“Today’s report is yet another deeply disturbing reminder of the immense danger posed by Pegasus and other spyware used to target journalists,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities should allow transparent inquiries into the targeting of Armenian journalists with Pegasus, and NSO Group must offer a convincing response to the report’s findings and stop providing its technologies to states or other actors who target journalists.”

The report, “Hacking in a war zone: Pegasus spyware in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict,” identified at least 12 people whose devices were infected by Pegasus, spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. Many of the infections clustered around the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and its subsequent escalations.

The report was published Thursday, May 25, by the rights groups Access Now, Amnesty International, and Citizen Lab, the Armenian digital emergencies group CyberHUB-AM, as well as independent mobile security researcher Ruben Muradyan.

The targets included Armenian human rights activists, academics, and state officials, two media representatives who requested to be kept anonymous, and three named journalists:

• Karlen Aslanyan, a reporter with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Radio Azatutyun
• Astghik Bedevyan, a reporter with Radio Azatutyun
• Samvel Farmanyan, co-founder of the now-defunct independent broadcaster ArmNews TV

The report says its authors found “substantial evidence” suggesting that Azerbaijan authorities purchased access to Pegasus, and that the targets would have been of intense interest to Azerbaijan. The targets were also critical of Armenia’s government, which is believed to have previously used another spyware product.

NSO Group previously told CPJ that it licenses Pegasus to fight crime and terrorism, stating that it investigates “all credible claims of misuse and take[s] appropriate action,” including shutting down a customer’s access to the software.

CPJ has documented the grave threat posed to journalists by spyware, and joined with other rights groups to issue recommendations to policymakers and companies to combat the use of spyware against the media, including by imposing bans on technology and vendors implicated in human rights abuses.

Azerbaijani journalists Sevinj Vagifgizi and Khadija Ismayilova were previously confirmed to have had their devices infected with Pegasus, while dozens of other prominent Azerbaijani journalists featured on a leaked list of potential Pegasus targets analyzed by the collaborative investigation Pegasus Project in 2021.

CPJ emailed NSO Group, the National Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Armenia, and the State Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

“Today’s report is yet another deeply disturbing reminder of the immense danger posed by Pegasus and other spyware used to target journalists,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Armenian and Azerbaijani authorities should allow transparent inquiries into the targeting of Armenian journalists with Pegasus, and NSO Group must offer a convincing response to the report’s findings and stop providing its technologies to states or other actors who target journalists.”

The report, “Hacking in a war zone: Pegasus spyware in the Azerbaijan-Armenia conflict,” identified at least 12 people whose devices were infected by Pegasus, spyware produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. Many of the infections clustered around the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh war between Armenia and Azerbaijan and its subsequent escalations.

The report was published Thursday, May 25, by the rights groups Access Now, Amnesty International, and Citizen Lab, the Armenian digital emergencies group CyberHUB-AM, as well as independent mobile security researcher Ruben Muradyan.

The targets included Armenian human rights activists, academics, and state officials, two media representatives who requested to be kept anonymous, and three named journalists:

• Karlen Aslanyan, a reporter with the U.S. Congress-funded broadcaster RFE/RL’s Armenian service, Radio Azatutyun
• Astghik Bedevyan, a reporter with Radio Azatutyun
• Samvel Farmanyan, co-founder of the now-defunct independent broadcaster ArmNews TV

The report says its authors found “substantial evidence” suggesting that Azerbaijan authorities purchased access to Pegasus, and that the targets would have been of intense interest to Azerbaijan. The targets were also critical of Armenia’s government, which is believed to have previously used another spyware product.

NSO Group previously told CPJ that it licenses Pegasus to fight crime and terrorism, stating that it investigates “all credible claims of misuse and take[s] appropriate action,” including shutting down a customer’s access to the software.

CPJ has documented the grave threat posed to journalists by spyware, and joined with other rights groups to issue recommendations to policymakers and companies to combat the use of spyware against the media, including by imposing bans on technology and vendors implicated in human rights abuses.

Azerbaijani journalists Sevinj Vagifgizi and Khadija Ismayilova were previously confirmed to have had their devices infected with Pegasus, while dozens of other prominent Azerbaijani journalists featured on a leaked list of potential Pegasus targets analyzed by the collaborative investigation Pegasus Project in 2021.

CPJ emailed NSO Group, the National Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Armenia, and the State Security Service and Ministry of Internal Affairs of Azerbaijan for comment, but did not immediately receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Since March, López Obrador has sharply criticized Article 19, national investigative magazine Proceso, privately owned online news outlets Animal Político and Aristegui Noticias, and Animal Político investigative reporter Nayeli Roldán over their coverage of the Mexican federal government’s alleged use of illegal spyware.

The president’s statements have led to online abuse and threats of violence against Article 19, the three outlets, and their reporters, according to Roldán, Animal Político’s editorial director Daniel Moreno, and Article 19’s regional director Leopoldo Maldonado, who all spoke to CPJ by phone. 

“Mexican President López Obrador’s recent attempts to discredit journalist Nayeli Roldán, three critical news outlets, and Article 19 are more proof that his administration prefers harassing journalists over solving the country’s catastrophic press freedom crisis,” said CPJ Mexico Representative Jan-Albert Hootsen. “López Obrador’s constant verbal attacks on reporters, which serve only as a distraction from the issues they report on, must stop before they lead to further violence against the press.”

Since he assumed office in 2018, López Obrador repeatedly stated that his government does not engage in illegal surveillance with spyware and denied that his administration uses such applications for anything other than national security.

However, a series of reports published in March 2023 provided evidence that the Mexican military used Pegasus, a spyware developed by the Israeli NSO group, to monitor conversations between human rights activist Raymundo Ramos and two journalists at the Mexico City newspaper El Universal since 2019.

In a March 10 press briefing, Roldán asked López Obrador about those allegations, to which he responded by saying Roldán was “always against his government.” When Roldán insisted the military must explain the legal basis for the spying, he accused her of “not being objective,” and called her “unprofessional” and part of the “tendentious, bribed media.”

During an April 28 press conference, the president told reporters that Roldán was paid in 2022 by the National Institute for Access to Information, a federal autonomous body that handles freedom of information requests and regulates the protection of personal data. López Obrador has been highly critical of the institute, which he claims is “useless,” “onerous, opaque, and unnecessarily expensive,” and opposes his administration and him personally, according to news reports.

During a May 2 press briefing, López Obrador accused Article 19 of being funded by the U.S. government to work “against his government,” therefore “violating our sovereignty” and called the organization “interventionist,” adding that he would send a diplomatic cable to the U.S. government “in protest.”  

Moreno, Roldán, and Maldonado told CPJ that the president’s remarks have led to many hateful comments on social media against them personally, as well as on websites and social media pages of Article 19, Proceso, Animal Político, and Aristegui Noticias. Roldán said she received “vicious” misogynistic comments, while Maldonado said he and his organization received many threats and statements echoing the president’s comments.

“I’ve been receiving lots of insults, an increasing number. I’d even call it stalking,” Roldán told CPJ, adding that the pressure has forced her to keep a lower profile on social media. “I can’t send out a single tweet without it receiving insults.” 

Moreno said the president’s comments have made him and his reporters feel less safe, leading some of his reporters to ask not to be named in bylines. 

“We try to respond to the president, who constantly lies about us and never rectifies false information. His daily press briefing is a far bigger platform than anything we could ever hope to have,” Moreno said. “We have seen an increase in the number of attacks and insults against us, including social media users openly asking who our family members are to accost them as well.”

CPJ contacted presidential spokesperson Jesús Ramírez Cuevas for comment via messaging app but did not receive any response.  

Mexico was the deadliest country in the Western Hemisphere for journalists in 2022. At least three reporters were murdered in direct connection to their work, and CPJ is investigating another 10 killings to determine the motive.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Six dozen civil society groups, journalists, and experts marked World Press Freedom Day on Wednesday with a joint call for "all governments to implement an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer, servicing, and use of digital surveillance technologies, as well as a ban on abusive commercial spyware technology and its vendors."

The use of spyware against media workers is "an alarming trend impacting freedom of the press and creating a wider chilling effect on civil society and civic space," the statement argues. "Privacy, source protection, and digital security are essential components of press freedom, allowing journalists to protect the confidentiality and integrity of their work and sources."

"As governments and other entities seek to suppress the press and silence dissent, we are seeing an exponential increase in the market for digital surveillance technologies, including spyware, that overrides these journalistic principles."

"As governments and other entities seek to suppress the press and silence dissent, we are seeing an exponential increase in the market for digital surveillance technologies, including spyware, that overrides these journalistic principles," the statement continues. Such tools "can infiltrate a target's phone, giving the attacker full access to emails, messages, contacts, and even the device's microphone and camera," rendering secure and encrypted platforms useless.

"From El Salvador to Mexico, from India to Azerbaijan, from Hungary to Morocco, to Ethiopia—the list goes on of countries where investigative journalists working to expose corruption, power abuses, or human rights violations, have been targeted by invasive spyware such as Pegasus," the statement adds, referencing spyware from the Israeli firm NSO Group that has been used to target reporters, dissidents, and world leaders.

The advocates of banning this type of surveilleance technology noted that there are at least 180 known cases of potentially targeted journalists across 21 countries. They pointed to multiple examples, including Hungary-based Andras Szabo and Szabolcs Panyi being targeted with Pegasus in 2019, and Raymond Mujuni and Canary Mugume facing the same spyware two years later in Uganda.

According to the statement:

Moroccan investigative journalist Omar al-Radi was targeted with Pegasus spyware between 2019 and 2021, and later sentenced to six years in prison on bogus rape and espionage charges. Meanwhile journalist Hicham Mansouri, who fled from Morocco to France in 2016 following state harassment and detention, was hacked by Pegasus at least 20 times between February and April 2021.

