Mobile phone and internet services have collapsed in Gaza under Israel’s intensifying military bombardment and “expanding” . That leaves more than 2 million Palestinians without reliable communication to the outside world.

Palestinian telecom company Jawwal, which provides mobile phone service in Gaza, said that the Israeli military’s airstrikes and artillery shelling had cut off all communications service as of 27 October, in a . , a nonprofit that tracks internet disruptions, shared network data showing “a collapse in connectivity to the Gaza Strip with high impact to Paltel” – the parent company of Jawwal and “the last remaining major operator to supply service as connectivity declines amid ongoing fighting with Israel”.

⚠ Confirmed: Live network data show a collapse in connectivity in the Strip with high impact to Paltel, amid reports of heavy bombardment; the company is the last remaining major operator to supply service as connectivity declines amid ongoing fighting with Israel 📉

— NetBlocks (@netblocks)

This communications collapse follows weeks of disrupted internet and phone service in Gaza as Israeli airstrikes have steadily destroyed the offices and infrastructure of Palestinian telecommunications providers, according to , a nonprofit focused on digital civil rights. , a service for tracking global internet traffic provided by the US internet company Cloudflare, has shared data tracking the decline.

But people in Gaza now face a nearly complete loss of communications. The , a nonprofit humanitarian organisation that is part of the International Red Cross, described losing all contact with its operations room and teams in Gaza as of Friday “due to the Israeli authorities cutting off all landline, cellular and internet communications”. Similarly, said that its reporters “have struggled to reach residents of Gaza by phone”.

The communications blackout comes as more than 2 million Palestinians – nearly half of them children – who remain in Gaza without clear escape routes have struggled to access drinking water, food and medical supplies. The cutoff of electricity in Gaza has also disrupted telecommunications operations while individual Palestinians have resorted to charging their phones .

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The “information blockade” in Gaza will make it “harder for civilians to stay alive”, said at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council, a US think tank based in Washington DC, in a 13 October .

that the loss of video and other communications from Gaza could also lead “the proportion of dis- and misinformation in pro-Palestinian sentiment communities to significantly increase” and obscure any factual information or news reporting that makes it out.

Even before the latest Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Palestinians living in Gaza had to make do with while much of the world moved on to 4G and 5G cellular network services. Israeli authorities have long blocked such advanced mobile phone technology and services in Gaza.

The Israeli military strikes on Gaza began after Hamas militants – the military arm of the Hamas organisation that controls Gaza – launched an unprecedented cross-border attack into Israel on 7 October. The Hamas militants killed more than 1400 people in Israel and kidnapped hundreds of hostages.

Since the Israeli bombardment of Gaza began on 7 October, the Palestinian Ministry of ��ҹ����1000���� in Gaza has reported more than and several times that number wounded.

Spyware sold for use in anti-terror investigations is being misused to watch journalists, academics and politicians across the world, according to a and partner organisations.

NSO Group, based in Israel, is thought to sell the spyware to multiple countries, including Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, India and the United Arab Emirates. It allows a user to read data from smartphones and spy via their microphones and cameras. The software, called Pegasus, uses vulnerabilities in smartphone and social media source code.

Technology firms that make these phones and social media platforms are now embroiled in a long-running legal battle – but can unmonitored, unregulated state surveillance be stopped?

WhatsApp and Facebook, its parent company, first filed a lawsuit in California in 2019 alleging that NSO had hacked into its servers to infect 1400 phones belonging to WhatsApp users, arguing that it was a violation of the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). NSO said that it should have “” because it sells to non-US governments, an argument that was dismissed in December 2020 and that the firm is appealing.

WhatsApp now wants a permanent injunction stopping NSO from attempting to gain access to its systems. The success of the case rests on whether NSO is considered to be hacking into systems or if that is being done by the users of its software. Taking legal action against governments would be a far more difficult proposition. Microsoft, Cisco, GitHub, Google, LinkedIn, VMWare and the Internet Association have now all joined the court case.

Pegasus can use SMS, WhatsApp and iMessage to infect a phone and harvest messages, emails, contacts, GPS data, calendars, photos and videos stored on a phone. It can also activate the microphone and camera to surreptitiously record the owner’s surroundings.

The case is making fresh headlines following an investigation by and , which claims to have a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers based across 45 countries that were selected for surveillance by Pegasus’s many users, showing that the tool is being used to monitor journalists, political opponents and campaigners as well as being used for anti-terror or serious crime investigations.

NSO, founded by former Israeli state surveillance operators, has been caught up in similar stories before. Last year, researchers claimed that Pegasus had been used by at least two state agencies to at Al Jazeera and Al Araby TV. In 2018, Amnesty International claimed that NSO software had been . And in 2017, it emerged that Mexico had been using the software to . Its use was also in the hacking of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s phone.

at the University of Toronto in Canada leads a research group that investigates and publicises the use of surveillance software such as Pegasus. He says that if his small team can uncover details about how NSO customers are using the tool, the company itself should easily be able to do the same.

