ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Ka’ila Farrell-Smith grew up in a community that was deeply involved in the fight for Indigenous rights, protesting broken treaties and other mistreatment of Native American people. Members of the movement, she said, understood that law enforcement agencies were surveilling their activities.

“I’ve been warned my entire life, ‘The FBI’s watching us,’” said Farrell-Smith, a member of the Klamath Tribes in Oregon.

Government records later confirmed wide-ranging FBI surveillance of the movement in the 1970s, and now the agency is focused on her and a new generation of Indigenous activists challenging development of a mine in northern Nevada. Farrell-Smith advises the group People of Red Mountain, which opposes a Canadian company’s efforts to tap what it says is one of the world’s largest lithium deposits.

Law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, have for years worked alongside private mine security to surveil the largely peaceful protesters who oppose the mine, called Thacker Pass, according to more than 2,000 pages of internal law enforcement communications reviewed by ProPublica. Officers and agents have tracked protesters’ social media, while the mining company has gathered video from a camera above a campsite protesters set up on public land near the mine. An FBI joint terrorism task force in Reno met in June 2022 “with a focus on Thacker Pass,” the records also show, and Lithium Americas — the main company behind the mine — hired a former FBI agent specializing in counterterrorism to develop its security plan.

“We’re out there doing ceremony and they’re surveilling us,” Farrell-Smith said.

“They treat us like we’re domestic terrorists,” added Chanda Callao, an organizer with People of Red Mountain.

All told, about 10 agencies have monitored the mine’s opponents. In addition to the FBI, those agencies include the Bureau of Land Management, Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office, Bureau of Indian Affairs, Nevada State Police Highway Patrol, Winnemucca Police Department and Nevada Threat Analysis Center, the records show.

Andrew Ferguson, who studies surveillance technology at the American University Washington College of Law, called the scrutiny of Indigenous and environmental protesters as potential terrorists “chilling.”

“It obviously should be concerning to activists that anything they do in their local area might be seen in this broad-brush way of being a federal issue of terrorism or come under the observation of the FBI and all of the powers that come with it,” Ferguson said.

The FBI did not respond to requests for comment. The Bureau of Land Management, which coordinated much of the interagency response, declined to comment. Most of the law enforcement activity has focused on monitoring, and one person has been arrested to date as a result of the protests.

Mike Allen, who served as Humboldt County’s sheriff until January 2023, said his office’s role was simply to monitor the situation at Thacker Pass. “We would go up there and make periodic patrol activity,” he said.

Allen defended the joint terrorism task force, saying it was “where we would just all get together and discuss things.” (The FBI characterizes such task forces, which include various agencies working in an area, as the front line of defense against terrorism.)

Tim Crowley, Lithium Americas’ vice president of government and external affairs, said in a statement: “Protestors have vandalized property, blocked roads and dangerously climbed on Lithium Americas’ equipment. In all those cases, Lithium Americas avoided engagement with the protestors and coordinated with the local authorities when necessary for the protection of everyone involved.”

Crowley noted that Lithium Americas has worked with Indigenous communities near the mine to study cultural artifacts and is offering to build projects worth millions of dollars for the Fort McDermitt Paiute and Shoshone Tribe, such as a community center and greenhouse.

But individuals and the community groups opposed to the mine don’t want money. They worry mining will pollute local sources of water in the nation’s driest state and harm culturally significant sites, including that of an 1865 massacre of Indigenous people.

“We understand how the land is sacred and how much culture and how much history is within the McDermitt Caldera,” Callao said of the basin where Thacker Pass is located. “We know how much it means to not only the next generation, but the next seven generations.”

Indigenous groups are increasingly at odds with mining companies as climate change brings economies around the globe to an inflection point. Greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels are contributing to increasingly intense hurricanes, heat waves, wildfires and droughts. The solution — powering the electrical grid, vehicles and factories with cleaner energy sources — brings tradeoffs.

Massive amounts of metals are required to manufacture solar panels, wind turbines and other renewable energy infrastructure. Demand for lithium will skyrocket 350% by 2040, largely to be used in electric vehicles’ rechargeable batteries, according to the International Energy Agency.

The U.S. produces very little lithium — and China controls a majority of refining capacity worldwide — so development of Thacker Pass enjoys bipartisan support, receiving a key permit in President Donald Trump’s first administration and a $2.26 billion loan from President Joe Biden’s administration. (Development ran into issues in June, when a Nevada agency notified the company that it was using groundwater without the proper permit. Company representatives have said they are confident that they will resolve the matter.)

Many minerals needed to produce cleaner energy are found on Indigenous lands. For example, 85% of known global lithium reserves are on or near Indigenous people’s lands, according to a 2022 study by researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia, the University of the Free State in South Africa and elsewhere. The situation has put Indigenous communities at odds with mining industries as tribes are asked to sacrifice land and sovereignty to combat climate change.

Luke Danielson is a mining consultant and lawyer who for decades has researched how mining affects Indigenous lands. “What I fear would be we set loose a land rush where we’re trampling over all the Indigenous people and we’re taking all the public land and essentially privatizing it to mining companies,” he said.

If companies or governments attempt to force mining on such communities, it can slow development, noted Ciaran O’Faircheallaigh, a professor emeritus of Australia’s Griffith University and author of “Indigenous Peoples and Mining.”