Perhaps the most infamous example of how spyware can facilitate and enable transnational repression and serious human rights violations, including enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killing, is the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi at the Consulate of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in Istanbul on October 2, 2018. Both prior to and after his death, Mr. Kashoggi's family members and acquaintances were targeted by Pegasus spyware.

"It is clear that the use of spyware and unlawful targeted surveillance violates the fundamental rights of freedom of expression and access to information, peaceful assembly and association, freedom of movement, and privacy," the statement asserts, demanding not only a ban but also accountability for developers and distributors of the technology, and boosted efforts to protect journalists.

The statement was launched at Secret Surveillance: Countering Spyware's Threats to Freedom of the Press and Expression, an event co-hosted by advocacy organizations including Access Now.

"Invasive and abusive commercial spyware that has been used to facilitate human rights abuses globally has no place in our world," declared Access Now surveillance campaigner Rand Hammoud. "Years worth of evidence by civil society has demonstrated that the companies selling these technologies should not be rewarded with governmental contracts that would continue enabling their abuses."

Natalia Krapiva, tech legal counsel at Access Now, agreed that "this sinister technology that has been misused and abused by governments around the world is not safe in any hands, and its use can never be justified."

"Discussions do not suffice," Krapiva added. "We expect action: Protect freedom of the press, stamp out the spyware threat."

The spyware statement came as other members of the media acknowledged World Press Freedom Day in various ways, including sounding the alarm about the impacts of artificial intelligence on fact-based journalism, demanding global safeguards for digital privacy, and calling out the U.S. government for continuing to seek the extradition of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Jessica Corbett.

The amendment authorizes the formulation of a central government fact-check unit empowered to order intermediaries, including social media companies and internet service providers, to take down “fake or false or misleading content.” Intermediaries risk liability in court if they fail to remove such content.

The statement expresses concern that the amendment, which was announced without adequate and meaningful consultation with journalists, press bodies, and civil society organizations, severely threatens press freedom and empowers the government to be the sole arbiter of truth on the internet.

The statement further notes that the surveillance of journalists continues with impunity and calls on the Indian government to meaningfully commit to protecting media freedom and ensuring that journalists can do their work freely and without fear of persecution.

Read the full statement here.

CPJ previously criticized the I.T. Rules, which expanded the government’s powers to censor online content. In January 2023, the Indian government cited the rules when ordering YouTube and Twitter to take down links to a BBC documentary investigating Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s alleged role in the 2002 riots in Gujarat.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“The revelations that Mexican authorities have continued to spy on activists, including their communications with reporters, is a shocking confirmation that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s promises to do away with illegal surveillance have not been realized,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “The previous failure to hold officials engaged in spying to account all but guaranteed that little would change. Only a credible, swift, and transparent investigation into these abuses will show that the government is taking such actions seriously.”

Joint reporting published Tuesday, March 7, by The New York Times and the independent Mexican outlet Aristegui Noticias showed that military authorities used Pegasus surveillance software designed by the Israeli firm NSO Group to spy on Ramos.

According to that reporting, an intelligence unit with Mexico’s Defense Secretariat attacked Ramos’ phone on numerous occasions between 2019 and 2020, and listened in on conversations he had with journalists at the newspaper El Universal about alleged extrajudicial executions of civilians in the northern state of Tamaulipas. The documents also revealed that the secretariat accused Ramos of working for a criminal gang in the state.

López Obrador, who assumed office in 2018, pledged that his government would end surveillance and denied the continued use of Pegasus. Past investigations into the use of Pegasus have not led to the arrest of public officials allegedly responsible for the surveillance.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

A group of journalists working for the award-winning Central American independent news outlet El Faro have filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against NSO Group, the Israeli company that operates the Pegasus spyware used to monitor and track journalists, human rights activists and dissidents across the globe. The journalists of El Faro, which is based in El Salvador, allege that Pegasus software was used to infiltrate their iPhones and track their communications and movements. “We’re of course of the belief that it was the government of El Salvador who engaged in these attacks. This is weapons-grade software that is sold exclusively to governments,” says Roman Gressier, a French American staff reporter with El Faro English and one of 15 plaintiffs in the lawsuit. We also speak with Carrie DeCell, senior staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University and the lead lawyer in the lawsuit, who says part of the goal is to force the courts to confirm who NSO Group’s client was. “That would send a signal to other government clients around the world that they can no longer rely on NSO Group’s assurances of secrecy when they … intimidate and persecute journalists, civil rights activists, human rights activists around the world,” says DeCell.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

“Earlier it was just one conversation they [authorities] would tap into,” Venu told CPJ in a phone interview. “They wouldn’t see what you would be doing in your bedroom or bathroom. The scale was stunning.”

The Indian journalists were among scores around the world who learned from the Pegasus Project in July 2021 that they, along with human rights activists, lawyers, and politicians, had been targeted for possible surveillance by Pegasus, the spyware made by Israel’s NSO Group. (The company denies any connection with the Project’s list and says that it only sells its product to vetted governments with the goal of preventing crime or terrorism.) 

The Pegasus Project found that the phones of two founding editors of The Wire – Venu and Siddharth Vardarajan – were confirmed by forensic analysis to have been infected with Pegasus. Four other journalists associated with the outlet – diplomatic editor Devirupa Mitra, and contributors Rohini Singh, Prem Shankar Jha, and Swati Chaturvedi – were listed as potential targets.

The Indian government denies that it has engaged in unauthorized surveillance, but has not commented directly on a January New York Times report that Prime Minister Narendra Modi agreed to buy Pegasus during a 2017 visit to Israel. The Indian government has not cooperated with an ongoing inquiry by an expert committee appointed by the country’s Supreme Court to investigate illegal use of spyware. In late August, the court revealed that the committee had found malware in five out of the 29 devices it examined, but could not confirm that it was Pegasus.

However, Indian journalists interviewed by CPJ had no doubt that it was the government behind any efforts to spy on them. “This government is obsessed with journalists who are not adhering to their cheerleading,” investigative reporter Chaturvedi told CPJ via messaging app. “My journalism has never been personal against anyone. I don’t understand why it is so personal to this government.” For Chaturvedi, the spying was an invasion of privacy “so heinous that how do you put it in words.” 

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

Overall, the Pegasus Project found that at least 40 journalists were among the 174 Indians named as potential targets of surveillance. With six associated with The Wire, the outlet was the country’s most targeted newsroom. The Wire has long been a thorn in the side of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its reporting on allegations of corruption by party officials, the party’s alleged promotion of sectarian violence, and its alleged use of technology to target government critics online. As a result, various BJP-led state governments, BJP officials, and their affiliates have targeted the website’s journalists with police investigations, defamation suits, online doxxing, and threats.

Indian home ministry and BJP spokespeople have not responded to CPJ’s email and text messages requesting comment. However after the last Supreme Court hearing, party spokesperson Gaurav Bhatia criticized the opposition for “trying to create an atmosphere of fear” in India. “They [Congress party] were trying to spread propaganda that citizens’ privacy has been invaded. The Supreme Court has made it clear that no conclusive evidence has been found to show the presence of Pegasus spyware in the 29 phones scanned,” he said.

As in so many other newsrooms around the world, the Pegasus Project revelations have prompted The Wire to introduce stricter security protocols, including the use of encrypted software, to protect its journalists as well as its sources.

Ajoy Ashirwad Mahaprashasta, political editor at The Wire, told CPJ in a phone interview that as part of the new procedures, “we would not talk [about sensitive stories] on the phone.” While working on the Pegasus project, the Wire newsroom was extra careful. “When we were meeting, we kept our phones in a separate room. We were also not using our general [office] computers,” he said.

Venu told CPJ that while regular editorial meetings at The Wire are held via video call, sensitive stories are discussed in person. “We take usual precautions like occasional reboot, keep phones away when we meet anyone. What else can we do?” he asks.

Chaturvedi told CPJ via messaging app that she quickly started using a new phone when she learned from local intelligence sources that she might have been under surveillance. As an investigative journalist, her immediate concern following the Pegasus Project disclosures was to avoid compromising her sources. “In Delhi, everyone I know who is in a position of power no longer talks on normal calls,” she said. “The paranoia is not just us who have been targeted with Pegasus.”

“Since the last five years, any important source I’m trying to talk to as a journalist will not speak to me on a normal regular call,” said Arfa Khanum Sherwani, who anchors a popular political show for The Wire and is known as a critic of Hindu right-wing politics. Sherwani told CPJ that her politician sources were the first ones who moved to communicate with her on encrypted messaging platforms even before the revelations as they “understood that something like this was at play.”

Rohini Singh similarly told CPJ that she doesn’t have any conversations related to her stories over the phone and leaves it behind when she meets people out reporting. “It is not about protecting myself. Ultimately it is going to be my story and my byline would be on it. I’m essentially protecting people who might be giving me information,” she said. 

Journalists also say they are concerned about the safety of their family members.

“After Pegasus, even though my name per se was not part of the whole thing, my friends and family members did not feel safe enough to call me or casually say something about the government. Because they feel that they are also being audiographed and videographed [filmed or recorded],” said Sherwani.

Chaturvedi told CPJ that her family has been “terrified” since the revelations. “Both my parents were in the government service. They can’t believe that this is the same country,” she said.

Venu and Sherwani both expressed concerns about how the atmosphere of fear could affect coverage by less-experienced journalists starting out in their careers. “The simple pleasure of doing journalism got affected. This may lead to self-censorship. When someone gets attacked badly, that journalist can start playing safe,” said Venu.

Said Sherwani: “For someone like me with a more established identity and career, I would be able to get people [to talk to me], but for younger journalists it will be much more difficult to contact politicians and speak to them. Whatever they say has to be on record, so you will see less and less source-based stories.”

