The Biden administration announced on Monday that it would impose new restrictions that will allow imposing visa restrictions on foreign individuals involved in the misuse of commercial spyware.
The new policies could affect major US allies, including Israel, India, Jordan, and Hungary.
US Announces New Restrictions
The new policy, which was announced on Monday, demonstrates how the Biden administration continues to see the proliferation of weapons-grade commercial spyware, which has been used by governments all over the world to target hundreds of political dissidents, human rights activists, journalists, and attorneys. This poses a severe threat to US counterintelligence and national security.
The move was taken three years after the administration banned the US government from using commercial spyware and put Israel's NSO Group on a blacklist maintained by the commerce department. The Biden administration's severe position on Israeli companies, which dominate the world in developing commercial malware, has become a diplomatic cause of contention between the two allies.
Spyware such as NSO's Pegasus, when employed effectively against a target, can covertly enter any phone without the user's knowledge.
Through spyware such as Pegasus, intelligence services or other government agencies can surreptitiously obtain a mobile phone user's photos, text messages, and phone conversations, including communications exchanged through encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal.
The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, stated that "arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances, and extrajudicial killings in the most egregious of cases" had been connected to the improper use of commercial spyware.
Spyware has been perceived by the US government as a security risk even when used by close allies, mainly when it comes to US government employees stationed overseas, such as diplomats and intelligence officers. On Monday, a senior administration official revealed that spyware has recently targeted over fifty US federal employees across ten nations and three continents.
Hacking researchers claimed that they have evidence that people who employ Apple's "lockdown" security feature have been targeted by malware, but the infection was unsuccessful. According to a report, authorities in Jordan used NSO spyware to target dozens of people.
However, it is still a big problem in Jordan, where advocacy group Access Now just revealed that Pegasus had targeted or hacked about thirty-six people.
US Introduces Global Visa Ban
The State Department announced on Monday that the visa limitations would apply to people in countries that do not need a visa to enter the US, like EU countries and Israel. It is regarded as a "global" visa ban, and anyone affected by the sanction would be informed that they are no longer eligible for visa-free travel and must apply for a visa at a US consulate to enter the country.
The State Department's guidelines noted that the ban will prevent entry for anyone who is thought to be abusing commercial spyware "to target, arbitrarily or unlawfully surveil, harass, suppress, or intimidate individuals including journalists, activists, other persons perceived to be dissidents for their work, members of marginalized communities or vulnerable populations, or the family members of these targeted individuals."
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