On Tuesday, the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware, marking the first time that this type of software — also known as government or mercenary spyware – discussed in the Security Council.

The purpose of the meeting, according to the US Mission to the UNis to “address the implications of the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware for the maintenance of international peace and security.” The United States and 15 other countries called for the meeting.

While the meeting was largely informal and did not end with any concrete proposals, most of the countries involved, including France, South Korea, and the United Kingdom, agreed that governments must act to control the proliferation and abuse of commercial spyware. Russia and China, meanwhile, dismissed the concerns.

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, a human rights organization that has been investigating spyware abuses since 2012, gave testimony in which he sounded the alarm over the proliferation of spyware created by “a secretive global ecosystem of developers, brokers, middlemen, and boutique firms,” ​​which “threatens international peace and security as well as human rights.”

Scott-Railton called Europe “a hotbed of spyware abuses” and a fertile ground for spyware companies, Referring to a recent investigation by TechCrunch that shows that Barcelona has become a center for spyware companies in the last few years.

Representatives of Poland and Greece, countries with their own spyware scandals involving software developed by NSO group and Intellexa respectively, also intervened.

The representative of Poland focuses on local legislative efforts to put “more control, including the judiciary, on the related operational activities of the security and intelligence services,” while also recognizing that spyware can be used legally. “We are not saying that the use of spyware is absolutely unjustified or necessary,” said the Polish representative.

And the Greek representative points to the country’s 2022 bill banning the sale of spyware.

Russia, on the other hand, points the blame at the United States. The representative of Russia, referring to historic revelations of NSA surveillance by US whistleblower Edward Snowden, said that, “it is the United States that specifically created a real system for global surveillance and illegal interference in the private lives of its own citizens, and citizens of other countries, and continues to perfect this system.”

The representative of China criticized the meeting itself, saying that the discussion of “the so-called commercial spyware and the maintenance of international peace and security put the cart before the horse compared to the more harmful activities of the proliferation of the government.”

“Since the Stuxnet incident, the proliferation of advanced national cyber weapons has created a series of major risks on the Internet, which are more harmful than commercial spyware,” the Chinese representative said, referring to the Stuxnet malware that developed . as part of a US-Israeli operation aimed at sabotaging Iran’s nuclear weapons program.

During the Biden administration, the US government took several actions against commercial spyware, including Israeli spyware makers NSO Group and Candiru are allowedas well as the one based in Greece Intellexa and its founder Tal Dilian; and impressive travel ban against people involved in the spyware industry.
Last year, people who work or used to work in the spyware industry told TechCrunch have expressed concerns that sanctions and other punitive measures will affect them personally.