Ashirwad agreed. “I’m very critical of this government, which is known. My stand now is I shall not say anything in private which I’m not comfortable saying in public,” he said.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

Over five years have passed since Villarreal and Ismael Bojórquez, RíoDoce’s co-founder and editor-in-chief, received the suspicious text messages that experts said bore telltale signs of Pegasus, the now notorious surveillance software developed by Israeli firm NSO Group. Just this month, a joint investigation by three Mexican rights groups and the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab found evidence of Pegasus infections on the devices of two Mexican journalists and a human rights defender between 2019 and 2021 – infiltration that occurred in spite of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s 2018 promise to end illegal surveillance. (López Obrador denied on October 4 that his administration had used Pegasus against journalists or political opponents, saying, “if they have evidence, let them present it.”)

The previous Mexican administration also denied using the technology on high-profile journalists, even after the Pegasus Project, a global consortium of investigative journalists and affiliated news outlets that investigated the use of the spyware, reported in 2021 that more than two dozen journalists in Mexico have been targeted with the spyware. Those named included award-winning investigative journalist Carmen Aristegui and Jorge Carrasco, the editor-in-chief of the country’s foremost hard-hitting investigative magazine Proceso. Yet although the surveillance caused considerable outrage, almost nothing has changed since 2017, according to Villarreal, who spoke to CPJ from Sinaloa’s capital, Culiacán.

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

In what CPJ has found to be by far the deadliest country for journalists in the Western Hemisphere, there remains no legal protection from intrusive surveillance, no recourse for its victims, and no repercussions for those in public office who facilitated the spying.  

López Obrador’s pledge to stop illegal surveillance was one of his first major undertakings after he took office in December 2018. Eleven months later, he assured Mexicans that the use of the Israeli spyware would be investigated. “From this moment I tell you that we’re not involved in this. It was decided here that no one will be persecuted,” he said.

But with just over two years left in office – Mexico’s constitution allows presidents to serve only a single six-year term – journalists, digital rights groups, and human rights defenders say little has come of the president’s promises. Not only has the investigation into the documented cases of illegal use of Pegasus shown no meaningful progress, the critics say, but also virtually nothing has been done to prevent authorities from continuing to spy. 

“Unfortunately, the regulatory situation and the authorities’ capacity to intercept communication have remained intact,” said Luis Fernando García of Red en Defensa de los Derechos Digitales (R3D), a Mexico City-based digital rights group that supports reporters targeted with Pegasus. “There’s very little transparency, very little publicly available information about the use of such technologies, which makes repetition a very real possibility.”

CPJ contacted the office of President López Obrador’s spokesperson for comment before publication of the October report about the most recent infections but did not receive a reply.

NSO says it only sells Pegasus to government and law enforcement agencies to combat terrorism or organized crime. But investigative journalists report that in countries like Mexico non-state actors, including criminal groups, can also get their hands on these tools even if they are not direct clients. This poses a major threat to journalists and their sources across the region, where CPJ research has found that organized crime groups are responsible for a significant percentage of threats and deadly violence targeting the press. At least one Mexican journalist who was killed for his work, Cecilio Pineda Birto, may have been singled out for surveillance the month before his death.

Villarreal and Bojorquez received the first Pegasus-infected text messages just two days after Javier Valdez Cárdenas, Riodoce co-founder and a 2011 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was fatally shot on May 15, 2017, near the magazine’s offices in northern Sinaloa state. 

“Although it had all the hallmarks of Pegasus, it took us quite a while before we realized what was happening,” Villarreal recalled. “We were in a very vulnerable state after Javier’s death. It wasn’t until approximately a month later, after contact with press freedom groups, that we realized that it was Pegasus.”

A 2018 report by R3D, citing findings by Citizen Lab, stated that the likely source of Villarreal’s surveillance was the Agency of Criminal Investigation, a now-defunct arm of the federal attorney general’s office. Two autonomous federal regulators subsequently established that the attorney general’s office used Pegasus illegally and violated privacy laws.

However, an ongoing federal investigation initiated under the previous government of President Enrique Peña Nieto has not led to any arrests of public officials. In December 2021, Mexican authorities requested the extradition from Israel of the former head of the criminal investigation agency, Tomás Zerón, in connection with various investigations – reportedly including the Pegasus abuses – but that request has not yet been granted. (CPJ contacted the federal attorney general’s office for comment on the extradition, but did not receive a reply.)

Concerningly, according to Proceso, investigators of the federal state comptroller revealed in the audit of the federal budget in October 2021 that the López Obrador administration had paid more than 312 million pesos (US $16 million) to a Mexican businessman who had facilitated the acquisition of Pegasus in the past.

The López Obrador administration has not publicly responded to Proceso’s findings or the state comptroller’s report, but the president did say during his daily press briefing on August 3, 2021, that there ‘no longer existed a relationship’ with the developer of Pegasus. The president’s office had not responded to CPJ’s request for comment on the payment by the time of publication.

Experts at R3D and Citizen Lab said Pegasus traces on a journalist’s phone indicated they were hacked as recently as June 2021, just after they reported on alleged human rights abuses by the Mexican army for digital news outlet Animal Politico. The journalist was not named in reports of the incident.

“I don’t think anything has changed,” Villarreal said. “The risk continues to exist, but the government denied everything.”

R3D, together with a number of other civil society groups, has also pushed hard for new legislation to curb the use of surveillance technologies by lobbying directly to legislators and via platforms like the Open Government Alliance. So far, the result has been disappointing. Even though López Obrador and his party, the Movement of National Regeneration (Morena), hold absolute majorities in both chambers of federal congress and have repeatedly acknowledged the need to end illegal surveillance, there has been no meaningful push for new legislation on either the state or the federal level.

“There is indignation about surveillance, but my colleagues aren’t picking the issue up,” said Emilio Álvarez Icaza, an independent senator who has been outspoken about surveillance. “It’s an issue that at least the Senate does not seem to really care about.”

R3D’s García warns that Pegasus is just a part of the problem. R3D and other civil society groups say they have detected numerous other technologies that were acquired by state and federal authorities even after the scope of Pegasus’ use became clear.

“We’ve been able to detect the proliferation of systems that permit the intervention of telephones and there are publicly available documents that provide serious evidence that those systems have been used illegally,” García said. “The [attorney general’s office], for example, has acquired the capacity to conduct more than 100,000 searches of mobile phone data, but only gave clarity about 200 of them.”

“Even with regulation, the Mexican justice state has a tremendous problem of lack of transparency and accountability. The entire system seems to have been constructed to protect public officials,” said Ana Lorena Delgadillo, a lawyer and director of the Fundación para la Justicia, which provides legal support to Mexicans and Central Americans searching for ‘disappeared’ family members. “This is why I believe it’s important that cases of this nature are ultimately brought to the Supreme Court, but it’s hard to find people willing to litigate.”

Villarreal said he will not be one of those afraid to speak out. “Ultimately we’ve left our cases in the hands of civil society organizations,” he said. “Thing is, the spyware is just a new aspect of a problem that has always existed. The authorities have spied here, they will continue to do so. We have to adapt to the reality that we’ll never know the extent of what’s going on.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ Mexico Correspondent.

Last July, when the Pegasus Project investigation revealed that imprisoned Moroccan journalist Soulaiman Raissouni was selected for surveillance by Israeli-made Pegasus spyware, the journalist could only laugh. 

“I was so sure,” his wife Kholoud Mokhtari said Raissouni told her from prison. 

Raissouni is one of seven local journalists named by the Pegasus Project – an investigative consortium of media organizations – as a potential or confirmed target of Pegasus spyware. The news only validated what Moroccan’s journalist community had long suspected: that the state’s vast intelligence apparatus has been monitoring some journalists’ every move. 

Moroccan journalists were among the first worldwide to complain of the use of spyware against reporters, pointing to digital surveillance as early as 2015. In 2019 and 2020, Amnesty International announced the findings of forensic analyses confirming that Pegasus had been used on the phone of at least two Moroccan journalists, Omar Radi and Maati Monjib. Subsequent state action against some of the surveilled journalists underscored the ongoing threat to Morocco’s independent media – and reinforced CPJ’s conclusion that spyware attacks often are precursors to other press freedom violations. 

Both Raissouni and Radi are imprisoned in Morocco for what family and colleagues describe as trumped up sex crimes charges. Taoufik Bouachrine, another journalist whom the Pegasus Project said was targeted with the spyware, is imprisoned on similar charges. 

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

The Pegasus Project was unable to analyze the phones of all of those named as surveillance targets to confirm the infection and the Moroccan government has repeatedly denied ever using Pegasus. However, many of the three journalists’ private pictures, videos, texts, and phone calls, as well as those belonging to family members, were published in pro-government newspapers and sites like Chouf TV, Barlamane.com, Telexpresse, and then later used as evidence against the journalists in court.   

Bouachrine, former editor-in-chief of local independent newspaper Akhbar al-Youm, was arrested in February 2018, and is serving a 15-year prison sentence on numerous sexual assault and human trafficking charges. His wife, Asmae Moussaoui, told CPJ in a phone call in May 2022 that she believes she was surveilled, too. 

In April 2019, Moussaoui said she called a private Washington, D.C.-based communications firm to help her run ads in U.S. newspapers about Bouachrine’s case, hoping that the publicity might aid efforts to free her husband. The next day, Barlamane published a story alleging that Moussaoui paid tens of thousands of euros to the firm, using money the journalist allegedly earned through human trafficking activities. Human Rights Watch describes Barlamane as being “closely tied with security services.” 

Suspecting she was being monitored, Moussaoui turned to one of her husband’s lawyers, who suggested the pair “pull a prank” that would help them detect whether authorities were indeed spying on her. The lawyer “called me and proposed that we speak with Taoufik’s alleged victims to reconcile, which we did not really intend to do. The next day, tabloids published an article saying that our family is planning to bribe each victim with two million dirhams [about $182,000] so they drop the case. I became very sure [of the surveillance] then,” Moussaoui told CPJ.

Moroccan journalist and press freedom advocate Maati Monjib, co-founder of the Moroccan Association for Investigative Journalism (AMJI), had a similar experience. Monjib was arrested in December 2020 and sentenced to a year in prison the following month after he was convicted of endangering state security and money laundering fraud. The latter charge stems from AMJI’s work helping investigative journalists apply for grants, Monjib told CPJ in a phone call. 