“If there are bulldozers coming down the road and they are going to destroy an area that is central to people’s identity and their existence, they are going to fight,” he said. “The solution is you actually put First Peoples in a position of equal power so that they can negotiate outcomes that allow for timely, and indeed speedy, development.”

Most of the documents tracing law enforcement’s involvement at Thacker Pass were obtained via public records requests by two advocacy groups focused on climate change and law enforcement, Siskiyou Rising Tide and Information for Public Use. They shared the records with ProPublica, which obtained additional documents through separate public records requests to law enforcement agencies.

Given the monitoring of mining’s opponents highlighted in the records, experts raised questions about authorities’ role: Is the government there to support industrial development, protect civil liberties or act as an unbiased arbiter? At Thacker Pass, the documents show, law enforcement has helped defend the mine.

Protests have at times escalated.

A small group of more radical environmentalists led by non-Indigenous activists propelled the early movement, setting up a campsite on public land near the proposed mine site in January 2021. In June 2022, a protester from France wrote on social media, “We’ll need all the AR15s We can get on the frontlines!” Tensions peaked in June 2023, when several protesters entered the worksite and blocked bulldozers, leading to one arrest.

That group — which calls itself Protect Thacker Pass — argued that its actions were justified. Will Falk, one of the group’s organizers, said that, in any confrontation, scrutiny unfairly falls on protesters instead of companies or the government. “As a culture, we’ve become so used to militarized police that we don’t understand that, out of the group of people gathered, the people who are actually violent are the ones with the guns,” he said.

Falk and another organizer were, as a result of their participation in protests, barred by court order from returning to Thacker Pass and disrupting construction, and the Bureau of Land Management fined them for alleged trespass on public lands during the protest. The agency charged them $49,877.71 for officers’ time and mileage to monitor them, according to agency records Falk shared with ProPublica. Falk said his group tried to work with the agency to obtain permits and is disputing the fine to a federal board of appeals.

“None of us are armed. We’re not there for an uprising,” said Gary McKinney, a spokesperson for People of Red Mountain, which parted ways with Falk’s group before the incident that led to an arrest.

McKinney, a member of the Duck Valley Shoshone-Paiute Tribe, leads annual prayer rides, journeying hundreds of miles across northern Nevada on horseback with other Native American activists to Thacker Pass. He described the rides, intended to raise awareness of mining’s impact on tribes and the environment, as a way to exercise rights under the American Indian Religious Freedom Act, which protects tribes’ ability to practice traditional spirituality. Still, the group feels watched. A trail camera once mysteriously appeared near their campsite along the path of the prayer ride. They also crossed paths with security personnel.

Beyond the trail rides, the FBI tracks McKinney’s activity, the records show. The agency informed other law enforcement when he promoted a Fourth of July powwow and rodeo on his reservation, and it flagged a speech he delivered at a conference for mining-affected communities.

“We’re being watched, we’re being followed, we’re under the microscope,” McKinney said.

The records show security personnel hired by Lithium Americas speaking as if an uprising could be imminent. “To date, there has been no violence or serious property destruction, however, the activities of these protest groups could change to a more aggressive actions and violent demeanor at any time,” Raymond Mey, who joined Lithium Americas’ security team for a time after a career with the FBI, wrote to law enforcement agencies in July 2022.

Mey also researched protesters’ activities, sharing his findings with law enforcement. In an April 2021 update, for example, he provided an aerial photograph of the protesters’ campsite. Law enforcement agencies worked with Mey, and he pushed to make that relationship closer, seeking “an integrated and coordinated law enforcement strategy to deal with the protestors at Thacker Pass.” The records indicate that the FBI was open to him attending its joint terrorism task force.

Mey is not licensed with the Nevada Private Investigators Licensing Board, which is required to perform such work in the state, according to agency records.

Mey said that he didn’t believe he needed a license because he wasn’t pursuing investigations. He said that his advice to the company was to avoid direct conflict with protesters and only call the police when necessary.

The battle over Thacker Pass reflects renewed strife between mining and drilling industries and Indigenous people. Two recent fights at the heart of this clash have intersected with Thacker Pass — one concerning an oil pipeline in the Great Plains and the other over a copper mine in the Southwest.

Beginning in 2016 and continuing for nearly a year, a large protest camp on the Standing Rock Indian Reservation sought to halt construction of the 1,172-mile Dakota Access Pipeline. Members of the Indigenous-led movement contended that it threatened the region’s water. The protest turned violent, leading to hundreds of arrests. Law enforcement eventually cleared the camp and the pipeline was completed.

Law enforcement agencies feared similar opposition at Thacker Pass, the records show.

In April 2021, Allen, then the local sheriff, and his staff met with Mark Pfeifle, president and CEO of the communications firm Off the Record Strategies, to discuss “lessons learned” from the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Pfeifle, who helped the Bush administration build support for the second Gulf War, had more recently led a public relations blitz to discredit the Standing Rock protesters. This involved suggesting using a fake news crew and mocking up wanted posters for activists, according to emails obtained by news organizations. Pfeifle sent Allen presentations about the law enforcement response at Standing Rock, including one on “Examples of ‘Fake News’ and disinformation” from the protesters. “As always, we stand ready to help your office and your citizens,” he wrote to the sheriff.

The department appears not to have hired Pfeifle, although Allen directed his staff to also meet with Pfeifle’s colleague who worked on the Standing Rock response.

