media/maker-of-pegasus-spyware-deposition-whatsapp-lawsuit\r\nhttps://therecord.media/maker-of-pegasus-spyware-deposition-whatsapp-lawsuit\r\nPage 3 of 3",
	"extraction_quality": 1,
	"language": "EN",
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		"https://therecord.media/maker-of-pegasus-spyware-deposition-whatsapp-lawsuit"
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