NSO Group Technologies is an Israeli technology firm whose spyware called Pegasus enables the remote surveillance of smartphones.
In 2014, the surveillance firm Circles merged with the NSO Group. Circles is capable of identifying the location of a phone in seconds, anywhere in the world. It was identified that 25 countries across the world were customers of Circles. The firm has two systems. One operates by connecting to the purchasing country’s local telecommunications companies’ infrastructure. The other separate system, known as the “Circles Cloud”, is capable of interconnecting with telecommunications country across the globe. In December 2020, the Citizen Lab reported that Supreme Council on National Security (SCNS) of the United Arab Emirates was set to receive both these systems.