4 more nations sign on to US-led counter-spyware agreement

Austria, Estonia, Lithuania and the Netherlands on Sunday joined a U.S.-led pact designed to deter global spyware abuses, marking 21 nations signing onto the agreement after the alliance began with 11 participants in March of last year.

The add-ins were fleshed out on the sidelines of the United National General Assembly, a State Department release said. The announcement follows a U.S. move last week that levied sanctions on members of the Intellexa Consortium, a confederation of firms known for crafting and selling advanced surveillance tools to private companies and sovereign nations.

Spyware — software programs surreptitiously planted on victims’ devices to surveil their movements and capture private communications — has been deployed extensively by governments against journalists, politicians and dissidents around the world. It has also fueled spying and espionage scandals with private companies.

U.S. officials, including those working abroad for State, have previously been targeted by the technology. High-profile lawmakers who lead foreign affairs and national security efforts in Congress have also been put in the crosshairs of the cyber surveillance tools.

At least 74 nations have contracted with spyware providers, according to an analysis released last year by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace think tank based in Washington.

State has been working behind the scenes to accelerate adding more participants to the pact before the end of the year, after six separate countries agreed to join in March. Various complications tied to intergovernmental coordination made it impossible to finalize additional members by the time of that March 18 announcement, an agency spokesperson said at the time.

The alliance encourages participating nations to impose domestic and international controls on spyware makers and their investors. The U.S. argues that spyware abuses threaten privacy and freedoms of expression and that targeting individuals with such tools has been linked to arbitrary detentions, forced disappearances and sometimes extrajudicial killings. 

Still, American law enforcement agencies have engaged with such spyware companies. The FBI in 2022 confirmed that it had tested NSO’s Pegasus spyware offering for use in criminal investigations, though it claimed the license was not applied in a real scenario.

Spyware development is largely backed by the private sector. Google findings released earlier this year shows industrial spyware providers have made lucrative business selling their products to governments.

In March, the White House convened investors for the first time to warn them about the global security implications of financing spyware ventures. They made voluntary commitments to “guide investments in ways that promote the values of free and open societies,” according to the State Department.