“During one of our meetings at AMJI in 2015, I mentioned that we need to look for grants to support more journalists. The next day, one of the tabloids published a story claiming that Maati Monjib is giving 5,000 euros [$4,850] to every journalist who criticizes the general director of the national security. This is a proof that they were listening to our meeting,” said Monjib. 

The revelations have forced journalists and their family members to take precautions against surveillance – no easy task given the difficulty of detecting spyware infection without forensic help. “[Raissouni] told me to try to be safe, so I am trying my best,” Mokhtari, Raissouni’s wife, told CPJ. 

“Other than the usual precautions I take to protect my phone, I regularly update it and I never keep any personal pictures or important messages or emails on it,” she said. “I also buy a new phone every three months and destroy the old one, which has taken a financial toll on my family. But honestly you can’t escape it. The most tech-savvy person I know is our friend Omar Radi. He took all the necessary precautions against hacking, and they still managed to infect his devices.” 

Monjib brings his devices to tech experts almost daily to check for bugs and to clean them, he told CPJ, adding that he also never answers phone calls, only uses the encrypted Signal messaging app, and always speaks in code.

Aboubakr Jamai, a prominent Moroccan journalist and a 2003 CPJ International Press Freedom Award winner, was selected for surveillance with Pegasus in 2018 and 2019 — and confirmed as a target in 2019 — even though he has been living in France since 2007, according to the Pegasus Project. He believes that the Moroccan government is to blame for the spyware attacks, and that the surveillance has effectively ensured the end of independent journalism in the country, he told CPJ in a phone call. 

“For years now, there haven’t been any independent media or journalism associations,” said Jamai. What’s left now is a handful of individuals who have strong voices and choose to echo it using some news websites, but mainly social media platforms.” 

CPJ emailed the Moroccan Ministry of Interior in September for comment but did not receive any response. 

Still, Jamai – who gave no credence to the government’s earlier denials of Pegasus use – did see one positive result from the spyware disclosures. “It publicly exposed Morocco’s desperation and the extent to which it is willing to go to silence journalists,” he said. “Now the whole world knows that the Moroccan state is using Pegasus to spy on journalists.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Madeline Earp.

The indignation and humiliation were from seeing himself and other prominent journalists included on a list of convicted criminals and known mob figures considered to be threats to Hungary’s national security. The pride was because the Hungarian government, which routinely ignored his reporting questions, thought it was worth spending tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars on his surveillance; the relief was the validation that his earlier suspicions about being spied on were not a sign of paranoia.

Other Hungarian journalists targeted for surveillance expressed similarly ambiguous emotions in interviews with CPJ. And all were skeptical that any future recommendations by the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry into Pegasus and other spyware, expected next year, would bring much relief in a country where independent media face an increasingly hostile press freedom climate under the government of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.

Panyi, who continues to relentlessly investigate the surveillance scandal, is one of the few journalists still giving regular interviews to Hungarian and international media about his surveillance. Three other CPJ interviewees said that while they were making an exception in talking to the organization, they’d otherwise stopped making public statements on their experience because they did not want their Pegasus targeting to define their lives.

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

The three – crime reporter Brigitta Csikász, Zoltán Varga, owner of one of the country’s biggest independent news sites, 24.hu, and a reporter who asked not to be identified for fear that further publicity would negatively impact his career – were named as targets in July 2021, when Panyi broke the story for Direkt36 as part of its reporting for the Pegasus Project, an international investigation that found the phone numbers of more than 180 journalists on a global list of potential spyware targets. (The NSO Group, which makes Pegasus, denies any connection with the Project’s list and says that it only sells its product to vetted governments with the goal of preventing crime or terrorism.)

Along with Panyi, all the journalists recounted signs that they were under physical and digital surveillance before they were aware of Pegasus being used against them, and all said that their private and professional lives had changed since the scandal broke last year.

Csikász, who covers corruption, told CPJ in a phone interview that she had seen numerous signs that people might be watching her and was warned by friends for years that her phone might be monitored. “I did not get a heart attack, I was not at all traumatized,” she told CPJ in a phone interview about her reaction to the news that Pegasus was used to monitor the contents of her phone between early April and mid-November 2019.   

Csikász has even managed to find some humor in her situation. “My friends took it real easy, most of them just crack jokes and my family took it as a sign of prestige and importance. For them, it is as if I was awarded with a special journalism prize,” she said. She added that the publicity surrounding the disclosures had even prompted some sources to contact her because they heard about her in the news. “I was not, and I have not, become paranoid,” she told CPJ.

Still, Csikász, who currently works for daily tabloid newspaper Blikk and was reporting for the investigative outlet Átlátszó, remains concerned about the intrusion. “As a journalist, I respect my country’s laws and my profession’s ethical standards and I consider the possibility of being spied on as part of my job,” she said. However, she would like to know which of her numerous investigations were considered threats to national security.

Varga told CPJ in a video interview that he’d attracted government attention when he started investing in media in 2014. This scrutiny increased, especially when he made it clear around 2017 that he would not be willing to sell his assets in spite of quiet threats and warnings from businesspeople linked to the government. In recent years, he said, he had spotted people sitting in cars parked outside his house and apparent eavesdroppers sitting next to his table at restaurants. He recalled that his phone calls were often interrupted, he once heard a recording of a call played back from the start, and at one point German tech experts provided proof that his android phone had been hacked.

Panyi’s investigation found Varga’s Pegasus surveillance started around the time he invited six people to a dinner in his house in Budapest in June 2018, two months after Orbán won a third consecutive term as prime minister. All seven participants of the dinner were selected as potential candidates for surveillance and at least one of their phones showed evidence of infection under Amnesty’s forensic analysis.  

“I was only surprised that the regime used this type of high-level technology to spy on an otherwise innocent gathering of intellectuals,” Varga told CPJ in a video call. “It was far from being a coup, it was just a friendly gathering. We discussed the very high level of corruption in Hungary’s ruling elite and how to find ways to expose it. Using this kind of technology in such a situation for me just shows how much the government is afraid of its opponents,” he said.

The reporter who spoke on condition of anonymity was also surprised that the government would deploy such high-tech spyware against journalists. Although he’d seen indications of occasional physical surveillance, the Pegasus infiltration “came out of the blue and was a real shock to me,” he said in a phone interview. His “dark period” only eased when the fact of his surveillance was publicly reported. “Since then, I prefer not to speak about it and share my experiences with anyone but my friends,” he told CPJ.

Panyi said that the way he communicates with sources has now become much slower and more complicated. “Of course, I have much more difficulty meeting and communicating with sources, who are increasingly afraid of the trouble I might bring into their life,” he told CPJ in a phone interview. He uses various secure digital tools and applications, is mindful about what networks he connects to on his computer or mobile phone, regularly goes to meetings without his phone, and continues to take physical notes.

Varga says the spyware disclosures have harmed some of his business ventures. “The Pegasus scandal made it obvious for both my business and private contacts that it might be risky to talk to me and they might also get exposed, which people obviously try to avoid,” Varga told CPJ, adding that acquaintances now crack Pegasus “jokes” in most of his meetings. “As a result of this whole affair, I have much less phone calls, more walking meetings outside, without phones in the pocket,” he said.

Many companies, including advertising agencies and advertisers for his news site, seem to prefer to avoid doing business with him, and their loss is not offset by the small number of ad-buyers who now see the site as an important media voice, said Varga. “I have become kind of toxic for my environment,” he told CPJ. 

The reporter who preferred not to be named said that his phone now “stays outside” whenever he sees friends and family and he uses a special anti-tracking case when he attends professional meetings.

Hungary’s government acknowledged in November 2021 that it had bought Pegasus spyware, but says that its surveillance of journalists and political critics was carried out in accordance with Hungarian law.

A government spokesman said that journalists might have been monitored because some of their sources were under surveillance on suspicion of crimes or terrorist links, not because the journalists were the direct targets of the investigations.

In January, the Hungarian National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information issued a 55-page report, which concluded that in all the cases they investigated, including those involving journalists, all legal criteria for the application of the spyware were met and the spyware was used to protect Hungary’s national interests.  

These responses have left the journalists who spoke to CPJ with little hope that anyone will be held accountable for the intrusion on their lives. Nor do they expect help from the institutions of the European Union, where officials themselves have been targeted by spyware as they grapple with mounting political pressure over how to hold member states accountable for any breaches of the rule of law.

As the European Parliament’s committee of inquiry looks at the mountain of evidence that surveillance spyware has been used in EU countries and against EU citizens, the EU Commission lacks the powers to hold member states to account, and has been forced to refer those seeking justice to their national courts.    

Surveilled journalists might eventually get EU relief if a new draft European Media Freedom Act, released on September 16, becomes law. The Act could give journalists a path to file a complaint to the EU’s Court of Justice if they or those close to them are subject to the unjustified use of spyware. However, the Act still has to be reviewed by EU institutions and member states and may not survive in its current form.  

Meanwhile, Panyi does not believe Hungary’s courts can provide any relief. “The laws regulating national security, including surveillance, are so broadly formulated that it is legal to wiretap and surveil anyone,” he told CPJ. Noting that there was no independent oversight of the surveillance process, he added that “legal” in these cases meant only that “everything has been properly documented, and the necessary stamps are where they should be.”

In June, Panyi saw his concerns confirmed when the Central Investigation Prosecutor’s Office announced it had terminated its own investigation into the allegations of illegal surveillance of journalists and opposition politicians, citing absence of a crime. “A broad investigation which included classified documents found no unauthorized and secretive collection of information or the unauthorized use of a concealed device,” said the investigators. 

Additional reporting by Tom Gibson in Brussels

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Attila Mong/CPJ EU Correspondent.