Around July 2021, the Humboldt County Sheriff’s Office held a meeting “to plan for the reality of a large-scale incident at Thacker Pass” similar to the Dakota Access Pipeline protests. Police referred to the ongoing protests on public land at Thacker Pass as an “occupation.”

Allen said he didn’t remember meeting with Pfeifle but said he wanted to be prepared for anything. “We didn’t know what to expect, but from what we understand, there were professional protestors up there and more were coming in,” he said.

Pfeifle didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Members of People of Red Mountain have also traveled to Arizona to object to the development of a controversial copper mine that’s planned in a national forest east of Phoenix. There, some members of the San Carlos Apache Tribe oppose the development because it would destroy an area they use for ceremonies. (In May, the Supreme Court handed down a decision allowing a land transfer, removing the final key obstacle to the mine.)

On these trips, Callao and others have frequently found a “notice of baggage inspection” from the Transportation Security Administration in their checked luggage. She provided ProPublica with photos of five such notices.

An agency spokesperson said that screening equipment does not know to whom the bag belongs when it triggers an alarm, and officers must search it.

To Callao, the surveillance, whether by luggage inspection, security camera or counterterrorism task force, adds to the weight placed on Indigenous communities amid the energy transition.

“We shouldn’t have to accept the burden of the climate crisis,” Callao said, “We should be able to protect our ancestral homelands.”

This content originally appeared on ProPublica and was authored by by Mark Olalde.

We continue to discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S. surveillance under a second Trump administration. Ever-increasing surveillance is “dangerous for democracy,” says Farrow. “We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” As O’Neill emphasizes, “We could all be caught up.”

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

Is that a spy in your pocket? In a holiday special we speak to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow and filmmaker Matthew O’Neill about Surveilled, their new HBO documentary looking at how high-tech surveillance spyware is threatening democracy across the globe. As part of the reporting for the documentary, Farrow traveled to Israel for a rare interview with a former employee of NSO Group, the Israeli software company that makes Pegasus. He warns that it’s not just “repressive governments” that abuse Pegasus and other surveillance technology, but also a growing number of democratic states like Greece, Poland and Spain. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies under both the Biden and Trump administrations have also considered such spyware, although the extent to which these tools have been used is not fully known. “Surveillance technology has historically always been abused. Now the technology is more advanced and more frightening than ever, and more available than ever, so abuse is more possible,” says Farrow.

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

We discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S. surveillance under a second Trump administration. Ever-increasing surveillance is “dangerous for democracy,” says Farrow. “We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” As O’Neill emphasizes, “We could all be caught up.”

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

We look at the world of high-tech surveillance with Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow and filmmaker Matthew O’Neill about their new HBO documentary Surveilled, which is now available for streaming. Farrow says he became interested in the topic after he was tracked by the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube during his reporting on Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual abuse. Although Black Cube used a “relatively low-tech approach,” Farrow says the experience started him on a path to investigate more sophisticated methods of surveillance, including the powerful spyware Pegasus, which has been used against journalists and dissidents around the world. As part of the reporting for the documentary, Farrow traveled to Israel for a rare interview with a former employee of NSO Group, the Israeli software company that makes Pegasus. He warns that it’s not just “repressive governments” that abuse Pegasus and other surveillance technology, but also a growing number of democratic states like Greece, Poland and Spain. U.S. law enforcement and intelligence agencies under both the Biden and Trump administrations have also considered such spyware, although the extent to which these tools have been used is not fully known. “Surveillance technology has historically always been abused. Now the technology is more advanced and more frightening than ever, and more available than ever, so abuse is more possible,” says Farrow.

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

The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department investigated or surveilled multiple journalists during Alex Villanueva’s tenure as sheriff from 2018 to 2022, according to accounts published in July 2024.

The Los Angeles Times reported that its former investigative reporter Maya Lau became a subject of an investigation in 2018, when the department revived an inquiry into the disclosure of a list of roughly 300 problem deputies. Lau had written about the deputies the previous year, prompting the LASD’s initial attempt to identify the source, which quickly ended without success.

The investigation was reopened shortly after Villanueva took office as sheriff and, according to an investigative case file obtained by the Times, officers ultimately alleged that Lau was a “criminal suspect,” having knowingly received stolen materials. The department submitted the case against her to the state’s attorney general in 2021, who formally declined to prosecute her in May 2024.

Lau told the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker that she only learned of the investigation when her former colleagues at the Times reached out for comment after it was closed.

“This investigation is an outrage. They should know better: Journalists shouldn’t be criminally investigated for doing their job,” Lau said. “Whether they want to admit it or not, it is an intimidation tactic.”

She added that her coverage, along with that of her colleagues, helped change state laws to improve public access to police disciplinary records and that the work she did was in the public’s interest.

Lau was not the last journalist investigated under Villanueva’s leadership.

According to a pair of articles published on July 17, 2024, reporter Cerise Castle obtained email records confirming that the LASD began surveilling her almost immediately after she published a 15-part series with Knock LA in March and April 2021 exposing a history of gangs within the department.

Castle gained access to digital communications containing her name after suing the department for denying a May 2021 public records request. It ultimately agreed to a settlement and began turning over the records two years later.

The emails revealed that she was flagged as a suspicious person, that an officer described her reporting as “a potential officer safety concern” and that another described Knock LA as among the “anti-LASD platform(s) we’re tracking,” Castle reported.

