Commercial Spyware Global Inventory
Description
Global inventory of commercial spyware procured by governments. Focuses on three overarching questions: Which governments show evidence of procuring and employing commercial spyware? Which private sector companies are involved? Are the operations being carried out in possible violation of principles of legality, necessity, and proportionality? Source material derives from the Citizen Lab, Freedom House, Privacy International, the Council on Foreign Relations’ Cyber Operations Tracker, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Article 19, Access Now, and an assortment of related research organizations. The inventory also includes data from major print and news media outlets (e.g., The New York Times, Reuters, Haaretz, Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal). Because of attribution challenges and the difficulty of pinpointing intrusion operations within a specified timeframe, I aggregated observations between 2011 and 2022. Updated October 20, 2022.