The hearing started unsurprisingly enough. Chaim Gelfand, the NSO Group lawyer, laid out the company line that Pegasus is designed for use against terrorists and other criminals. He promised that the company controlled its sales, developed human rights and whistleblowing policies, and took action against those governments that abused it. He wanted to “dispel certain rumors and misconceptions” about the technology that have circulated in “the press and public debate.” He made his case.

Then, surely from NSO Group’s perspective, it went downhill. MEP after MEP asked specific questions of NSO Group. For instance: if Pegasus is sold only to counter terrorism or serious crime, how did it come to be used in EU member states? How did it come to be used to eavesdrop on staffers at the European Commission, another public allegation? Can NSO provide examples of when it terminated contracts because a client misused Pegasus? Can NSO clarify what data it has on its clients’ uses of Pegasus? How does NSO Group know when the technology is “abused”? More personally: How come you spied on me?

MEPs were angry. Increasingly their questions became more intense, more personal, more laced with moral and legal outrage. And this tenor only deepened over the course of the hearing, as the NSO lawyer stumbled through his points and regularly resorted to the line that he could not speak to specific examples, cases or governments. Few, if any, seemed persuaded by the NSO Group claim that it has no insight into the day-to-day use of the spyware by the “end-user”. To the contrary, the PEGA hearing ended with one thing clear: NSO Group faces not only anger but the reality of an energized set of legislators.

More than a year after release of the Pegasus Project, the global reporting investigation that disclosed massive pools of potential targets for Pegasus surveillance, the momentum for action against spyware like Pegasus is gathering steam. 

Read CPJ’s complete special report: When spyware turns phones into weapons

In 2019, in my capacity as a U.N. Special Rapporteur, I issued a report to the United Nations Human Rights Council that surveyed the landscape of the private surveillance industry and the vast human rights abuses it facilitates, calling for a moratorium on the sale, transfer and use of such spyware. At the time, few picked up the call. But today, with extensive reporting of the use of spyware tools against journalists, opposition politicians, human rights defenders, the families of such persons, and others, the tide seems to be turning against Pegasus and spyware of its ilk.

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, several U.N. special rapporteurs, the leaders of major human rights organizations, and at least one state, Costa Rica, have joined the call for a moratorium. The Supreme Court of India is pursuing serious questions about the government’s use of Pegasus. The United States Department of Commerce placed NSO Group and another Israeli spyware firm on its list of restricted entities, forbidding the U.S. government from doing any business with them. Apple and Facebook’s parent company Meta have sued NSO Group for using their infrastructure to hack into individual phones.

All of these steps suggest not only momentum but the elements of a global process to constrain the industry. They need to be transformed into a long-term strategy to deal with the threats posed to human rights by intrusive, mercenary spyware. State-by-state responses, or high-profile corporate litigation, will generate pain for specific companies and begin to set out the normative standards that should apply to surveillance technologies. But in order to curb the industry as a whole, a global approach will be necessary. 

In principle, spyware with the characteristics of Pegasus – the capability to access one’s entire device and data connected to it, without discrimination, and without constraint – already violates basic standards of necessity and proportionality under international human rights law. On that ground alone, it’s time to begin speaking of not merely a moratorium but a ban of such intrusive technology, whether provided by private or public actors. No government should have such a tool, and no private company should be able to sell such a tool to governments or others.

In the land of reality, however, a ban will not take place immediately. Even if a coalition of human rights-friendly governments could get such negotiations toward a ban off the ground, it will take time.

Here is where bodies like the European Parliament and its PEGA Committee – and governments and parliamentarians around the world – can make an immediate difference. They should start to discuss a permanent ban while also entertaining other interim approaches: stricter global export controls to limit the spread of spyware technology; commitments by governments to ensure that their domestic law enables victims of spyware to bring suits against perpetrators, whether domestic or foreign; and broad agreement by third-party companies, such as device manufacturers, social media companies, security entities and others, to develop a process for notification of spyware breaches especially to users and to one another. 

Some of this would be hard to accomplish. It’s not as if the present moment, dominated as it is by tensions like Russian aggression against Ukraine, is conducive to international negotiations. Some steps could be achieved by governments that should be concerned about the spread of such technologies, already demonstrated by U.S. and European outrage. Either way, governments and activists can begin to lay the groundwork, defining the key terms, highlighting the fundamental illegality of spyware like Pegasus, taking steps in domestic law to ensure strict controls on export and use. 

There is precedent for such action in the global movement to ban landmines in the 1990s, which started with little hope of achieving a ban, focused instead on near-term controls. Ultimately human rights activists and like-minded governments were able to hammer out the Ottawa Convention to ban and destroy anti-personnel landmines in 1997. It is, at least, a process that activists and governments today could emulate and modify.

Human rights organizations and journalists have done the work to disclose the existence of a major threat to freedom of expression, privacy, and space for public participation. It is now the duty of governments to do something about it.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by David Kaye.

The report includes a global overview of spyware and how it’s used against journalists, as well as four case studies from India, Mexico, Hungary, and Morocco. Each provides first-hand accounts from journalists, digital privacy advocates, and others who were themselves targeted by spyware. The report also includes an opinion column by David Kaye, a former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, on what he recommends global leaders should do to stop the abuse of spyware. 

The final piece offers concrete policy recommendations from CPJ experts to governments, corporate entities, and international human rights organizations to combat the arbitrary or unlawful deployment of spyware.

The full report will be available on Thursday, October 13 at 5:00am ET at: https://cpj.org/spyware-press-freedom

If you would like to speak with a CPJ expert about the report or about spyware’s impact on journalism more broadly, please contact Adam Peck at cpj@westendstrategy.com or at +1 202-531-6408.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

“This new report definitively shows that Mexico’s President Andrés Manuel López Obrador can no longer hide behind blaming his predecessor for widespread use of Pegasus in Mexico,” said Jan-Albert Hootsen, CPJ’s Mexico representative. “Mexican authorities must immediately and transparently investigate the use of Pegasus and other spyware to target journalists during his administration, as well as push for more regulations to end the use of this technology against the press once and for all.”

The report was published by the Mexican digital rights organization R3D (Red en los Defensa de los Derechos Digitales) and rights and research groups Article 19 and SocialTIC. The University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab conducted a forensic analysis of the devices.

The device of an unnamed journalist from the online outlet Animal Político was infected in 2021, according to the report. Journalist Ricardo Raphael, a columnist for news magazine Proceso and newspaper Milenio Diario who was previously targeted in 2016 and 2017, was hacked with Pegasus at least three times in October and December 2019 and again in December 2020.

According to Citizen Lab, the more recent cases differ from previous use of Pegasus against Mexican journalists in several ways, including the use of zero-click attacks rather than malicious text messages designed to trick targets into clicking on links triggering an infection.

CPJ has documented how spyware is used to target journalists and those close to them worldwide, including repeated cases of Pegasus infections targeting journalists in Mexico, and has called for a moratorium on its trade pending better safeguards.

Israeli firm NSO Group says it only licenses its Pegasus spyware to government agencies investigating crime and terrorism. Mexican president López Obrador said in his daily press conferences earlier today that his government may address the revelations later this week.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Is having an IQ lower than Rahul Gandhi’s a prerequisite for being in Congress?
The SC hasn’t alleged non cooperation by central Govt in the Pegasus case.
It has merely said the stand of the Govt has been the same before the committee as well as the Supreme Court.
Read the order.

— Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) August 25, 2022

Malviya’s tweet was in reference to the tweet by the Indian National Congress about the hearing of the Pegasus case in the Supreme Court on Thursday, August 25, by a bench headed by outgoing Chief Justice of India NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli.

सुप्रीम कोर्ट की जांच कमेटी को :

– फोन में मालवेयर मिला
– कमेटी के अनुसार भारत सरकार ने पेगासस जासूसी जांच में सहयोग नहीं किया

अब सवाल यह उठता है कि मोदी सरकार जांच से क्यों डर रही है?#Pegasus मामले में देश को गुमराह करने वाले समझ लें कि उनका काला सच जल्द सामने आने वाला है। pic.twitter.com/NVRhjTtBes

— Congress (@INCIndia) August 25, 2022

Amit Malviya claimed in his tweet that the court had merely said that the government’s stand continues to remain the same and it did not allege “non-cooperation” by the central government. The tweet by Malviya also takes a dig at Congress leader Rahul Gandhi. It is important to note that Amit Malyvia’s tweet does not explain what “stand” of the government was being referred to by the apex court.

Fact-check

On October 27, 2021, the Supreme Court formed a three-member expert committee to look into the alleged misuse of Israeli spyware Pegasus by the Union Government for targeted surveillance on selected opposition leaders, activists, journalists and others as reported first by The Wire as part of the Pegasus Project. The report claimed a digital forensic analysis conducted by Amnesty International’s Security Lab had allegedly found that the phones of dozens of people were either targeted or had been infected by Pegasus spyware, sold by Israel’s NSO Group.

The committee, monitored by former apex court judge R V Raveendran submitted its final report to the top court on August 2, 2022, in three parts — two parts by the technical committee and one by the retired judge overseeing the probe. On August 25, the three-judge bench heard the matter.

Alt News went through the Twitter thread by Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) and Bar&Bench (@barandbench), two digital news agencies that reported the hearing live on Twitter. These threads noted that while going through the report, the CJI read out parts of it and made the oral observation in the packed courtroom that the government had not cooperated with the investigation. He then told solicitor general Tushar Mehta that the Union government had taken the same stand in front of the investigation committee as it did in the apex court earlier, i.e., of non-cooperation with the probe. To this, the SG replied that he was not aware of it.

Solicitor General : I am not aware of that.#CJINVRamana #Pegasus #SupremeCourt

— Live Law (@LiveLawIndia) August 25, 2022

This oral observation made by the court was also widely reported by media outlets such as The Telegraph, Scroll, The Wire and The Indian Express.

What is Central Government’s ‘stand’?