“These emails confirm LASD monitored me, a reporter performing her work, protected by the First Amendment of the US Constitution, as well as other people they consider to be in my orbit,” Castle wrote. “It’s not clear the extent of which this is still happening. I have filed similar requests to the original filed in 2021, but have not received any records.”

Castle told the Tracker that before the series was published, a source warned her that she might be surveilled and she took it seriously: She stayed at a safe house while finishing the reporting and through its publication. After returning home, she said she repeatedly saw department vehicles parked in the driveway outside her apartment — located outside of LASD’s jurisdiction — and has been pulled over multiple times recently while reporting on police misconduct cases.

“It’s impossible for me to relax. I don’t really feel safe anywhere, even at home,” Castle said. “It hasn’t killed my resolve. It has changed me completely as a person, but I’m not going to stop doing this work.”

David Loy, legal director of the First Amendment Coalition, condemned the surveillance of journalists in a statement, calling it “truly alarming.”

“It creates a significant chill in the fact that journalists should be able to do their jobs without fear that they’re going to be targets, or potential targets, of law enforcement retaliation,” Loy said.

At a news conference in April 2022, Villanueva targeted another journalist, LA Times reporter Alene Tchekmedyian, as part of a leak investigation. That followed Tchekmedyian’s reporting on internal documents that detailed an alleged department cover-up around an inmate abuse case.

When pressed at the news conference to say whether Tchekmedyian was under criminal investigation, Villanueva responded that the reporter received information and put it to use. “What she receives legally and puts to her own use and what she receives legally and the L.A. Times uses — I'm sure that's a huge, complex level of law and freedom of the press and all that. However, when it’s stolen materials, at some point, you actually become part of the story.”

Hours after the news conference, Villanueva went on social media to address the public outcry over his comments.

“Resulting from the incredible frenzy of misinformation being circulated, I must clarify at no time today did I state an LA Times reporter was a suspect in a criminal investigation. We have no interest in pursuing, nor are we pursuing, criminal charges against any reporters,” Villanueva wrote.

At the time of that statement, however, the department’s recommendation that Times reporter Lau be charged was still pending before the attorney general.

Villanueva was later voted out of office and his replacement, Robert Luna, was sworn in as sheriff in December 2022.

In an emailed statement to the Tracker in July 2024, the department said: “Under the leadership of Sheriff Luna, we do not monitor journalists and we respect the freedom of the press. Our current administration operates distinctively from its predecessor, and actions taken in prior administrations do not reflect our current policies or practices.”

LASD declined to respond to requests for details about when the investigations were opened and closed, and whether Villanueva personally ordered or oversaw them. Villanueva did not respond to a request for comment.

Police investigating journalists isn’t unusual, Castle told the Tracker. “We’ve seen journalists that have gone through surveillance like this by police departments quite frequently,” she said, citing Lau, Tchekmedyian and the raid on the Marion County Record last year. “This stuff is happening all over the United States a lot more frequently than I think people are aware of, and it’s something that should be a concern for all of us.”

Lau said that while she doesn’t have any reason to believe that egregious investigatory tactics, such as tapping her phone, were used, there are unanswered questions. “I don’t know the full scope of this investigation and that is the danger. It could theoretically put other sources, including those that had nothing to do with this story, at risk.”

This content originally appeared on U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database and was authored by U.S. Press Freedom Tracker: Incident Database.

The existence of a surveillance operation that allegedly spied on Zogo since at least 2015 was disclosed in a 20-page referral to trial document reviewed by CPJ. The document was part of a judicial investigation into the January 2023 kidnapping, torture, and murder of the popular radio host, which was finalized on February 29, 2024.

Seventeen suspects are expected to stand trial, on a date yet to be set, in a military court in the capital, Yaoundé, on charges including murder, complicity and conspiracy to murder, complicity and conspiracy to torture, complicity to kidnap, and violation of instructions, according to the document and news reports.

The suspects include:

• Léopold Maxime Eko Eko, former head of the counterintelligence agency General Directorate for External Research (DGRE)
• Justin Danwe, former DGRE director of operations
• Jean-Pierre Amougou Belinga, an influential businessman and head of the privately owned media group L’Anecdote
• Bruno François Bidjang, L’Anecdote managing director and news presenter for privately owned television station Vision 4

“The revelation that a surveillance operation targeted popular radio host Martinez Zogo since at least 2015 raises concerns about which other journalists have been surveilled by Cameroon’s counterintelligence agency,” said Angela Quintal, head of CPJ’s Africa program in New York. “Cameroonian authorities must make a full disclosure and ensure the end to all surveillance, physical or electronically, of journalists. The unfettered practice is not only a violation of journalists’ right to privacy but has serious consequences for source protection.”

Zogo was found dead on January 22, 2023, after going missing five days earlier.  A week before his abduction, Zogo publicly accused Belinga of widespread corruption involving funds from the Cameroonian treasury during his radio show Embouteillage (Gridlock).

The court document reviewed by CPJ was prepared by lead investigating judge, Lieutenant-Colonel Pierrot Narcisse Nzié, the third investigating judge in the case who was appointed in December after the previous judge ordered the controversial release of Belinga and Eko Eko. The pair remained in detention after authorities claimed that the release order was fake.

The document describes how DGRE agents led by Danwe, under the influence of Belinga, allegedly carried out the kidnapping and torture of Zogo in Ebogo, a district of the capital Yaoundé, on January 17, 2023. Part of this team returned to the scene an hour later for a second operation that “resulted in Zogo’s death” by “strangulation and torture.”

