Spyware prompts State Att’y to withdraw murder case evidence

Evidence in a Haifa-area double murder case was withdrawn by the State Attorney’s Office on Monday after it was discovered that the information was obtained by police spyware on a computer.

The State Attorney’s Office said that since February 2022 it had examined 27 cases in which spyware was used to access computer data beyond what had been permitted by judges, but the Haifa double murder was the first case in which the illegally collected information was presented before a court as evidence.

The Israel Police said that the murder case would still continue and that it cooperated with the office to remove the evidence from the proceedings.

The State Attorney’s Office Cyber Department discovered in its investigations that spyware had been installed to eavesdrop on communications between two computers, also allowing access to stored information. There had not yet been an indictment filed against the suspect at the time.

Stored information was collected and passed on to officers, which goes beyond the scope of judicial orders for wiretapping. The State Attorney’s announcement said that accessing the information was tantamount to a covert search rather than wiretapping.

The information was included in the police investigation file, given to prosecutors and submitted to the court as evidence.

The incident comes in the wake of inquiries into the NSO Pegasus scandal, in which the police were found to have used spyware to infect suspects’ phones. This malware not only allowed police to intercept calls but also to access application information, notes, contacts, message histories and other stored information. Over a thousand people were alleged to have had their privacy violated using the spyware, Knesset hearings revealed.

Legal authorities have argued that the 1979 wiretapping law regulated the use of physical police listening devices, and did not cover the covert accessing of private computers and altering of the devices.