Officially the sale of surveillance software is limited to authorized governments to support investigation of agencies on criminal organizations and terrorist groups.

Unfortunately, its software is known to have been abused to spy on journalists and human rights activists.

In July, Citizen Lab collected evidence of attacks against 175 targets worldwide carried on with the NSO spyware. Citizen Lab uncovered other attacks against individuals in Qatar or Saudi, where the Israeli surveillance software is becoming very popular.

In August, an Amnesty International report confirmed that its experts identified a second human rights activist, in Saudi Arabia, who was targeted with the powerful spyware.

According to Joshua Franco, Amnesty’s head of technology and human rights, recent discovery demonstrates that trading of surveillance software is going out-of-control.

Now Snowden claims that the Israeli surveillance firm NSO Group had a primary role in Khashoggi’s murder that is “one of the major stories that’s not being written about.”

“They are the worst of the worst in selling these burglary tools that are being actively, currently used to violate the human rights of dissidents, opposition figures, activists, to some pretty bad players,” Snowden told his audience.

The Snowden Video Interview was published by almasdarnews.com.

Snowden told to the audience that the surveillance firms don’t operate “to save lives, but to make money.”