The NSO Group, one of the most well-known and controversial makers of government spyware, published a new transparency report on Wednesday as the company enters what it described as “a new phase of accountability.”
However, the report, unlike NSO’s previous annual disclosures, does not detail how many clients the company has rejected, investigated, suspended or terminated for human rights violations involving its surveillance tools. While the report contains promises to respect human rights and controls that require its clients to do the same, the report provides no concrete evidence to support this.
Experts and critics who have followed NSO and the spyware market for years believe the report is part of an effort and campaign by the company to get the US government to remove the company from a blacklist – technically called the Entity List – as it hopes to enter the US market with new financial backers and executives at the helm.
Last year, a group of US investors acquired the company, and since then, NSO has undergone a transition that has included major personnel changes: former Trump official David Friedman was appointed the new executive chairman; CEO Yaron Shohat resigned. and Omri Lavie, the last founder still involved with the company, also left, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.
“When NSO products are in the right hands in the right countries, the world is a much safer place. That will always be our primary mission,” Friedman wrote in the report, which did not name any countries where NSO operates.
Natalia Krapiva, the senior technology legal counsel at Access Now, a digital rights organization that investigates spyware abuses, told TechCrunch: “NSO is clearly on a campaign to be removed from the US Entity List, and one of the key things they need to show is that they’ve changed dramatically as a company since they were listed.”
“The change of leadership is one part and this transparency report is another,” Krapiva said.
“However, we have seen this before with NSO and other spyware companies over the years, where they change names and leadership and publish empty transparency or ethics reports, but the abuses continue.”
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“This is just another window dressing attempt and the US government should not be taken for granted,” Krapiwa said.
Since the Biden administration added NSO to the entity list, the company has applied pressure to remove its restrictions. After President Donald Trump took office last year, the NSO stepped up those efforts. But since May last year, The NSO had failed to influence the new administration.
In late December, the Trump administration lift the sanctions against three executives associated with the Intellexa spyware consortium, which some saw as a sign of a change in the administration’s attitude toward spyware makers.
Lack of details
This year’s transparency report, which covers 2025, has less detail than previous years’ reports.
In older transparency report covering 2024, for example, the NSO said it had launched three investigations into possible misuse. Without naming the customers, the company said it cut ties with one and imposed “alternative remedial measures” on another customer, including mandatory human rights training, monitoring customer activities and requesting more information about how the customer used the system. NSO did not provide any information about the third survey.
NSO also said that during 2024, the company turned down more than $20 million “in new business opportunities due to human rights concerns.”
At transparency report Published last year, covering 2022 and 2023, NSO said it suspended or terminated six government clients, without naming them, claiming those actions resulted in a loss of $57 million in revenue.
In 2021, the NSO he said had “disconnected” the systems of five clients since 2016 following an investigation into misuse, resulting in more than $100 million in “estimated lost revenue,” and also said it had “terminated engagements” with five clients due to “human rights concerns.”
NSO’s most recent transparency report does not include the total number of customers NSO has, statistics that have been consistent in previous reports.
TechCrunch asked NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier to provide similar statistics and figures, but did not receive a response by press time.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at The Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has investigated spyware abuses for more than a decade, criticized the NSO.
“I was waiting for information, numbers,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “Nothing in this document allows outsiders to verify NSO’s claims, which is common for a company that has a decade-long history of making claims that later turned out to be misleading statements.”
