Barcelona has become the European capital of Israeli spy companies, which have settled there over the past 18 months, the newspaper reports Haaretz. A whole series of companies in this sector have chosen Ciutat Comtal to consider that, in this way, they can open up to a wider market and escape the restrictions imposed on them by the Israeli government after a series of international scandals.
Most of these hackers they have passed through Unit 8,200 of the Israeli army, a secret unit of colossal dimensions that specializes in the creation and application of espionage technologies against civilian and military targets around the world, including Western countries. When they leave the army, a considerable part of the hackers they create private companies that operate on technology that they themselves have developed in the armed forces. This business, which must be authorized by the army in each case, has served Israel, among other things, to enter countries even theoretically hostilelike Saudi Arabia, as it transpired in 2018 following the murder in Turkey of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, a critic of the Riyadh regime.
One of the most frequent criticisms leveled at these companies is that they are not only contracted by third parties, but also report their operations to the Israeli spy services they have previously worked for. In this way, Israel would collect a large amount of information about Third World countries, but also about Western countries, which it would then use according to its interests.
The Pegasus program
One of these cases would be the collection of information in countries such as France or Spain through the Pegasus program, which would have been executed by the Moroccan intelligence services. These activities recently led to a very tense crisis between Paris on the one hand and Morocco and Israel on the other, which was only resolved when Israel pledged that programs such as Pegasus would not be used to spy on France. Despite this, Western intelligence services are suspicious and fear that Israel could use the Pegasus-type programs, of which there are several versions, to spy on the West through Third World countries.
The reason why Barcelona is becoming the European capital of the hackers Israelis is that these companies would like to escape the direct control of the Israeli authorities, despite the fact that these companies must report their activities to the government in Tel-Aviv.
Faced with the criticism that espionage companies have raised, Israel would have promoted the creation of new companies that would operate in Western and Third World countries. The former would respect Western laws, while the latter would act more freely in countries that are authoritarian or in which there are dictatorships that do not respect human rights. All of these companies are ultimately controlled by the government of Israel.
according to Haaretz“at least three teams of Israeli researchers” who operate with this kind of companies have settled in Barcelona in the last year and a half. In total, in Spain, at least six groups would operate. One of the teams that is in Barcelona has arrived from Singapore, and “is specialized in looking for weak points in the defenses of smart phones through which spying technology can be installed remotely”.
Although these companies may have their base in countries such as Spain, most of their workers are Israelis who have previously passed through the military intelligence services. For example, 60 Israelis work in one of the companies based in Barcelona.
Source: www.ara.cat
