https://www.seattletimes.com/business/apnewsbreak-undercover-agents-target-cybersecurity-watchdog-2/
By Raphael Satter
The Associated Press
Updated January 28, 2019
NEW YORK (AP) -- The researchers who reported that Israeli software was used to
spy on Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi's inner circle before his
gruesome death are being targeted in turn by international undercover
operatives, The Associated Press has found.
Twice in the past two months, men masquerading as socially conscious investors
have lured members of the Citizen Lab internet watchdog group to meetings at
luxury hotels to quiz them for hours about their work exposing Israeli
surveillance and the details of their personal lives. In both cases, the
researchers believe they were secretly recorded.
Citizen Lab Director Ron Deibert described the stunts as "a new low."
"We condemn these sinister, underhanded activities in the strongest possible
terms," he said in a statement Friday. "Such a deceitful attack on an academic
group like the Citizen Lab is an attack on academic freedom everywhere."
Who these operatives are working for remains a riddle, but their tactics recall
those of private investigators who assume elaborate false identities to gather
intelligence or compromising material on critics of powerful figures in
government or business.
Citizen Lab, based out of the Munk School at the University of Toronto, has for
years played a leading role in exposing state-backed hackers operating in
places as far afield as Tibet, Ethiopia and Syria. Lately the group has drawn
attention for its repeated exposés of an Israeli surveillance software vendor
called the NSO Group, a firm whose wares have been used by governments to
target journalists in Mexico, opposition figures in Panama and human rights
activists in the Middle East.
[...]
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