Critics slam spyware maker NSO’s claims of transparency in its efforts to enter the US market

ONS Groupone of the best-known and most controversial government spyware makers, published a new transparency report Wednesday, as the company enters what it described as “a new phase of accountability.”

But the report, unlike NSO’s previous annual disclosures, lacks details on the number of customers rejected, investigated, suspended or fired due to human rights violations involving its surveillance tools. Although the report contains promises to respect human rights and controls to require its clients to do the same, the report provides no concrete evidence to support these promises.

Experts and critics who have followed NSO and the spyware market for years believe the report is part of an effort and campaign by the company to get the U.S. government to remove the company from the spyware market. a block list – technically called Entity List – as it hopes to enter the US market with new backers and executives at the helm.

Last year, a group of American investors acquired the companyand since then, NSO has undergone a transition that has included high-profile personnel changes: former Trump official David Friedman was appointed the new executive president; CEO Yaron Shohat has resigned; and Omri Lavie, the last founder still involved in the company, has also left, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“When NSO’s products are in the right hands in the right countries, the world is a much safer place. This will always be our overriding mission,” Friedman writes in the report, which does not mention any countries in which NSO operates.

Natalia Krapiva, Senior Legal and Technical Advisor at Access Now, a digital rights organization that investigates spyware abusetold TechCrunch: “NSO is clearly campaigning to be removed from the US Entity List and one of the key things they need to show is that they have changed dramatically as a company since their listing.”

“Changing leadership is one part and this transparency report is another,” Krapiva said.

“However, we have seen this before with NSO and other spyware companies over the years, where they change names and management and publish reports void of transparency or ethics, but the abuse continues.”

“This is nothing more than another attempt at window dressing and the US government should not be taken for a fool,” Krapiva said.

Since the Biden administration added NSO to the Entity List, the company has puts pressure have its restrictions lifted. After President Donald Trump took office last year, NSO stepped up its efforts. But, since May last year, NSO failed to convince the new administration.

At the end of December, the Trump administration sanctions lifted against three executives linked to the Intellexa spyware consortium, in what some saw as a sign of a change in the administration’s attitude toward spyware makers.

A lack of details

This year’s transparency report, which covers 2025, contains fewer details than previous years’ reports.

In a previous transparency report covering 2024, for example, NSO said it had opened three investigations into potential misuse. Without naming the customers, the company said it severed ties with one and imposed “alternative remedial measures” on another customer, including requiring human rights training, monitoring customer activities and requesting more information about how the customer uses the system. NSO did not provide any information on the third investigation.

NSO also said that in 2024 the company had rejected more than $20 million “in new business opportunities due to human rights concerns.”

In the transparency report released the previous year, covering 2022 and 2023, NSO said it had suspended or terminated six government customers, without naming them, saying those actions had resulted in a $57 million loss in revenue.

In 2021, NSO said it has “disconnected” the systems of five clients since 2016 following an investigation into misuse, resulting in an “estimated loss of revenue of more than $100 million,” and it also said it had “discontinued engagements” with five clients due to “human rights concerns.”

NSO’s latest transparency report does not include the total number of NSO customers, statistics that were consistently present in previous reports.

TechCrunch asked NSO spokesperson Gil Lanier to provide similar statistics and figures, but did not receive responses at the time of publication.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has investigated spyware abuses for more than a decade, criticized NSO.

“I expected some information, some numbers,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “Nothing in this document allows third parties to verify NSO’s claims, which is the status quo from a company that has a decade-long history of making statements that were later found to be false claims.”