Spyware maker Paragon accused the Italian government of refusing its help in investigating whether a journalist was spied on with its technology, according to a statement on Monday.
In the statement first reported by Haaretz, Paragon claimed it was this refusal that prompted the company to cut ties with its Italian government customers.
“The company offered both the Italian government and parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist in violation of Italian law and the contractual terms,” read the statement. “As the Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy.”
Paragon confirmed to TechCrunch that the statement was accurate. After TechCrunch contacted Paragon’s executive chairman John Fleming for comment, Emily Horne, who works for WestExec Advisors, responded saying the company is “referring all media queries” to the statements in the Haaretz article.
This is the first time a spyware provider has publicly stated it cut ties with a specific customer after reports of abuse.
The spyware maker’s accusation is the latest twist in a scandal that erupted in January, when WhatsApp revealed a mass-hacking campaign targeting its users. The messaging app giant said it alerted around 90 users that they were targeted with spyware made by Paragon, a company co-founded by former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak (pictured). Paragon, which has a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has marketed itself in the U.S. and Europe as ostensibly a more responsible vendor compared to its predecessors in the industry.
Francesco Cancellato, the director of news website Fanpage who was the first person to come forward saying he received WhatsApp’s notification, is the journalist that Paragon referred to in the statement.
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Paragon’s statement is a response to a report published last week by an Italian parliamentary committee known as COPASIR, which investigated the spyware scandal in the country. The committee concluded there was no evidence that Cancellato had been a target of Italy’s two intelligence agencies, AISI and AISE, which it confirmed were Paragon customers.
Hours after Haaretz published Paragon’s statement, the Italian government rebuffed Paragon’s remarks, saying that the decision to first suspend and then terminate the contract with Paragon was mutual, according to unnamed sources quoted by Italian news wire ANSA.
The sources were also quoted as saying that the Department of Information for Security (DIS), the Italian government body overseeing AISE and AISI, refused Paragon’s help to check the logs on the agencies’ Graphite spyware systems because doing so would have exposed confidential data to a private foreign company and compromised national security. Allowing Paragon to help, the sources claimed, would have compromised the reputation of Italian intelligence agencies among its international peers.
COPASIR and the Italian government, which is led by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, did not respond to TechCrunch’s requests for comment.
Cancellato responded to Paragon’s statement in a video posted on Fanpage. “Who is lying in this story? COPASIR or Paragon?” he said.
“To find out, all we have to do is ask Paragon to officially tell us who spied on Fanpage. They said they can find out? We want them to tell us once and for all,” said Cancellato.
In late April, Fanpage reporter Ciro Pellegrino said he had received a notification from Apple that he had been targeted with government spyware. COPASIR’s investigation did not mention Pellegrino’s case.
COPASIR, on the other hand, confirmed that other victims of Paragon spyware were lawfully targeted, including Luca Casarini and Beppe Caccia, who work for the Italian nonprofit Mediterranea Saving Humans, which rescues immigrants who try to cross the Mediterranean Sea, and David Yambio, the president and co-founder of Refugees in Libya, a non-governmental organization active in Italy.
All of them, COPASIR said, were lawfully investigated for their activities related to alleged illegal immigration.
On the other hand, COPASIR concluded that there was no evidence of surveillance against Mattia Ferrari, a priest who works on the rescue ship of Mediterranea Saving Humans, who also received a notification from WhatsApp.
In a statement to ANSA on Monday, COPASIR said that it was willing to declassify the contents of the hearing it held with Paragon representatives on April 9 to defend its work in the inquiry. The statement said COPASIR was surprised by Paragon’s statement.
