Anti-spyware anti-spyware maker NSO has been vocal as it pushes to enter the US market

The NSO teamone of the most famous government spy software developers, released a new transparency report Wednesday, as the company enters what it calls a “new response phase.”

But the report, unlike NSO’s annual disclosures, does not contain information about customers the company has denied, investigated, suspended, or suspended for copyright violations involving its monitoring equipment. Although the report contains promises to respect human rights and to have the power to compel its clients to do the same, the report did not provide concrete evidence to back it up.

Experts and critics who have followed NSO and the spyware market for years believe that this report is part of the company’s efforts and campaign to get the US government to remove the company. block list – technically called Entity List – because it hopes to enter the US market with new financial advisors and managers at the helm.

Last year, a group of US investors acquired the companyand since then, the NSO has been undergoing changes that have included a major change in staff: former Trump executive David Friedman was chosen new executive chairman; CEO Yaron Shohat stepped down; and Omri Lavie, the last remaining founder still involved in the company, also left, as reported by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz.

“When NSO’s assets are in good hands in the right countries, the world is a much safer place. That will always be our top priority,” Friedman wrote in the report, which does not name each country in which NSO operates.

Natalia Krapiva, senior legal counsel at Access Now, a digital rights organization that investigates spyware abusestold TechCrunch: “NSO is campaigning to be delisted from the US Entity List and one of the main things they have to show is that they have changed a lot as a company since they were listed.”

“Changing leadership is one part and transparent reporting is another,” Krapiva said.

“However, we have seen it before with NSO and other spy agencies over the years where they change names and leadership and publish empty or ethical reports but the abuse continues.”

“This is nothing new but an attempt to dress the window and not be taken as an idiot by the US government,” Krapiva said.

Since then, the Biden administration has added NSO to the Entity List, the company said to force to have its restrictions lifted. After President Donald Trump took office last year, the NSO expanded this process. But, since May last year, NSO failed to influence the new leadership.

In late December, the Trump administration sanctions were lifted against three executives tied to the Intellexa spyware consortium, which some have seen as a sign of a change in the management of spyware developers.

Lack of detail

This year’s 2025 transparency report contains less information than previous years’ reports.

In the past visual report covering 2024, for example, NSO said it had opened three investigations into misuse. Without naming the customers, the company said it had cut a contract with one, and forced another customer to “take additional control measures,” including mandating human rights training, monitoring customer activity, and requesting information about how the customer uses the system. NSO did not provide any information about the third investigation.

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

In visual report published last year, covering 2022 and 2023, NSO said it suspended or suspended six government clients, without naming them, and saying that this resulted in a loss of $57 million.

In 2021, AGAIN he said It “terminated” the systems of five clients since 2016 following an investigation into abuse, which resulted in more than $100 million in “losses,” and said it “terminated” five clients due to “human rights concerns.”

NSO’s latest report does not include the number of clients NSO has, figures that have been available in previous reports.

TechCrunch asked NSO spokesman Gil Lanier to provide similar figures and statistics, but did not receive a response by press time.

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

“I expected more, the numbers,” Scott-Railton told TechCrunch. “There is nothing in this document that allows outsiders to verify NSO’s claims, which is business as usual from a company that has a long history of making claims that later turned out to be false.”