Jerusalem (AFP) - Reports that police may have used spyware on a key witness in the trial of former premier Benjamin Netanyahu dominated Israeli headlines Thursday amid global scrutiny of Israeli-made surveillance technology.
Netanyahu described the allegations as an "earthquake", although an analyst expressed doubt they would affect the outcome of his high-profile trial.
In a recording aired by Channel 12 news, police are heard allegedly discussing tapping a phone belonging to Shlomo Filber, a former Netanyahu ally turned state witness.
"It's as if it's illegal" a police officer says, continuing "to install the application".
Police declined to comment on the recordings that emerged late Wednesday.
But a spokesperson told AFP "the Israeli police will cooperate fully and transparently" with an investigation team appointed by the attorney general, which is probing potential police misuse of spyware.
Netanyahu's lawyers have asked the court to "order the prosecutor to reveal all the elements of the probe obtained through Pegasus or other spyware", a statement said.
'Moral turpitude'
Netanyahu, who served as premier from 2009 until last year, is being tried on charges of bribery, fraud and breach of trust, allegations he denies.
His trial is expected to last for several more months, and appeals could take years.
Israeli media reported last month that he was negotiating a plea deal with the attorney general that would include admission of "moral turpitude", an offence which carries a seven-year ban from politics.
Netanyahu has denied the deal.
The allegation that police spied on Filber surfaced amid a broader probe into unauthorised police surveillance of Israeli phones.
Israel's justice minister pledged to investigate after a report in the business daily Calcalist found police had used NSO Group's Pegasus spyware on protesters against Netanyahu.
Police had initially denied the allegations, but on Tuesday appeared to backpedal, saying "new elements changed certain aspects of the matter".
Pegasus is a surveillance program that can switch on a phone's camera or microphone and harvest its data.It sparked controversy worldwide following revelations last year it was used to spy on journalists and dissidents.
NSO last month would neither confirm nor deny it sold technologies to the Israeli police, stressing it does "not operate the system once sold to its governmental customers and it is not involved in any way in the system's operation".
The reports do not specify whether Pegasus or a different spy program was used against Filber.
'Earthquake'
A former communications ministry director general, Filber is accused of mediating between Netanyahu and the controlling shareholder of the Bezeq telecom giant, as the sides reportedly plotted to exchange regulatory favours for positive coverage on a news site owned by the firm.
Tehilla Shwartz Altshuler, an expert on technology and law at the Israel Democracy Institute, said the revelations could shed light on why one of Netanyahu's closest advisers turned against him.
"Maybe one of the investigators found something on Filber's phone that helped the police influence or convince Filber to become a witness against Netanyahu," she said.
Shwartz Altshuler said she doubted the allegations of unauthorised police snooping on Filber would jeopardise the case against Netanyahu, even if they prove to be true.
Last month, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal of another former Netanyahu adviser, who said police based a case against him on evidence gathered in an unauthorised search of his phone.
On Wednesday, Netanyahu called the revelations of spying on Filber an "earthquake".
"It was revealed that police investigators hacked into phones illegally to overthrow a powerful right-wing prime minister," he said in a Twitter post.
Shwartz Altshuler said his complaints rang hollow as Israel licensed Pegasus spyware to governments around the world, with some deals reportedly personally approved by Netanyahu.
"You can't really use a technology or a product like Pegasus as Israel's gift of friendship to all the dictatorships in Africa, and to Hungary and India and Mexico on the one hand, and then on the other hand complain when it is used in Israel," she said.
The reported spying on Filber included photographs, phone numbers, messages and apps that were extracted without a court-issued warrant, according to a report on Channel 13 News.
Filber declined an interview request from AFP but tweeted in jest Wednesday: "My wife responds: 'Finally someone is listening to your prattling.'"