The court document said Eko Eko denied involvement, saying Zogo was never a threat to him and the operation against the journalist was Danwe’s personal initiative; however, Nzié said Eko Eko could not claim this, as he had ordered the DGRE to surveil the journalist since 2015 as part of the “Presse” dossier.  The court documents did not elaborate further but said the surveillance operation ordered by Eko Eko was confirmed by another witness,  Emmanuella Moudie, the chief of the DRGE’s electronic surveillance division. 

Zogo’s surveillance was also corroborated by Yves Saïwang, another suspect facing trial and an officer in the DGRE’s electronic surveillance division, who “bluntly” declared during questioning that Zogo was the target of the DGRE’s surveillance, according to the court document. Saïwang also said that since 2017, he was responsible for monitoring Zoga. Eko Eko had never taken any measures to prevent this and could not escape responsibility, Nzié said in the court document.

Saïwang also said he sent Danwe geolocation information about Zogo via WhatsApp and then received 20,000 francs (US $33), according to the document. Heudji Guy Serge, another DGRE officer who is also a suspect in the trial, said he, too, provided technical information to Danwe about Zogo and received 15,000 francs (US $25).

Denis Omgba Bomba, director of the media observatory at Cameroon’s Ministry of Communication, told CPJ that there was no surveillance “program” dedicated to journalists but that as Zogo was a public figure, the surveillance was a normal intelligence operation. Bomba added that the protection of journalists’ sources is not absolute and that the state can ignore this for security reasons. 

Authorities charged Bidjang with conspiracy to torture, conspiracy to arrest, and kidnapping in relation to Zogo’s murder, according to the court document. He is detained in Yaoundé’s Principal Prison on separate charges of revolt, incitement to insurrection, rebellion, and spreading false news, his lawyer, Charles Tchoungang, told CPJ.

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

On Monday, Bihus.Info published an investigation which said that 30 members of a branch of the SBU, the Department for the Protection of National Statehood, spied on its journalists and filmed them using illegal recreational drugs at a private party in a hotel on December 27. The outlet said that the cameras used to surveil its staff had been placed in the hotel before the party and that the hotel’s security cameras had shown several SBU agents entering the hotel ahead of the event. 

“CPJ is deeply concerned that Bihus.Info journalists were spied on by the Ukrainian security service, which is responsible for combating national security threats. Investigative journalists are not a threat, but the foundation of a healthy democracy,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Ukrainian authorities must ensure their investigation into this illegal surveillance of the media is quick and transparent and hold those responsible to account.” 

The story broke last month, when YouTube channel Narodna Pravda published a video showing Bihus.Info employees apparently using drugs and recordings of phone conversations about obtaining cannabis and MDMA (also known as Ecstasy) – both of which are illegal in Ukraine. The video, which Bihus.Info director Denys Bihus acknowledged as genuine, has since been taken offline.

Anastasiya Borema, head of communications at Bihus.Info, told CPJ at the time that their analysis of the video showed that the journalists’ phones had been tapped for about a year.

On January 22, Ukraine’s national police said they had registered four cases of privacy violation at the request of four Bihus.Info representatives.

President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the surveillance, said the matter was under investigation, and signed a decree on January 31 dismissing Roman Semenchenko, head of the Department for the Protection of National Statehood.

SBU responded to Monday’s investigation by Bihus.Info with a statement on Tuesday that said it had launched a criminal investigation into illegal surveillance and that it had originally acted on information claiming that employees of Bihus.Info were clients of drug dealers.

“We believe that independent media are an integral part of a modern democratic society and no actions of individuals can cast a shadow on any of the newsrooms and mass media in general, and all employees of the SBU must act exclusively to ensure the protection of the national interests of the state and society,” it said.

Also on Tuesday, Ukraine’s parliament voted to summon the head of the SBU, Vasyl Malyuk, over the affair. On the same day, Malyuk posted a statement saying that the “actions of individual employees” of the Department for the Protection of National Statehood were “truly outrageous” and “unacceptable” and the Office of the Prosecutor General said in a statement that it had instructed the State Bureau of Investigation (DBR), which investigates crimes committed by public officials, to carry out a pre-trial investigation into criminal proceedings over illegal surveillance. “Violations of the rights of journalists are unacceptable and are subject to careful consideration and appropriate response,” Attorney General Anriy Kostin said in the statement.

Bihus.Info’s Borema told CPJ that the criminal cases into the surveillance of their journalists had been transferred from the SBU and the police to the DBR.

“We are waiting for the continuation of the story and punishment for its participants and organizers,” she said. “The head of the department was fired, while about 30 people were involved in the surveillance operation. These people could not have come up with this operation on their own, so it was approved by the top management,” adding: “The editorial staff of Bihus.Info believes that the order to surveil the journalists was given either by the SBU leadership or by other government bodies.”

Several investigative Ukrainian journalists have faced threats, violence, and harassment over their work since Russia’s full-scale invasion of the country. Journalists seeking press accreditation previously told CPJ that they had been questioned by the SBU and pressured to take certain approaches in their reporting. 

On February 3, the military relaxed the accreditation rules that were in place since March 2023 and that had been criticized for limiting the journalists’ access to the frontline.

