[Music] it's the real news network and I'm Greg wilpert in Baltimore last week an Israeli investigative TV show called oofta revealed that the private intelligence firm black cube was hired in 2014 by Israel a billionaire Eden offer to smear Israel's then finance minister a year Lapid this is only the latest revelation about the covert actions that black cube has been undertaking the company is also known to offer corporate espanha espionage by using techniques that the Israeli Mossad and other security agencies have perfected the company became famous when it was discovered that movie producer Harvey Weinstein had hired black cube to spy on women who filed complaints against him for sexual assault Weinstein allegedly received the recommendation for contracting black cube from former Israeli prime minister and minister of defense a hood Barak Weinstein apparently believed that former Mossad agents would be able to get him off the hook for sexual harassment assault and rape allegations here's what the well-known journalist Ilana Dayan had to say about Baba cube when introducing last week's broadcast of the wolf documentary McCoy villach Vidal Nuala behind a heavy lock door a high-tech environment and also the salary and benefits of the group of brilliant people who sit there some of them are graduates of the Mossad and other classified units but the product which they are producing can be dark and much more dangerous than what they imagined they are called black cube and their official goal is to provide business intelligence what really lies behind these words we are exposing here this evening for the first let me show now what made this report so shocking for Israelis was not the methods of deception sting operations and surveillance that black cube uses but rather that black cube has no qualms about taking on Israeli targets as well including activists journalists state officials and politicians everything is possible for the highest bidder black cube responded to the report with fury and launched a lawsuit for over 15 million British pounds against the show oofta joining me now to look at the latest revelations of black cubes activities is Shir Hever here's a correspondent for the real news network living in Heidelberg Germany and his most recent book is the privatization of Israeli security published in 2017 by Pluto press thanks for being here again share thanks for having great so black cube was founded in 2010 and gradually became famous alongside other Israeli private intelligence company such as NSO and Sai group what did the ova documentary focus on and why did it's for why did it focus on black cube and why now well da now finished their 25th and season and this was a very big deal for them to do this a very in-depth investigative journalism work on black cube I think for the journalists working in Louvre da for Ilana Dayan and the others the fact that this company is using these methodologies where they use sting operations where they use surveillance and a deception they track their targets to know what is important for them on an emotional and personal level and then create fake characters that promote those ideas or those ideologies in order to win their trust all of that is not a problem because this is a these are journalists that consider this kind of work to be completely normal when it's done by the Israeli security organizations in order to entrap Palestinians or agents of other countries and so on however when it's a private company which is doing it for profit and when the targets are also Israeli targets then there is a sense of fear and I think that's the reason that Huda has decided to focus on black cube and I think the sense of fear that in fact the very methods that have been used by Israeli authorities and Israeli agencies in order to control Palestinians under occupation in order to eliminate possible critical voices are now being used internally by certain Israeli billionaires against others and against politicians in air and so on is something that makes Israelis lose faith in their security agencies that's why they're so afraid and I think that's also why members of black cube itself people working for the company they either directly or indirectly have come forward and agreed to speak with the journalist for move down no industrial or corporate aspire espionage is not a new phenomenon but it does seem that black cube seems to get contracts with the worst kinds of customers such as Kerala in the Democratic Republic of Congo Harvey Weinstein and others like that now other Israeli companies like NSO took contracts from Saudi Arabia and the UAE why do Israeli companies seem to have fewer scruples than companies from other countries well I think it's it's a circumstance that we have to understand how this came to be because it would be wrong to say that Israelis just by their upbringing or just by their their culture are more willing to cross moral lines that's not the case what is the case however is that the Israeli security organizations are in a state of crisis and the generals the commander that the chief agents of Mossad and other security institutions are facing a daily struggle to keep Palestinian resistance under control and they're failing and because they are failing they're losing public support and a public legitimacy and so they're turning to the private sector and I think what we see with these companies like black cube and NSO and psy group is that these companies reek of desperation they take these contracts which are very problematic contracts because nobody else will and I think it's also interesting and very telling that if you look at the cases all all these scandals that were now shown by oof-dah and you can you can of course look at the case of Harvey Weinstein Kabila Joseph Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo is no longer in power Einstein did not get off the hook and and other people who hired black cube were not able to use that information that that they got this blackmail material in order to get off whatever accusations that we're facing and that shows that the companies are also not very successful so they're trying to build on their reputation as former Mossad agents or agents of other Israeli security agencies trying to say we are the best spies in the world because we worked for the Israeli Mossad and in order to make money in order to survive in a world that just doesn't have a place for them anymore because the world doesn't really need these apartheid officers or trained at humiliating people and controlling them and I think that is the reason that these companies are are taking these very very notorious contracts with notorious customers and also the reason that they're not very successful in in providing a good service to their customers now officialy intelligence companies are subject to state regulation normally has regulation failed in the case of black cube and if so why I think this is something that we see not just in Israel we've seen this even more strongly in the United States and the Washington Post and other newspapers have discovered that when the United States started to privatize intelligence as a mode one of the most extreme extreme cases of privatization of security the intelligence officers in the private market who are all former state employees or former state intelligence agents now working for the private sector they double their salaries or increase them even more than than twofold and they control access to sensitive government data and they have an incentive not to share their information with state institutions because by controlling this information they leverage their their power as a private company and to towards the state or the government so the result of privatization of security is a snowball effect it makes the private sector stronger and stronger and at some point it's no longer possible to regulate it and because these companies now have more control over States intelligence capabilities than the state intelligence officers themselves the best intelligence agents or the most intelligent ones the the best educated ones the ones with the most experience have already left a government service and moved on to the private sector and this is something that happened first United States and in Israel I think the government was very naive to think that it won't happen in Israel because the Israeli generals are loyal and patriotic and Zionists and that's simply not true and as soon as they came into the private sector they started to operate as people to operate in the private sector for a company for profit maximizing their income Maxim's maximizing the profit and gradually crossing one line after the other in trying to get another contract and another contract even for dictators like Joseph Kabila a or sexual predators like Harvey Weinstein and this shows and also against Israeli officials against Israeli politicians and I think that's something that everyone has to be aware of that a governments who are willing to relinquish control over security and surveillance to the private sector are opening a Pandora's box and this can lead to very devastating a thing now finally what would you say can government's learn from this when private security companies get out of hand like this what can be done well at this stage when the the horse has already left the stable then the government's are in a very difficult the government is in a very difficult situation though the one thing a government can do in this situation is first of all close down the company and and remove all of its licensing right now the Israeli Ministry of Defense gives black cube a license to operate a while while also declaring that they're officially not to be considered a military company Oh although what they do is really sometimes crossing the line into military activity so I think the Ministry of Defence in Israel in any country should be very very careful about what kind of freedom such private companies receive and I think it's also very important that people will have access to transparency and the victims of companies like that you know if we look at this a documentary about black cube black cube has targeted a very long list of people who were lied to deceived by the company approached by fake agents and so on and only when this documentary show was done started to investigate it they reached out to these people and told them that the person that they spoke to was actually a spy and they didn't even know and I think that's the government responsibility to give that information to the victims to track those cases and to inform people that they have a claim and and their privacy has been violated and that if they want to file a lawsuit for example they should and it shouldn't be only up to journalists who may stumble upon this case and maybe not hmm okay well we're gonna leave it there for now I speaking to share however real news network correspondent in Heidelberg Germany thanks again for joining us today chair thank you great and thank you for joining the real news network