General Information
In March 2020, with the rise of COVID-19, NSO Group launched a contact-tracing technology named ‘Fleming’. The software is designed to track and map the spread of COVID-19 using geolocation data from mobile phones, including through using data collected by external third-party apps. The systems then providers information about contacts and durations of infected people who can individually be tracked, creates “heat” maps to identify hot-spots of the virus spread, and provide a risk analysis of how probable is each person or population group to be infected with the virus.[1]Forensic Architecture – Fleming
A report by Forensic Architecture published in December 2020 reported on a database collected by NSO’s Fleming program that was found unprotected online. It contained more than five hundred thousand datapoints for approximately 32,000 distinct mobile phones. This database was used as a marketing tool to market the system to countries around the world. The mobile phones tracked were those of citizens in Israel, UAE, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Rwanda – all countries with ongoing contractual relationships with NSO group.[2]Forensic Architecture – Fleming
Use by Israeli Forces
Israeli minister of defense at the time, Naftali Bennet, was an enthusiastic supporter of the development and use of the software in Israel.[3]Globes The system was used as part of the Israeli security service contact tracking of Israelis throughout 2020.[4]Forensic Architecture – Fleming