All my life I've thought spyware was developed primarily by evil Russian and Chinese hackers. But apparently also by Israeli developers with their government's blessing and open endorsement. That's some very shady stuff.
Gamma Group is an Anglo-German company that provides similar surveillance software with government blessing and endorsement. Hacking Team (Italian company) sells similar surveillance software to various European governments. Before an embarrassing data breach in 2015 they also used to sell surveillance software to various totalitarian regimes outside Europe.
If i remember correctly, the Italian government at the time made some noise - they weren’t happy to find there was no exclusivity in the relationship, so to speak. They kinda threatened to cut their contracts. To be honest I don’t know how it ended, it fell off the news in Italy too and that was it. Behind the façade of barely-organised anarchy, Italy is an instinctively authoritarian country and blunt instruments are considered fair game more often than not.
Gamma Group is an Anglo-German company that provides similar surveillance software with government blessing and endorsement. Hacking Team (Italian company) sells similar surveillance software to various European governments. Before an embarrassing data breach in 2015 they also used to sell surveillance software to various totalitarian regimes outside Europe.