As controversy was erupting over its role in authoritarian governments’ spying, NSO Group was blacklisted by the U.S. Department of Commerce in November 2021, “to put human rights at the center of US foreign policy,” the agency said at the time.

Working on NSO’s behalf, Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman, a New York-based law firm, held over half a dozen meetings between March and August with Rep. Pete Sessions, R-Texas, who sits on the House Financial Services Committee as well as Oversight and Reform.

NSO’s recent hiring of two lobbyists, Jeffrey Weiss and Stewart Baker, from the Washington-based white-shoe law firm Steptoe & Johnson, was made public at the end of October in a filing with the House of Representatives.

Steptoe’s description of its work for the Israeli mission is similar to its goals for the NSO contract: to “provide advice on various international trade related matters affecting the State of Israel” which will be used “to develop its position w/re various U.S. policies.”

The statute itself is forgiving, the enforcement mechanisms like warning letters often render failures to register moot, and, with so little case law owing to so few indictments, prosecutors are loath to try their hand at bringing charges.

In a letter sent to the Justice Department in July of last year, Democracy for the Arab World Now called on the government to investigate what, at the time, was described as the firms’ lack of registration as agents for Israel under FARA.

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