People all around the world deserve the right to have a private conversation. Communication privacy is a human right, a civil liberty and one of the centerpieces of a free society. And while we all deserve basic communications privacy, the journalists, NGO workers and human rights and democracy activists among us are especially at risk, since they are often at odds with powerful governments.
So it is no surprise that people around the world are angry to learn that surveillance software sold by NSO Group to governments has been found on cellphones worldwide. Thousands of NGOs, human rights and democracy activists, along with government employees and many others have been targeted and spied upon. We agree and we are thankful for the work done by Amnesty International, the countless journalists at Forbidden Stories, along with Citizen Lab, to bring this awful situation to light.