On February 21, 2022, Israel's Justice Ministry announced the results of its internal investigation into whether police had illegally hacked the phones of dozens of public figures using Pegasus spyware. The finding: no indication of abuse. None. Clean as a whistle. The announcement arrived roughly a month after attorney general Avichai Mandelblit ordered the probe in response to the Calcalist newspaper's explosive, unsourced reports. The speed and tidiness of the conclusion will surprise anyone who has never encountered a government investigation into government misconduct. A separate inquiry had by early February identified use of spyware against three individuals — a considerably narrower finding than Calcalist's sweeping allegations — and Prime Minister Bennett had requested yet another probe before any final mechanism was decided. The Justice Ministry's exoneration neatly contradicted the core claims of the newspaper's series, leaving observers to choose between trusting an institution investigating itself and trusting an unsourced newspaper report. A difficult philosophical dilemma, certainly. What the episode did produce, undeniably, was a broader national conversation about state surveillance of Israeli citizens, a corruption trial thrown into procedural chaos, and a great many politicians delivering grave speeches about democracy while doing absolutely nothing to structurally limit police spying powers.