Through the portal Indian Kanoon, Alt News got access to the order passed by the Supreme Court in October 2021 where the CJI-led bench had commented on the said ‘stand’ of the Union government. “However, despite the repeated assurances and opportunities given, ultimately the Respondent­Union of India has placed on record what they call a “limited affidavit”, which does not shed any light on their stand or provide any clarity as to the facts of the matter at hand. If the Respondent­Union of India had made their stand clear it would have been a different situation, and the burden on us would have been different. Such a course of action taken by the Respondent Union of India, especially in proceedings of the present nature which touches upon the fundamental rights of the citizens of the country, cannot be accepted,” it had said, adding, “They must justify the stand that they take before a Court. The mere invocation of national security by the State does not render the Court a mute spectator.”

To further understand the observation made by the court in its August 25 hearing, we reached out to two independent sources. Senior advocate Vrinda Grover, who was present in the courtroom during the hearing confirmed that the CJI had orally remarked that the government had not cooperated with the investigation. “CJI Ramana, in open court, read out only a part of the technical committee report. During the hearing the CJI orally remarked that it was noted in the report that the Government of India has not cooperated with the probe,” she told Alt News.

Manu Sebastian, the managing editor of Live Law who attended the proceedings virtually (Journalists only had virtual access to the hearing) and reported them live, too, confirmed that quoting the committee’s report, the CJI said the Union government had not cooperated with the committee.

“After reading out parts of the report filed by the SC-appointed committee, the CJI made some oral observations. For example, he said the committee had examined 29 phones, and malwares were found in five. Then he observed that the committee has said in its report that the Government of India has not cooperated with the probe,” Sebastian said.

It is important to note that the last line of Malviya’s tweet — ‘Read the Order’ — seems to suggest that the order throws some light on the government’s stand before the SC and the committee. The record of proceedings, uploaded on the SC website, however, does not mention anything along those lines. The order only says;

“1. Pursuant to order dated 27.10.2021, the Technical Committee and the Overseeing Judge have submitted their Reports in sealed covers. The same are taken on record. The sealed covers were opened in the Court and we read out some portions of the said Reports. Thereafter, the Reports were re-sealed and kept in the safe custody of the Secretary General of this Court, who shall make it available as and when required by the Court. 2. Heard learned Senior counsel appearing on behalf of the parties and Mr. Manohar Lal Sharma, the petitioner-in-person, as also learned Solicitor General appearing on behalf of the Union of India. 3. List these matters after four weeks for further hearing.”

In summary, Amit Malviya’s tweet regarding the oral observations made by the court during the Pegasus hearing is misleading and full of ambiguities. The CJI while reading a part of the technical committee’s report made an oral remark that it was noted in the report that the Government of India has not cooperated with the probe.

The post Amit Malviya’s claim that the SC did not allege “non-cooperation” by the govt during Pegasus probe is misleading appeared first on Alt News.

This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Indradeep Bhattacharyya.

In a joint letter to Acting Solicitor General Brian Fletcher on August 3, the groups argued that Israeli-owned NSO Group should not enjoy sovereign immunity. The letter concerns a lawsuit WhatsApp and its parent Facebook, now called Meta Platforms Inc., filed in October 2019 alleging NSO Group used WhatsApp’s servers to deliver Pegasus spyware to the devices of more than 1,400 users. NSO Group says it only licenses its Pegasus spyware to government agencies investigating crime and terrorism and claims that it should avoid accountability in U.S. courts because it acted as an agent of foreign governments under the doctrine of sovereign immunity.

In December 2020, CPJ joined an amicus brief to the U.S. Federal 9th Circuit Court urging the court to reject this argument. Following an appeal by NSO Group, in June 2022 the U.S. Supreme Court asked the solicitor general to file a brief regarding whether it should grant NSO Group’s petition for sovereign immunity.

As our letter argues, “The impact of such a finding would be that U.S. persons, including U.S.-based technology companies, on whose technologies civil society and regular users depend on across the world, and who are entitled to the protection of American laws, would be left without an effective remedy and unfettered violations of citizens’ right to privacy would be rampant.” You can read the full letter here.

In a second letter, sent Wednesday, August 23, to Secretary of Commerce Gina M. Raimondo, CPJ joined other groups in urging the Biden administration to keep NSO Group on the Entity List for Malicious Cyber Activities. The Entity List is a tool used by the Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security to limit a designee’s access to U.S. exports. NSO was added to this list in November 2021, but reporting suggests both NSO and the Israeli government are lobbying to have the company removed. The joint letter details reporting about the use of Pegasus against journalists and activists since the original listing.

“The evidence of the use of Pegasus spyware against human rights defenders, journalists, opposition parties, and state officials by repressive regimes continues to mount, contrary to NSO Group’s claim that their spyware is used as a tool for investigating criminal activity and terrorism,” the letter states. You can read the full letter here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Michael De Dora.

The Pegasus Project, an investigation by Amnesty International and a consortium of media outlets coordinated by Forbidden Stories, revealed in July 2021 that at least 180 journalists were among those from over 50 countries who may have been targeted with the sophisticated surveillance software.

Three journalists from the West African country of Togo were included on the Pegasus Project list. They told CPJ at the time about how the revelations had caused “nightmarish nights” and damage to their personal as well as professional lives. Twelve months on, they say the prospect of being monitored still generates pervasive paranoia and hinders their communications with sources.

“Since I heard this news until today I can no longer easily communicate with my phone,” Ferdinand Ayité, director of L’Alternative newspaper, recently told CPJ about the implications of his phone number being listed. “There is a kind of permanent fear that forces me to change my means of communication.”

That fear is aggravated as Togolese authorities intensify their crackdown on independent press since the Pegasus Project revelations.

NSO Group, the Israeli company that sells the Pegasus spyware, has denied any connection to the Pegasus Project list and has said it only sells spyware to governments to fight terrorism and crime. However, research shows that journalists and those close to them have been targeted, along with activists and politicians, around the world.

Citizen Lab, a University of Toronto-based research group, found Togolese clergy had been selected for Pegasus surveillance in 2019. Similarly, Amnesty International reported that a Togolese human rights defender, who requested anonymity for security reasons, had been targeted with a different, Indian-made spyware in late 2019 and early 2020.

Ayité, like other journalists whose phones were reportedly listed for potential surveillance in countries ranging from Morocco to Mexico to India to Hungary, said the disclosures had affected their ability to work. “Sources treat us differently. Several people are reluctant to take our phone calls, and we are forced to proceed otherwise,” he said. “Personally, I no longer call certain sources…To this day I continue to think that my communications are always followed and listened to and this has a negative impact on the work.”

Ayité and two other journalists⁠—Komlanvi Ketohou and Luc Abaki⁠—whose contacts featured among the over 300 Togolese phone numbers on the Pegasus Project list, have not confirmed if their devices were ever infected with the spyware. But they told CPJ how the threat of surveillance shaped their broader concerns about freedom of expression in Togo. Spyware was just one of the reasons the Togolese Press Patronage (PPT), a local association of media owners, called 2021 the “darkest [year] of the democratic era in Togo in terms of press freedom.”

Days after he learned that his number had been listed, Ayité told CPJ he was not surprised and described himself as “a journalist on borrowed time.” Less than six months later, in early December 2021, police arrested Ayité and Fraternité newspaper director Joël Egah, and detained them for over 20 days on accusations of “contempt of authorities” and “propagation of falsehoods.” Ayité said authorities retained his passport until mid-June; Egah died of a heart attack in March.

In May, Ayité and his newspaper lost their appeal of a separate defamation case. The ruling they sought to reverse had ordered them each to pay 2 million West African francs (US $3,703) in damages over a June 2020 report accusing a local official of embezzlement. Ayité said he and his legal team were preparing to appeal again to Togo’s Supreme Court.

Ketohou, who also uses the first name Carlos, told CPJ that even a year after learning his number was listed, people still worried about being in contact with him.

“They have fear to speak with me,” Ketohou said. “Fear that what they say will be listened to by Togolese authorities.”

Even when people do agree to speak with him over the phone, Ketohou said they often request a video call to be able to see that it’s really him on the other end of the line. Ketohou recognized that this would not necessarily protect against spyware that can grant remote access to a phone’s microphone and camera, but people were looking for ways to build confidence in their communications with him.

Reached by phone on July 15, Togo communication minister Akodah Ayewouadan said the government had no connection with the NSO Group, “has not used that [Pegasus] spyware and we have not communicated on it.” Ayewouadan requested that he be sent questions in writing, but as of Monday, July 18, CPJ had not received any response to those written questions.

Months before learning his number was listed, Ketohou was arrested by Togolese police and detained for several days over a report published by his L’Indépendant Express newspaper alleging corruption by government ministers. That paper was barred from publishing following his release and he fled the country amid ongoing threats against him and his family, setting up the L’Express International news site in exile.

Living outside Togo, Ketohou told CPJ that he has remained worried about the transnational reach of the Togolese government. He said in recent months he had received video calls from numbers he did not know, which he refused to answer. Even without evidence to suggest the callers wished to harm him, Ketuhou said he feared they sought to confirm visually that it was his phone and to collect information about his location.

Luc Abaki, who works as a freelance reporter, told CPJ that while being listed in the Pegasus Project leak didn’t significantly change his private life, “certain people, especially close to power carefully avoid my calls, in particular telephone. This means that I no longer have access to certain information that is sometimes essential for the work that I do as a journalist.”

“I work conscientiously with the main objective of aiming for the common good,” Abaki said. “I always observe prudence.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Jonathan Rozen/CPJ Africa Research Associate.

This article is co-published with Shomrim. Shomrim is an Israel-based nonprofit and nonpartisan independent news organization.

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Israeli cybersecurity company NSO Group, the company behind the notorious Pegasus spyware, has been conducting a broad campaign in the United States to get off the U.S. government’s blacklist.

Pegasus is a hacking tool that could be used to vacuum up a phone’s contents remotely without the target having to fall into a phishing trap by clicking on a deceptive link. The spyware can even use the phone to remotely track and record its user.