SBU’s spokesperson Artem Dekhtiarenko declined to respond to CPJ’s query as to whether the surveillance operation had been sanctioned by a prosecutor and referred CPJ to the agency’s previous statements.

Editor’s note: The 12th paragraph in this report has been updated to clarify a quote attribution.  

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Access Now’s report does not name the other 12 journalists and media workers, and CPJ was unable to immediately identify them. Previously, in 2022, CPJ called for an investigation into the use of Pegasus spyware on two Jordanian journalists, including Suhair Jaradat.

“The new revelations that journalists and media workers in Jordan have been targeted with Pegasus spyware underscores the need for an immediate moratorium on the use and sale of this technology, and a ban on vendors facilitating abuses,” said Sherif Mansour, CPJ’s Middle East and North Africa program coordinator, in Washington, D.C. “Journalists are not legitimate surveillance targets, and those responsible for these attacks should be held accountable.”

According to the report, phones belonging to Sabbagh and Dihmis, who cover the Middle East and North Africa as a senior editor and an investigative reporter, respectively, at the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), were targeted with Pegasus spyware.

“What bothered me most was the impact of the surveillance on my sources, and friends, and relatives,” said Sabbagh, who is also the co-founder of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism. “Because of the nature of OCCRP’s work, it is a principal target for surveillance agencies. They wish to keep crime and criminality hidden. We work to expose it. And with this type of work comes a very high price.”

Dihimis called the revelation “quite the violation,” adding that “as a journalist, it was a reminder of the importance of being cautious in terms of secure communication — to protect yourself but also your sources and colleagues. As a person, it spurred a lot of paranoia,” she added.

Kuttab, a Palestinian-American journalist based in Jordan and a 1996 recipient of CPJ’s International Press Freedom Award, was targeted by Pegasus spyware multiple times, according to the report.

On March 8, 2022, two weeks after the first incident, Kuttab was arrested when he arrived at Queen Alia International Airport outside of Jordan’s capital, Amman. He was detained under the Cybercrime Law for an article written in 2019 and was released a few hours later on bail, the report said.

The report detailed seven other attempts to infect Kuttabʼs mobile device with Pegasus, including a 2023 attempt in which the attacker impersonated a journalist from media outlet The Cradle asking questions about Jordanʼs cybercrime law while sending malicious links.

“I will not be intimidated, and I will not censor myself,” Kuttab told CPJ. “It is highly irritating to be spied on, but that also comes with the job nowadays. Whatever I know, I publish, but my only concern is my sources and their protection.”

Gharaibeh, director of Jordan’s Radio Husna, and the host of its morning talking show, was targeted successfully multiple times and there were also several failed attempts to infiltrate his phone, the report said.

When asked by CPJ about the apparent reason behind the recurrent attacks, Gharaibeh said that “it could be anything from monitoring the journalists and their sources to exploiting the journalists and silencing them.”

According to Access Now, the victims in the report were targeted using Pegasus with both zero-click attacks, in which spyware takes over a phone without the user’s knowledge, and attacks in which a user has to click a link. 

CPJ has documented the use of Pegasus to target journalists around the world in order to monitor their phones’ cameras, microphones, emails, texts, and calls. Journalists have been targeted with the software in Jordan, 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.

CPJ offers guidance for journalists and newsrooms on spyware targeting and general digital safety.

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

“British authorities should ensure a thorough and transparent investigation into the alleged surveillance of journalists Trevor Birney and Barry McCaffrey, and make sure that any who violated journalists’ rights are held accountable,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator. “Journalists must be able to speak with sources and do their jobs without fear that authorities will spy on their communications.”

The investigation stems from complaints filed by Birney and McCaffrey to the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, an independent judicial body charged with looking into surveillance allegations. The IPT is expected to hold a hearing later this year on the lawfulness of that alleged surveillance.

Birney and McCaffrey were arrested and their homes raided in 2018 on suspicion of stealing confidential documents while working on the documentary “No Stone Unturned,” about a Northern Ireland police investigation into the 1994 murders of six men. In 2020, the journalists won a case in the High Court of Belfast, which ruled that the search warrants were inappropriate and ordered the police to pay damages to both journalists.

Birney told The Guardian that he and McCaffrey had no insight into the IPT’s investigation. He said they were “completely blinkered in this process. We only get to see a glimpse behind the curtain of what the court is doing.”

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

In an October 24 article and interviews, Telloglou, a reporter for Greek privately owned online investigative outlet Inside Story, said that unknown individuals stalked him between May and August 2022, and used cell phone data to monitor him as well as Chondrogiannos, an investigative reporter at privately owned online investigative outletReporters United, Koukakis, a financial reporter who works for various local and international outlets, and Triantafillou, an investigative reporter at Inside Story. Telloglou’s report was published on the website of the Greek office of the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an independent organization affiliated with Germany’s Green Party.

The four reporters told CPJ by email and phone that they suspect Greek authorities are behind their surveillance, which they believe is linked to their reporting and investigations into a recent wiretapping and spyware scandal in which intelligence officials wiretapped Koukakis’ and another journalist’s cell phone and Koukakis’ phone was infected with Predator spyware, which the government denied procuring.

Their allegations come against a backdrop of a deteriorating climate for press freedom in Greece.

