On September 28, 2026, Access Now wrote to four pension funds —
Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association
,
Houston Firefighters’ Relief and Retirement Fund
,
New Mexico Educational Retirement Board
, and
Hampshire Pension Fund
— regarding their investment in AE Industrial Partners (AEI). AEI
purchased
spyware technology vendor Paragon Solutions in 2024 and merged the company with its holding company REDLattice. The letters urge pension fund managers to use their leverage with AEI to ensure the fund “provide[s] remedy where warranted, and implement robust safeguards” to prevent any contribution to human rights breaches.
Investors have a responsibility to identify and address human rights risks in their portfolios. Paragon presents a clear risk given its appalling human rights record, and these pension funds should avoid exposure to such spyware in their portfolios and demand answers from AE Industrial Partners.
Isedua Oribhabor, Business & Human Rights Manager at Access Now
well-documented history
demonstrates Paragon’s spyware tool, Graphite, being used to target
journalists
and
activists
. A
2025 report
confirmed the use of Graphite spyware against journalists, adding to
previous findings
revealing that the company’s tech was used to target civil society actors in Italy. Coupled with the
disclosures by Meta
and
Apple
, an Italian parliamentary
report
, and
forensic confirmation
by the Italian prosecutor, these findings raise urgent concerns regarding Paragon’s due diligence practices, post-sale oversight mechanisms, and provision of access to remedy for affected individuals.
Paragon has also sparked concerns in the U.S. given the company’s
$2 million contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
. Though a notice on a federal procurement website indicates that the
contract’s “close out” date
was January 20, 2026, and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) stated that ICE has “
no relations
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