The Biden administration added NSO to a Commerce Department list of restricted companies last November after a series of investigations revealed that Pegasus had been used by foreign governments against journalists and human rights activists. A forensic analysis from last July, for example, revealed that two people close to journalist Jamal Khashoggi were targeted by the spyware before and after his assassination in October 2018. Khashoggi, an exiled Saudi Arabian journalist and American resident, was murdered in Turkey by Saudi authorities. The NSO Group has said its technology “was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi.”

NSO has invested hundreds of thousands of dollars in the past year in payments to lobbyists, public relations companies and law firms in the U.S., in the hope of reversing the Biden administration’s November decision, according to public records filed under the Foreign Agent Registration Act and conversations with people familiar with the effort. These firms have approached members of the U.S. House and Senate, as well as various media outlets and think tanks across the U.S., on NSO’s behalf.

Companies on the Commerce Department’s blacklist, officially called the “Entity List,” are not completely prohibited from doing business in the U.S. However, they are subject to licensing and other trade restrictions, making it more difficult to conduct business in the country or with Americans. NSO’s business has reportedly suffered since the designation.

NSO is trying to get the matter raised during a meeting between U.S. President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid when the former visits Israel this week. In addition, NSO lobbyists unsuccessfully tried to set up a meeting between representatives of the company and U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan, but it did not take place.

Asked for comment, an NSO spokesperson declined to comment on the campaign but “thanked” Shomrim for publishing an article on its efforts, which he described as “supportive.”

The American military contractor L3Harris also held talks to try to purchase NSO, with backing from the Defense Department, according to The New York Times. L3Harris has abandoned the effort, the paper said.

Placement on the Entity List is a serious sanction but less significant than being placed on the Specially Designated Nationals list. In the past, companies have won removal from the Entity List after settling charges with the U.S. government and promising reforms.

NSO said at the time of the U.S. administration’s decision to add it to the list that it would work to have the move reversed. Public records show that the firm started recruiting various North American consultants even before it was blacklisted. In July last year, it hired the Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman law firm to advise it on tenders and various compliance requirements in the United States. The firm was initially hired for six months at a cost of about $75,000 per month. NSO continued to retain its services at least into the first half of 2022.

Pillsbury then hired strategic advisory group Chartwell for six months at a cost of $50,000 to $75,000 per month, according to public records. Chartwell met with representatives of the House Intelligence Committee, whose members called last year for more serious sanctions of NSO under the Magnitsky Act. The lobbying firm also approached, among others, Senators Mitt Romney, R-Utah, and Mike Rounds, R-S.D., as well as Reps. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J. and Mike Turner, R-Ohio. Romney, Rounds, Malinowsky and Turner did not respond to a request for comment. Chartwell has also reached out to various media outlets on behalf of NSO, and distributed material in which the company reiterated its assurances that it would investigate any misuse of its products.

In January 2022, the company hired the services of the Paul Hastings law firm for $10,000 a month. Hastings then had a call with Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., on behalf of NSO. Moreover, less than four months ago, NSO signed an agreement with Washington, D.C.-based public relations and media consulting firm Bluelight Strategies, which has strong ties with the Democratic Party. The firm’s managing director, Aaron Keyak, went on unpaid leave to join Biden’s campaign staff in July 2020 and currently serves as the State Department’s deputy special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism. NSO paid Bluelight $100,000 in February for two months of work, with an option to extend the contract for $50,000 a month.

The contract between the parties, signed by NSO founder Shalev Hulio and Bluelight President Steve Rabinowitz, also allows Bluelight to hire a subconsultant at a cost of up to $20,000 a month. “NSO’s tools provide limited and specifically targeted intelligence capabilities that have been repeatedly used for instance to help rescue scores of children from human trafficking as well as stopping numerous terrorist attacks,” wrote Brian E. Finch, a partner at Pillsbury, to Rep. Malinowsky earlier this year. “NSO’s Pegasus customers are solely law enforcement and intelligence agencies, and by far are mainly democratic allies of the U.S. and Israel in Western Europe,” he added.

NSO Group “worries about improper or otherwise abusive use of its tools against journalists, human rights advocates, and others,” wrote Finch. “NSO has strict protocols in place to avoid misuse of its products and to terminate access to such products in cases where misuse has been alleged.” The attorney wrote that “NSO stands ready and willing to work with the U.S. government to identify and develop global standards that reflect shared values — protecting citizens of the United States and safeguarding human rights and privacy concerns.”

In a different letter distributed by the firm this year, NSO states it has “developed a human rights governance compliance program,” saying it would conduct a review of all users to see whether they might use the technology used to “violate human rights.”

Pillsbury, Chartwell, Paul Hastings and Bluelight did not respond to a request for comment. The Department of Commerce did not respond to a request for comment.

NSO representatives have approached various people within the administration in order to get a clear understanding of what steps the company could and should take to be taken off the blacklist. They presented NSO’s “kill switch,” which allows the company to terminate contracts when their product is misused, and have warned that if NSO shuts down, Chinese and Russian companies will take its place. So far, the lobbying campaign has generated little response. NSO has not been told what it needs to do to remove itself from the list, according to the people familiar with the campaign.

This content originally appeared on Articles and Investigations - ProPublica and was authored by by Uri Blau.

The post Rogues and Spyware: Pegasus Strikes Again appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

Pegasus spyware, the fiendishly effective creation of Israel’s unscrupulous NSO Group, has become something of a regular in the news cycles on cyber security.  Created in 2010, it was the brainchild of three engineers who had cut their teeth working for the cyber outfit Unit 8200 of the Israeli Defence Forces: Niv Carmi, Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie.

NSO found itself at the vanguard of an Israeli charm offensive, regularly hosting officials from Mossad at its headquarters in Herzliya in the company of delegations from African and Arab countries.  Cyber capabilities would be one way of getting into their good books.

The record of the company was such as to pique the interest of the US Department of Commerce, which announced last November that it would be adding NSO Group and another Israeli cyber company Candiru (now renamed Saito Tech) to its entity list “based on evidence that these entities developed and supplied spyware to foreign governments that used these tools to maliciously target government officials, journalists, businesspeople, activists, academics, and embassy workers.”

In July 2021, the Pegasus Project, an initiative of 17 media organisations and civil society groups, revealed that 50,000 phone numbers of interest to a number of governments had appeared on a list of hackable targets.  All had been targets of Pegasus.

The government clients of the NSO Group are extensive, spanning the authoritarian and liberal democratic spectrum.  Most notoriously, Pegasus has found its way into the surveillance armoury of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which allegedly monitored calls made by the murdered Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi and a fellow dissident, Omar Abdulaziz.  In October 2018, Khashoggi, on orders of Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, was butchered on the grounds of the Saudi consulate in Istanbul by a hit squad. NSO subsequently became the subject of a legal suit, with lawyers for Abdulaziz arguing that the hacking of his phone “contributed in a significant manner to the decision to murder Mr Khashoggi.”

Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, Defence Minister Margarita Robles, Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and 18 Catalan separatists are the latest high-profile targets to feature in the Pegasus canon.  Sánchez’s phone was hacked twice in May 2021, with officials claiming that there was at least one data leak.  This was the result of, according to the government, an “illicit and external” operation, conducted by bodies with no state authorisation.

Ironically enough, Robles herself had defended the targeting of the 18 Catalan separatists, claiming that the surveillance was conducted with court approval.  “In this country,” she insisted at a press conference, “no-one is investigated for their political ideals.”

The backdrop of the entire scandal is even more sinister, with Citizen Lab revealing last month that over 60 Catalan legislators, jurists, Members of the European Parliament, journalists and family members were targeted by the Pegasus spyware between 2015 and 2020.  (Citizen Lab found that 63 individuals had been targeted or infected with Pegasus, with four others being the victims of the Candiru spyware.)  Confirmed targets include Elisenda Paluzie and Sònia Urpí Garcia, who both work for the Assemblea Nacional Catalana, an organisation that campaigns for the independence of Catalonia.

The phone of Catalan journalist Meritxell Bonet was also hacked in June 2019 during the final days of a Supreme Court case against her husband Jordi Cuixart.  Cuixart, former president of the Catalan association Òmnium Cultural, was charged and sentenced on grounds of sedition.

The investigation by Citizen Lab did not conclusively attribute “the operations to a specific entity, but strong circumstantial evidence suggests a nexus with Spanish authorities.”  Amnesty International Technology and Human Rights researcher Likhita Banerji put the case simply. “The Spanish government needs to come clean over whether or not it is a customer of NSO Group.  It must also conduct a thorough, independent investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware against the Catalans identified in this investigation.”

Heads were bound to roll, and the main casualty in this affair was the first woman to head Spain’s CNI intelligence agency, Paz Esteban.  Esteban’s defence of the Catalan hackings proved identical to that of Robles: they had been done with judicial and legal approval.  But she needed a scalp for an increasingly embarrassing situation and had no desire to have her reasons parroted back to her.  “You speak of dismissal,” she stated tersely, “I speak of substitution.”

While the implications for the Spanish government are distinctly smelly, one should not forget who the Victor Frankenstein here is.  NSO has had a few scrapes in Israel itself.  It survived a lawsuit by Amnesty International in 2020 to review its security export license.  But there is little danger of that company losing the support of Israel’s Ministry of Defence.  In Israel, cybersecurity continues to be the poster child of technological prowess, lucrative, opaque and distinctly unaccountable to parliamentarians and the courts.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Binoy Kampmark.

The statement calls on authorities to release all journalists detained for their work, including Fahad Shah, Sajad Gul, and Aasif Sultan, who were granted bail but then re-arrested this year under the Jammu and Kashmir Public Safety Act, a preventative detention law. The groups also expressed concern about the use of spurious terrorism and sedition charges against members of the press including journalist Siddique Kappan, who has been detained since October 2020.

