Pegasus Project (investigation)
[1] A small number of phones that were inspected by Amnesty International's cybersecurity team revealed forensic evidence of the Pegasus spyware, a zero-click Trojan virus developed by NSO Group.
[2] Various parties called for further investigation of the abuses and a limitation on trading such repressive malware, among them the newsrooms involved, the Committee to Protect Journalists, the International Press Institute, and Edward Snowden.
[6] In 2020, a list of over 50,000 phone numbers believed to belong to individuals identified as "people of interest" by clients of the Israeli cyberarms firm NSO Group was leaked to Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, a media nonprofit organisation based in Paris, France.
Over several months, over 80 journalists from The Guardian (United Kingdom), Le Monde and Radio France (France), Die Zeit, Süddeutsche Zeitung, WDR and NDR (Germany), The Washington Post and Frontline (United States),[7] Haaretz (Israel), Aristegui Noticias and Proceso (Mexico), Knack and Le Soir (Belgium), The Wire (India), Daraj (Syria),[8] Direkt36 (Hungary),[9] and OCCRP investigated the spying abuses.
[10][3] Amnesty also published various tools or data from this investigation, including a Mobile Verification Toolkit (MVT)[3] and a GitHub repository listing indicators of NSO/Pegasus compromised devices.
[12] The investigation suggested that Pegasus continued to be widely used by authoritarian governments to spy on human rights activists, journalists and lawyers worldwide, although NSO claims that it is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.
[16] Targets include known criminals as well as human rights defenders, political opponents, lawyers, diplomats, heads of state and nearly 200 journalists from 24 countries.
Used against opposition, Western Sahara–friendly journalists in Morocco and France, and more than 6,000 Algerian politicians, high-ranking military officials, heads of intelligence, civil servants, diplomats and activists.
[51] In December 2021, Citizen Lab announced to have found multiple hacks into phones of prominent opposition figures during the 2019 parliamentary elections that the right-wing populist party Law and Justice (PiS) of Jarosław Kaczyński won by a slim margin, which lead to a further erosion of judicial independence and press freedom.
[52] As of January 25, 2022, the reported victims include: On February 7, 2022, the Supreme Audit Office (NIK) revealed that between 2020 and 2021, 544 of its employees' devices were under surveillance in over 7,300 attacks.
[65] In 2020,[67] the NSO Pegasus license was stripped from Dubai due to human rights concerns[68] and spying on Sheikh Maktoum family members.
[67] NSO Group did not deny the presence of its spyware, responding to the report by stating they rigorously vetted its customers' human rights records before allowing them to use its spy tools.
NSO stated its purchasing client governments are bidden by a signed contract and licence, agreeing to terms of uses, and contractually limited to legitimate criminal or terrorist targets.
Edward Snowden has called for governments to impose a global moratorium on the international spyware trade in order to avoid ubiquitous violation of privacy and associated abuses.
[80] In a statement, the National Association of Hungarian Journalists [hu] said they were "shocked" by the revelations and also stated: "If this is the case, it is unacceptable, outrageous and illegal, full information must be disclosed to the public immediately".
In a tweet, the Press Club of India (PCI) issued a statement: This is the first time in the history of this country that all pillars of our democracy — judiciary, Parliamentarians, media, executives & ministers — have been spied upon.
[82] Similarly, the Editor's Guild of India also released a statement directed against the alleged spying made by the Indian government, saying: This act of snooping essentially conveys that journalism and political dissent are now equated with 'terror'.
How can a constitutional democracy survive if governments do not make an effort to protect freedom of speech and allows surveillance with such impunity?It asked for a Supreme Court monitored enquiry into the matter, and further demanded that the inquiry committee should include people of impeccable credibility from different walks of life—including journalists and civil society—so that it can independently investigate the facts around the extent and intent of snooping using the services of Pegasus.
[106] In December 2021, the Israeli Defense Ministry imposed new restrictions on the export of cyber warfare tools as a result of the scandals involving NSO.
[93] In an interview given to Jeune Afrique, foreign minister Nasser Bourita stated it was "important to shed light on the facts, far from controversy and slander", and claimed that certain figures within the Pegasus consortium "serve agendas well known for their primary hostility towards Morocco and are ulcerated by its successes under the leadership of His Majesty King Mohammed VI.
"[109] The then-Moroccan ambassador to France, Chakib Benmoussa, also denied reports that his country's authorities had spied on French President Emmanuel Macron.
[110] Morocco later sued Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories for defamation, with lawyer Olivier Baratelli [fr], acting on behalf of the government, saying that the Moroccan state "wants all possible light cast on these false allegations", and that it "does not intend to let the multiple lies and fake news spread these past few days go unpunished".
[111] It also issued defamation citations against Le Monde, Mediapart and Radio France on 28 July 2021, and filed an injunction request against the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on 2 August.
[112] The Prime Minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, whose name was revealed to be in the list,[20] has called on the United Nations for an investigation on the Indian use of Pegasus.
[120] West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee alleged that the central government intends to "turn India into a surveillance state" where "democracy is in danger".
[124] However, these reports were later proven to be false, and Amnesty issued a statement stating that it categorically stands by the findings of the investigation and that the data is irrefutably linked to potential targets of Pegasus.
[127] France's national agency for information systems security (ANSSI) identified digital traces of Pegasus on three journalists' phones and relayed its findings to the Paris public prosecutor's office, which is overseeing the investigation into possible hacking.
