The Treasury Department on Tuesday banned the notorious creator of software that can hack smartphones and turn them into surveillance devices from doing business in the US
The sanctions represent the most aggressive action the US government has taken against a spy company.
Intellexa is developing software called Predator, which can take over someone’s phone and turn it into a surveillance device. Predator and other major spyware boast capabilities such as secretly turning on a user’s microphone and camera, downloading their files without their knowledge, and tracking their location.
Under the sanctions, Americans and people doing business with the US are prohibited from doing business with Intellex, its founder and architect Tal Dilian, employee Sara Hamo and four Intellex-related companies.
In a press release announcing the sanctions, a White House official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the decision to sanction Intellexa “goes beyond the actions we have taken.”
“This is the first time the US government has levied any sanctions against commercial spyware vendors for enabling the abuse of their tools,” he said.
An investigation by Amnesty International revealed that the Predator was used to target journalists, human rights workers and some senior political figures, including European Parliament President Roberta Metsola and outgoing Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-Wen. The report revealed that Predator was also deployed against at least two members of Congress, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and Sen. John Hoeven, RN.D.
Predator was also at the center of a scandal that rocked Greece in 2022, in which dozens of politicians and journalists were allegedly targeted by spyware.
NBC News was unable to reach Intellexa for comment. His website has been offline since sometime in 2023.
Multiple governments around the world “have used this technology to facilitate repression and enable human rights abuses, including intimidating political opponents and suppressing dissent, restricting freedom of expression, and tracking and targeting activists and journalists,” the Treasury Department’s statement on the sanctions said.
The sanctions followed President Joe Biden’s 2023 executive order regulating commercial spyware.
Under that order, the Commerce Department previously placed another spyware developer, the Israeli company NSO Group, on the US Entity List, subjecting it to additional regulations. But sanctioning Intellexa is an escalation, said John Scott-Railton, senior spyware researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab.
“The U.S. will use the Treasury Department’s sanctions as a lightning rod for the spyware world,” he said. “This suddenly has big, personal consequences.”
“This is the kind of thing that makes people think about changing jobs and leaving the country,” he said.