“Greek authorities must conduct a quick, transparent and independent investigation into the stalking and surveillance allegations by Tasos Telloglou and put an immediate stop to any use of cell phone data to track him and fellow investigative reporters Thodoris Chondrogiannos, Thanasis Koukakis, and Eliza Triantafillou,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “It is totally unacceptable to follow journalists or use cell phone data to track their and their sources’ movements. Greek authorities must protect the confidentiality of journalists’ sources rather than compromise it.”

In his article, Telloglou said that on May 27, he noticed that a man followed him in Athens as he walked to meet a source. Telloglou confronted the man, who ran away. Telloglou later contacted intelligence officials who denied following him. A few days later, a retired police officer warned him about the parking lot he used. A parking attendant told Telloglou that a policeman had wanted access to his car, but the attendant did not allow it.

Telloglou claimed that in June, a source gave him a photograph taken of him in an Athens café following his meeting with Koukakis on May 2. Telloglou did not publish the photo to protect his source. Also in June, an intelligence source told him that authorities were using cell phone signals to track his movements, those of the other three journalists, and potential sources to determine whether they had met, Telloglou wrote. 

Koukakis said Telloglou’s article “confirms that even after the scandal of surveillances was made public, the Greek government continued to monitor journalists working on this issue.”   

Chondrogiannos said the article confirms credible sources’ warnings that they and whistleblowers “have been targeted with geolocation surveillance for our investigation” on the scandal and that authorities wanted to identify their sources. The article exposes “the systematic surveillance of journalists” by intelligence officials in Greece, Chondrogiannos said. 

Triantafillou said that around May, she also noticed suspicious movements of unknown people outside her home, and believes that she was tailed as she walked to meetings with sources.

The reporters said they have not filed a police report on the incidents. Telloglou told CPJ that he does not think Greek authorities can offer protection from threats coming from the state. Chondrogiannos said that his outlet, Reporters United, will submit an official request to the Greek independent authority responsible for the protection of privacy (ADAE), to determine whether he had been under surveillance by intelligence officials.

Telloglou told CPJ that Greek authorities did not respond to his article.

CPJ emailed questions to the press department of Greece’s National Intelligence Service but received no reply.

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

Unsolved journalist killings weigh on the Greek press corps 

Investigative journalist Sokratis Giolias, who was killed 2010, and crime reporter Giorgos Karaivaz, who was killed 2021, were gunned down in similar circumstances by professional hitmen in the streets and there have been no arrests in either case. It has been years since authorities provided updates on Giolias, and while authorities say they are looking into what happened to Karaivaz, his family and colleagues are dissatisfied by the pace of the investigation. 

CPJ met with Karaivaz’s widow, Statha Alexandropoulou-Karaivaz, on the balcony of her Athens home overlooking the spot on the street where her husband was killed. She pointed CPJ to her emotional message on social media criticizing authorities for their sluggish work and for failing to update the family. “By no means will I accept silence,” she wrote, adding that she had heard rumors of the case being shelved. Soon after her post, Takis Theodorikakos, the minister for citizen protection in charge of overseeing the police met with Alexandropoulou-Karaivaz, and issued a statement that the investigation will continue “until the culprits are brought to justice.” 

But the assurance has proved cold comfort to the many journalists closely following the case. “In Greece, where everything gets leaked, the fact that there are no leaks about this probe is very telling,” one journalist told CPJ on the condition of anonymity given the sensitivities involved. Other journalists told CPJ they were skeptical that the investigation would yield any answers, especially because Karaivaz covered organized crime groups and their alleged links to policemen, officials, and politicians. The Greek elite, they said, have little interest in seeing a thorough investigation to fruition. 

The threat of violence has chilled reporting  

For many journalists covering issues like organized crime, protests, refugee movements, the threat of violence is part of their everyday working lives. Extremists groups have also launched arson attacks against media outlets. Authorities in most cases have failed to identify the perpetrators, compounding journalists’ feelings that they put themselves in harm’s way simply by doing their jobs. “When Karaivaz was murdered, we were frozen. This feeling is still with us,” Eliza Triantafillou, a journalist with investigative outlet Inside Story told CPJ. Thodoris Chondrogiannos, a journalist with investigative outlet Reporters United said that as long as Karaivaz’s killing is not properly investigated, “we can assume that it can happen to any journalist, and sources can also assume the same.” 

Journalists are concerned about surveillance

In November 2021, newspaper EfSyn reported that intelligence services’ wiretapped the cellphone of Stavros Malichudis, a journalist covering refugee issues. Then, in April 2022, Reporters United revealed government documents indicating authorities had similarly wiretapped a phone belonging to financial journalist Thanasis Koukakis in 2020. Koukakis also said that in 2021 his phone had been infected with Predator spyware, which can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts. The company that sells Predator, Intellexa, says on its website that it markets its products to law enforcement agencies. 

The government initially denied that it surveilled the journalists. But over the summer, when an opposition politician revealed his phone was targeted with Predator — igniting a political scandal that ended in the resignation of Greece’s intelligence service chief and the prime minister’s aide, who was also his nephew — parliament vowed to investigate the use of spyware and other surveillance tools. The investigation, however, ended in October with no conclusions as the parliamentary inquiry failed to interview key players.  

Journalists predict more reporters will be surveilled  

Reporters who spoke with CPJ believe more members of the media have been targeted with wiretaps than is publicly known. “The process to get waivers for wiretapping is just so easy,” Malichudis told CPJ in an interview; in 2021, annual figures show that an official with oversight authority over the Greek secret service approved more than 15,000 wiretap requests on the basis of vague national security interests. Koukakis has taken his case to the European Court of Human Rights. 

