Pension Funds Pressed Over Spyware Maker Paragon Investments
Surveillance control · 13.10.2026

Access Now has sent letters to four pension funds — Los Angeles County, Houston firefighters, New Mexico teachers, and the UK's Hampshire Pension Fund. All of them had invested in AE Industrial Partners (AEI), which in 2024 acquired spyware maker Paragon Solutions and merged it with its own REDLattice structure. The letters ask the funds to pressure AEI into providing redress and implementing safeguards so that contributors' money doesn't keep bankrolling surveillance.

There's plenty to worry about with Paragon. Its Graphite tool has already been caught surveilling journalists and activists — confirmed by a 2025 report, with earlier findings from Italy before that. Apple and Meta documented the facts, the Italian parliament released a report, and an Italian prosecutor conducted a forensic investigation — a body of evidence that's hard to dismiss as coincidence.

A separate thread involves Paragon's $2 million contract with the US immigration agency ICE. According to records on the government procurement portal, the contract officially closed on January 20, 2026, and the Department of Homeland Security claims ICE has "no relationship" with Paragon at all. However, the agency declined to clarify whether ICE still has access to Paragon's tools. A convenient phrasing: no contract, but access remains an open question.

Access Now sent an open letter to AEI and Paragon back in June 2025, asking what the companies planned to do about what had already happened and how they would help those affected. No response came. The UK's Business and Human Rights Resource Centre also wrote to both companies — and is still waiting for a reply as well.

Silence could prove costly not just for Paragon but for its investors too: reputational and financial risks spread across the entire chain — from the developer to the fund that simply wanted to grow retirement savings.

So far, the only clear response has come from the Hampshire Pension Fund: on October 9, 2026, it stated it has no investment in Paragon through AEI. The other three funds remain publicly silent for now.

Source: https://www.accessnow.org/press-release/beware-of-spyware-pension-funds/