Shabtai slammed over blaming media for denying surveillance tools
Constitution, Law and Justice Committee Chairman Simcha Rothman on Tuesday blasted Police Chief Kobi Shabtai for stating that media reports about the NSO scandal had deprived police of vital capabilities.
Calcalist reports on police use of the Pegasus and malware disabled “a critical police capability that does not exist at all in the police,” Rothman mocked Shabtai’s comments. “Blaming the person who revealed that the police used a tool illegally and without authority is a special kind of insolence.”
Rothman said that former police chief Ron Alsheikh had lied about the use of spyware.
“The conclusions of the [Deputy Attorney General Amit] Marari report raised very difficult questions about the procurement procedures in the police and the use of spyware,” said Rothman.
In hearings on the NSO scandal report held in the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, politicians said that between 1080 to 1800 phones were hacked, and the software enabled access to information beyond simple wiretapping. The report revealed that chat logs, app history, notes and other stored information could be accessed using the police programs.
Likud MK Moshe Saada – a former deputy of the Police Internal Investigations Unit (Machash) – said on Tuesday that the police chief “should take responsibility for his organization and also act in his department for a commission of inquiry that will look into the matter and do justice instead of placing blame on journalists who did their job and served the public.”
During the hearings, Saada said that Machash should have investigated the use of police spying, and Rothman and other politicians called for further government inquiries. Rothman reiterated his calls for government inquiries on Tuesday.
According to Haaretz, it was said at the Reichman University Conference said that the Calcalist’s reports disabled “critical police capabilities for over a year,” and that “there is no logic that the technology entrusted to the police would be inferior in its effectiveness to the tools that exist in the civilian market and in the world.”