Judge dismisses spyware case brought by Salvadoran journalists targeted with Pegasus

A California federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a lawsuit filed by a group of Salvadoran journalists whose devices were infected with powerful zero-click spyware.

The plaintiffs, who all worked for the independent and Salvadoran news outlet El Faro, failed to convince the court that their case had jurisdiction in California, according to the judge’s order.

Between June 2020 and November 2021 Pegasus was deployed against lead plaintiff Carlos Dada and colleagues at least 226 times, according to the Knight First Amendment Institute, which filed the lawsuit on their behalf in November 2022.

The Dada case was the first to be filed against the Pegasus manufacturer, NSO Group, in a U.S. court.

The decision on Wednesday is a big loss for the plaintiffs, though the case could still be revived down the road. Another judge tossed the case in March 2024, saying it was “entirely foreign” and had no standing to be tried in California.

Dada and the other El Faro employees argued the case could be tried there because the attacks leveraged compromised infrastructure located in the state.

The journalists and other staffers’ phones were secretly accessed from afar and the attacks became more frequent in the days before major investigations were to be published, the institute said.

Plaintiffs had wanted the court to order NSO to delete the collected information and direct the spyware manufacturer to name the client who ordered the snooping.

A spokesperson for NSO did not immediately respond to a request for comment. the Knight Institute said it plans to appeal the decision.