On Monday, evidence emerged that the surveillance firm's clients may have intended to target their political opponents using spying technology offered to the governments by NSO, igniting fierce political debates throughout the world.
Pegasus, like other tools, converts target's phone into real-time spying device. Hundreds of journalists and politicians from Hungary, India, Mexico, Morocco, and other countries are among the phone numbers named as spyware targets in a leaked list. According to NSO, its surveillance technologies are sold to thoroughly vetted government clients who are only allowed to use them for legitimate criminal and terrorism investigations.
The investigation's media reported that they had identified more than 1,000 individuals from more than 50 nations whose names were on the list.
Politicians, business leaders, activists, and members of the Arab royal family are among them. Among the numbers on the list are those of journalists for Agence France-Presse, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, El Pais, the Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, and Reuters, The Guardian claimed.
According to the research, the phone of Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto appeared twice on the list, including in the month before he was murdered.
In Hungary, where Viktor Orbán's government is accused of employing NSO's hacking software against journalists, opposition lawmakers said that a special meeting of parliament's national security committee will be called to address the claims. “Press freedom is a core value of the European Union,” said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen during a visit to Prague on Monday. If the charges are accurate, she says "it is completely unacceptable".
The leaked information also included people close to Mr. Khashoggi were being watched over. However, NSO posted a statement on its website “As NSO has previously stated, our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” and “We can confirm that our technology was not used to listen, monitor, track, or collect information regarding him or his family members mentioned in the inquiry.”
In India, the list reportedly included more than 40 journalists, three opposition politicians, and two ministers from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's cabinet. The opposition Congress party in India accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi's administration of being the "deployer and executor" of a "spying racket". Rahul Gandhi said: “If your information is correct, the scale and nature of surveillance you describe goes beyond an attack on the privacy of individuals. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country. It must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be identified and punished.”Any wrongdoing on the part of the Indian government was denied. The "over-the-top" media reports, which he called as "an attempt to discredit Indian democracy and its well-established institutions," were disputed by IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw. However, it was revealed a few hours later that Vaishnaw's number had been chosen as a prospective target back in 2017, before he was elected MP.
Journalists will no longer be able to contact sources without fear of government reprisal, activists claim, if they do not have access to surveillance-free communications. Rights activists will also be unable to interact freely with victims of government abuses.
Pegasus can provide spies access to the phone's memory, allowing them to examine images, videos, emails, and texts, even on encrypted communication apps. Spy software can also let spies to listen in on or near a phone's conversations, use its cameras, and track its user's movements.
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