WASHINGTON—According to news reports, a $2 million contract between the U.S. branch of the Israeli spyware vendor Paragon Solutions and the cyber division of U.S. Homeland Security Investigations was quietly reenabled over the weekend. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a contract with the spyware maker last year, which had been under a stop work order pending review. 

The following can be attributed to Nadine Farid Johnson, policy director at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University:

“Reports that ICE has renewed its contract with spyware vendor Paragon compounds the civil liberties concerns surrounding the rapid and dramatic expansion of ICE’s budget and authority. Spyware like Paragon’s Graphite poses a profound threat to free speech and privacy. It has already been used against journalists, human rights advocates, and political dissidents around the world. The quiet lifting of the stop work order also raises the troubling prospect that parts of the executive branch are acting without adherence to the government’s own vetting requirements. Congress should step in to limit the circumstances in which spyware technology can be deployed.”

In 2022, the Knight Institute filed a lawsuit on behalf of journalists and other members of El Faro—one of Central America’s foremost independent news organizations, based in El Salvador—who were the victims of spyware attacks using NSO Group’s Pegasus technology. In July, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit held that the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia had abused its discretion in dismissing the lawsuit and remanded the case for further consideration. Read more about that case, Dada v. NSO Group, here.  

For more information, contact: Adriana Lamirande, [email protected]