(Ken Silva, Headline USA) A federal judge has ruled that the FBI can keep secret most of its internal documents about the use of the controversial Israeli surveillance tool, Pegasus.
Developed by former members of the elite Israeli Unit 8200—comparable to the U.S. National Security Agency—Pegasus software allegedly infects iPhones and Androids, enabling operators to extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and activate microphones in secret.
Pegasus became an internationally known name about two years ago, when the Guardian and 16 other media outlets began publishing a series of stories about how foreign governments used the software to surveil at least 180 journalists and numerous other targets around the world.
Last year, the New York Times further reported that the FBI considered using Pegasus. FBI Director Chris Wray reportedly admitted that his bureau bought a license for Pegasus, but claims that it was only for research and development—“to be able to figure out how bad guys could use it, for example,” he said last year.
The New York Times apparently wanted to know more about how the FBI uses Pegasus. The newspaper sued the bureau in February 2022 for documents about its use of the software.
The Times argued that the FBI should produce records about Pegasus because it supposedly doesn’t use the software.
In a ruling filed Friday, District Judge Jed Rakoff called the Times’s argument “unpersuasive on its face, as well as highly speculative.” The judge did not elaborate further.
Rakoff only ordered the FBI to produce several, seemingly inconsequential, records about Pegasus. For example, he said a “cover email” from the FBI’s Office of Technology Division shouldn’t be exempt from disclosure.
But by and large, Rakoff said the documents should be kept secret in the interest of national security.
“The Government convincingly explains that disclosing discussions such as these about how to test and evaluate technologies for gaining access to encrypted information could reveal information about the FBI’s actual and expected capabilities, which could help ‘allow hostile actors to exploit potential weaknesses in the FBI’s ability to assess similar software,’” the judge said.
“The Court believes the Government has established that this kind of disclosure could be reasonably expected to increase the risk of circumvention of law enforcement.”
While the FBI gets to keep much of its Pegasus documents secret, the developers of the software continue to face numerous lawsuits around the world for failing to curtail the abuse of its product.
Last month, the widow of deceased Washington Post writer Jamal Khashoggi filed her own lawsuit over the matter, claiming that Pegasus’s developers allowed the Saudi Arabian government to use the software to target her husband.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