“Litigation may be one of the most immediate ways to rein in the excesses of the poorly regulated global spyware marketplace,” he says. “Should litigation succeed and bring real financial penalties to companies like NSO, then the industry as a whole may be incentivised to better control to whom they are selling and how it is being deployed.”

at the University of Surrey, UK, says there is vast profit to be made in finding new ways to exploit software weaknesses, packaging them up and selling them as widely as possible. Unfortunately, once the software is in the hands of a state, it can be targeted at anyone the state sees fit with little oversight.

Woodward says that the customers tend to be governments that don’t have their own offensive cyber capability and that phone manufacturers and social media companies are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game in which exploits are found but then patched. Often these exploits will continue to be useful for some targets because owners don’t update their software with the new patches.

at UK law firm decoded.legal says the issue is a “groundbreaking” and complex legal problem with no obvious solution. Even if the lawsuit against NSO Group is successful, it is unlikely that the practice will be stopped because there are several other companies offering similar services.

Italian company Hacking Team itself in 2015 revealing that its client list for a similar product to Pegasus included the CIA, the Lebanese Armed Forces and even the bank Barclays. Stopping the practice may require legislation, but Deibert says this will prove problematic because many states have a vested interest in allowing the hacking to continue, adding that it is an “epidemic of global proportions”.

NSO says that it licenses its products to governments “for the sole purpose of preventing and investigating terror and serious crime”. An NSO Group spokesperson said in a prepared statement that the firm denied that its products were being misused but confirmed that the company would investigate all credible claims of misuse and take appropriate action, such as shutting down access to Pegasus by a state customer – something that it has done “multiple times” in the past. It also denied that the leaked list of phone numbers was a list of targets. The company declined to respond to further questions.

So, what do you do?
I’ve been researching the psychology of internet and technology use for more than 10 years. I also teach a Master’s degree course in cyberpsychology. Aside from that, I work with organisations like the World ��ҹ����1000���� Organization to help develop approaches to the prevention and treatment of mental health problems that spring from technology.

How does the internet affect us?
The internet has made our lives far more convenient and technology can connect us when we are distant from family and friends – the coronavirus pandemic is a great example. But my research shows that for a small number of vulnerable individuals, excessive internet use may lead to a variety of detrimental mental health consequences, including anxiety, depression, stress and addiction.

Do people spend too much time looking at screens these days? And what is too much?
Having smartphones with us constantly has increased the likelihood that we’ll spend a lot of time looking at screens. But there’s no single answer to what is too much. Some people can spend hours every day using the internet without any problems. “Too much” is when your technology use significantly impacts your health, work and relationships.

Can you actually be addicted to the internet or your smartphone?
Addiction is a specific mental health condition and not everyone uses the term correctly. It’s only a small minority of vulnerable individuals who use the internet and smartphones excessively who develop symptoms of addiction.

Internet addiction is quite controversial. Why?
The term is frequently used in common parlance to refer to people who spend a lot of time on their computers. However, we need to accept that technology is here to stay as an integral element of our lives. Just because we use it a lot, it does not mean that we are addicted to it. There’s a difference between a habit and an addiction; the latter causes significant negative impacts.

What are you working on at the moment?
I am currently working on a number of different international projects on technology use. One of my European collaborations is about helping people who really are addicted to the internet develop withdrawal plans based on their individual usage and experiences. The tool we have developed provides individualised withdrawal strategies using the science behind behavioural modification techniques often used in addiction treatment.

“There’s a difference between a habit and an addiction; the latter causes significant negative impacts.”

As a child, what did you want to do when you grew up?
I wanted to be a writer! From an early age, I’ve devoured books, and still do. I’ve now written three books myself and edited another. My plan is to write a novel in my lifetime. One of my ideas is to develop a dystopian story set in a fictional future – but that’s as much as I can tell you for now.

If you could have a conversation with any scientist living or dead, who would it be?
It is difficult to give just one name. I’m a big fan of Sherry Turkle – reading her book “Life on the screen” as a student was one of the key inspirations for my research career, as she was able to use her expertise as clinical psychologist to understand why and how people use technology and how this may impact their lives and relationships in multiple ways.

Do you have an unexpected hobby, and if so, please will you tell us about it?
I enjoy the great outdoors and try to explore natural landscapes in different countries. One of the things on my bucket list is to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. This plays to my academic interests because climbing such a peak is as much a mental challenge as it is a physical one.

How useful will your skills be after the apocalypse?
As a researcher, I’ve developed a number of transferable skills, including problem solving, communication to various groups and stakeholders and managing people – these skills could come in handy after the apocalypse!

OK one last thing: tell us something that will blow our minds…
Here are two things. On average, we check our phones about a hundred times a day, or an average of six times per waking hour. And contrary to popular wisdom, the average gamer is not an adolescent boy but a man or woman in their mid-30s.

Daria Kuss is an associate professor at Nottingham Trent University, UK

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