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Facebook sues Israeli surveillance contractor

The big picture: Intelligence groups and law enforcement agencies contract NSO Group to provide spyware that governments can use to surveil the cell phones of perceived threats.

While the spyware is intended to track terrorists and criminals, in practice authoritarian regimes often use it to target activists, dissidents, journalists and opposition political figures.

Why it matters: NSO recently announced new processes to investigate human rights misuse, but critics believe misuse of the as well as competitors' products in the space will be difficult to curtail.

That, said Facebook, would be a violation of state and federal civil statutes, not to mention WhatsApp's terms of service.

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