The statement notes that journalists belonging to minority communities are particularly vulnerable to harassment and retaliation. In January, a demeaning fake auction app was taken offline after it listed at least 20 female Muslim journalists for “sale,” all of whom covered the BJP government’s policies affecting religious minorities.

The statement also expresses concern about the use of Pegasus spyware to monitor journalists’ digital communications. The Pegasus Project has identified more than 40 Indian journalists who appeared on a leaked list of potential targets for surveillance by the spyware, which is produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. In October 2021, the Supreme Court of India ordered a “thorough inquiry” on the government’s alleged use of Pegasus against journalists and others.

Read the statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Throughout 2021, Suhair Jaradat, a freelance columnist for media outlets including the London-based Arabic news website Today’s Opinion, was repeatedly targeted by the spyware, according to a joint report published on Tuesday, April 5, by the human rights group Front Line Defenders and digital rights group Citizen Lab, as well as Jaradat, who spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

From February to December of that year, Jaradat’s phone was infected with Pegasus spyware on at least six separate occasions, according to the journalist and that report.

The report states that a second journalist, who also works as a human rights activist, had her phone infected by the spyware at least twice in 2021; the report does not name that journalist, and CPJ was unable to immediately identify them.

“Jordanian authorities must swiftly and transparently investigate the alleged surveillance of journalist Suhair Jaradat and a second unidentified journalist, and ensure those responsible are held to account,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator. “Journalists must be able to work without fear that hackers will gain access to their sources or their private lives.”

Jaradat told CPJ that she discovered her phone had been infected in May 2021, and officers with the local Criminal Investigation Department’s cybercrime unit were able to remove the spyware from her device. At a cybersecurity conference in February 2022, she again found that her phone had been compromised, she said. The Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab report said that a forensic examination of her phone showed that it had been infected with Pegasus six times from February to December of 2021.

The joint report said that researchers suspected two groups of hackers were behind the campaigns targeting Jaradat, that anonymous journalist, and human rights advocates in Jordan. One of those groups was focused entirely on Jordan, and the other also had activities in Iraq, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia. Front Line Defenders and Citizen Lab wrote that both groups were “likely agencies of the Jordanian government.” CPJ was unable to immediately determine the origin of the spyware infections.

When CPJ contacted Jordanian Ministry of Information manager Dina Doud via messaging app for comment, she referred CPJ to a statement published by the country’s National Cyber Security Center, which denied any government involvement in the use of spyware against journalists, and said it would have been illegal for authorities to have been involved in such activities.

Jaradat noted, “In Jordan, authorities stated before that they don’t use this spyware, and that people inside the Royal Court were also attacked by it. Then who is behind this attack?”

Jaradat writes commentary about Jordanian politics, and is often critical of authorities. She has covered topics including sedition, the silencing of the country’s political opposition, and the recent arrests of political and union figures.

“I can’t think of a reason but my articles” for prompting the hack, Jaradat told CPJ. “I don’t know for sure, but I can analyze that the goal behind affecting my phone with a spyware is to reach my sources or the people I work with.”

She added that the hack could be “a way of pressuring me to stop writing.”

CPJ has documented the use of Pegasus, spyware software made by the Israeli company NSO Group, to target journalists around the world and monitor their phones’ cameras, microphones, emails, texts, and calls. Journalists have been targeted with the software in Morocco, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia, among other countries.

CPJ emailed NSO Group for comment, but received no response. NSO Group says it only licenses its Pegasus spyware to government agencies investigating crime and terrorism.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.

Israel’s justice ministry last month denied a report by Israeli tech site Calcalist about the allegedly unlawful use of Pegasus spyware by Israeli police. An internal investigation determined that the claims, which newspapers including The New York Times could not replicate, were largely unfounded.

However, the furor over the Calcalist report, and the ministry’s acknowledgement that police had used spyware on a phone belonging to a key witness in the corruption trial of former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, has prompted fears among journalists that any overhaul of Israel’s surveillance laws could hamper their reporting.

“We want to protect our sources,” said Anat Saragusti, press freedom director at the Union of Journalists in Israel, which sent a letter to the attorney general with the group’s demand. “We want to protect freedom of information, and we want to protect our assets.” 

A February statement from the justice ministry noted that in 2018 police infiltrated a phone belonging to Shlomo Filber, a now former director general of the Communications Ministry who was under investigation at the time. He is now state’s witness in the Netanyahu trial. 

In order to monitor Filber’s phone, police obtained a wiretapping warrant – a particular detail that raised the eyebrows of legal experts in the country.

“It’s unclear what exactly is the legal basis for what [police] have done,” said Michael Birnhack, a privacy law professor at Tel Aviv University. 

Israel has no law authorizing “cyber-tools” like spyware for law enforcement purposes, according to the Israel Democracy Institute – and the wiretapping law cited to monitor Filber’s phone dates back to 1979.

The decades-old wiretap law, said Birnhack, is an ill-fit to authorize spyware given that the technology can do so much more than listen in on calls – it can suck up old data in the form of texts, photos, voice memos, and more, without the owner’s knowledge. 

“The technological options exceed regular search and they exceed wiretapping,” he said.  

With spyware there’s also a risk of “exposing excessive data” beyond the scope of a warrant, said Birnhack — something that happened in Filber’s case.

According to the justice ministry, police acquired extra information like Filber’s contact list, which they said was not passed on to investigators. (The ministry also said that the spyware infiltration did not yield anything relevant to the investigation.)

Even if journalists are exempted from legislation regulating spyware, police use of the technology has implications for the profession. Anat Ben-David, a professor of society and technology at Israel’s Open University, worries about a chilling effect on the press. 

“This is uncharted territory at the moment, but I will say this: just knowing that this is a possibility could lead to self-censorship and to changing journalistic norms and instilling fear.”

Ben-David questions whether the technology belongs in the hands of police at all, given its extreme prying capabilities. 

Pegasus, made by the NSO Group – an Israeli company now under U.S. trade embargo – allows the purchaser to access virtually everything stored on a cell phone and activate its microphone and camera without the owner’s knowledge.

CPJ has documented the use of Pegasus to spy on journalists around the world. Amnesty International and the University of Toronto’s CitizenLab said it was found on Palestinian activists’ phones, though Israel has denied it was behind the alleged hacks.

The justice ministry did not identify Pegasus as the spyware used on Filber’s phone, but a later statement made it clear that Israeli police do have the controversial technology. The police department, said the statement, did not use the “Pegasus software in its hands” to spy without a warrant on the people named in the Calcalist report.

NSO Group spokesperson Liron Bruck replied “no comment” when CPJ asked in an email if it provided Pegasus or other spyware to Israeli police or other authorities. An Israeli police spokesperson said in an email the department could not “confirm or deny” use of Pegasus.

Ben-David also worries that the impetus to legislate spyware is following a pattern in which Israel introduces new monitoring technology and later legalizes its use against citizens.

“Surveillance technologies are introduced through the back door, and after petitions to the Supreme Court they enter through the front door through legislation,” said Ben-David.  

She pointed to the security services’ tracking of cell phones to curb transmission of COVID-19. After repeated legal challenges from civil rights groups, the Israeli Knesset passed a law approving the tracking. In March 2021, Israel’s Supreme Court outlawed the practice for Israelis who cooperated with contact tracing efforts, though it was briefly reinstated by emergency order to counter the Omicron variant.

Journalists, however, had been exempted from the tracking since April 2020 after a petition from the Union of Journalists, the group that wants to make sure the press is excluded from spyware laws.

Israeli journalists do have some protections. A 1987 Supreme Court ruling said that journalists don’t have to reveal their sources unless a court deems it critical to prevent a crime or save a life.

But journalists can find their sources exposed through other means. Police obtained information about Filber’s calls with two Israeli broadcast journalists, Amit Segal of Channel 12 and Raviv Drucker of Channel 13, when it spied on Filber’s phone, according to Haaretz.

Segal told CPJ that he learned that his interviews were snooped on from the newspaper, while Drucker learned about his exposure in the course of his own reporting. A justice ministry spokesperson would not confirm or deny the Haaretz report in a phone call with CPJ.

It’s not clear if police used spyware or another type of monitoring technology to listen in on the calls with the journalists.

Regardless of the method used, Segal told CPJ it was “not very pleasant” to learn that police had accessed his interviews with Filber, especially since he reports critically on the police.

“They shouldn’t wiretap conversations with journalists,” said Segal, who added that police are not supposed to transcribe conversations between journalists and their sources. “It is not OK, but it is not the most severe attack on journalists the world has ever seen.” 

Drucker, for his part, called it a “breach of the journalistic relationship between a source and a journalist.” A private conversation with a source “is not something that should be exposed.”

Drucker added that he hopes lawmakers considering surveillance legislation “will take into account the interest of the free press and the free media and journalists’ ability to do their work.”

Now, Segal, Drucker, and the Israeli press corps at large, are watching to see if the government will heed their concerns.   

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Naomi Zeveloff/CPJ Features Editor.

On Wednesday, members of the European Parliament are set to vote on establishing a committee to investigate how EU member states have used Pegasus spyware to monitor people, including journalists in Europe, as well as the international reach of intrusive spyware. That committee’s final report could include recommendations that would shape the EU’s approach on tackling surveillance for years to come.

“The Committee of Inquiry should leave no stone unturned in its investigation into the use of spyware, and it must do everything possible to hold EU member states and institutions, as well as international companies, to account for the surveillance of journalists,” said Tom Gibson, CPJ’s EU representative. “This is the EU’s opportunity to take an international lead on curbing the malicious use of spyware to surveil journalists.”

CPJ has reported extensively on the use of spyware to target journalists because of their work. Israel-based NSO Group, which produces Pegasus, has said it sells only to vetted governments and law enforcement agencies.

The committee’s investigation would take place as the EU also works to more closely monitor press freedom trends in member states through its rule of law mechanism, and to better oversee recent EU legislation on the export of dual-use surveillance technology that could be used to spy on journalists. 

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Erik Crouch.