While the government denied that it procured Predator, journalists are not so sure. Triantafillou told CPJ that the Predator spyware costs millions of Euros, a sum governments can afford. She pointed out that the firm Intellexa, which acquired Predator from its original developers in 2018, “continues its operations in Athens, undisturbed by the authorities” despite the scandal. 

In September dozens of Greek and foreign correspondents in the country petitioned PEGA, an EU committee investigating spyware abuse, to probe the Greek surveillance scandal, concerned that their phones could also be infected. “The fear of being under surveillance is just as effective as being under surveillance: it makes it difficult for journalists to find and communicate with their sources,” said Triantafillou. 

After CPJ’s fact-finding mission, another Greek reporter, Anastasios Telloglou alleged that security services had tracked him, as well as Chondrogiannos, Triantafillou, and Koukakis, using mobile data to identify their sources.  

The new government is especially sensitive to critical reporting

When Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis came to power in 2019, he vowed to improve Greece’s public image, tarnished by years of corruption and financial mismanagement. But journalists told CPJ that the new government has made life harder for politics reporters who now face retaliation for reporting on issues deemed harmful to Greece’s reputation. 

The government is especially jittery about unfavorable coverage in international media, reporters told CPJ. In September, German weekly Der Spiegel defended its correspondent, Giorgos Christides, after Greek government officials accused him of a breach of ethics over his reporting on the authorities’ treatment of refugees and migrants on the Greek-Turkish border. The reporter was vilified in pro-government media outlets as “anti-Greek” and his newspaper as “pro-Turkish.” In another case, after Politico Europe reporter Nektaria Stamouli, who heads the Greek Foreign Press Association, published an article in August on the country’s eroding press freedom, government spokesperson Giannis Oikonomou accused Stamouli in a statement of opposition bias.  

Lawsuits are another method to clamp down on critical reporting. In the wake of the government surveillance scandal, the prime minister’s nephew and former aide Giorgis Dimitriadis sued two media outlets, EfSyn and Reporters United, for a collective total of US$400,000 in damages over their investigations about Dimitriadis’ alleged business links with Intellexa. He has also sued Koukakis, demanding the withdrawal of a tweet about Reporters United’s and EfSyn’s reporting on the surveillance. The first hearings in the cases are scheduled for November.

A prominent critic of the government, Kostas Vaxevanis, publisher of weekly Documento told CPJ his newspaper has faced more than 80 vexatious lawsuits for damages in the millions of Euros launched by state-owned companies, institutions, government officials, and ruling party politicians. Most of these lawsuits end up in the courts which Vaxevanis said often rule in favor of the journalists. But the lawsuits themselves serve as a kind of warning, Nikolas Leontopoulos, investigative journalist at Reporters United, told CPJ. “The lawsuits strangle us, squeezing us of two things we lack the most: time and money,” he said. 

CPJ emailed questions to the office of the Greek government’s spokesperson, the press department of the Ministry of Citizens Protection and Intellexa but did not receive any reply. 

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

“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.

A stunning leak of more than 4 million documents from inside the Mexican military has revealed collusion between high-level military officials and the country’s cartels. The leak, published by the hacking group Guacamaya, is one of the largest in Mexico’s history and shows how military officials sold weapons, technical equipment and key information about rival gangs to cartels. The documents also show how officials monitored journalists and activists using Pegasus spyware, and evaded cooperation with the investigation into the disappearance of 43 students from Ayotzinapa. For more, we’re joined by journalist Luis Chaparro, who examined some of the documents and reported in a piece for Vice that they reveal Mexico’s military sold grenades to the drug cartels.

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

On August 28, Braam, a reporter with The Investigative Desk cooperative of specialized investigative journalists, disclosed that the Dutch intelligence services had surveilled her from 1986 to 2017, according to news reports and the journalist, who communicated with CPJ via email.

On June 2, the General Intelligence and Security Service, or AIVD, complied with Braam’s request to view her own personal file and gave her a 300-page, mostly redacted document concerning surveillance by AIVD and its predecessor organization, the BVD, according to the journalist and those reports. Braam told CPJ that she resigned from her post at The Investigative Desk after receiving the file out of concern for the confidentiality of her sources.

During those years, Braam told CPJ that she reported extensively on the activities in the Netherlands of the Turkish ultranationalist group the Grey Wolves, and Turkey’s far-right Nationalist Movement Party. Intelligence authorities said in the file that Braam was of interest due to her contacts in Turkish immigrant circles, according to those reports.

On September 6, AIVD communications head Inge Oevering said that Braam’s name had appeared in the course of the agency’s surveillance the Gray Wolves, but that “does not justify the conclusion that we have investigated her,” according to news reports, which added that Oevering said the intelligence service would never be able to confirm or deny whether Braam was specifically under surveillance.

“Dutch authorities should conduct a swift and transparent investigation into the surveillance of investigative reporter Stella Braam from 1986 to 2017, and take immediate steps to ensure that journalists are not monitored for their work,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Surveilling journalists in an EU member state is unacceptable. Dutch authorities should immediately explain their motives for this surveillance, destroy any information gathered about Braam and her work, and stop any ongoing surveillance programs targeting members of the press.”

Any Dutch citizen can submit a request to the intelligence service to disclose their files, according to Braam, but she said that only data from more than five years ago can be released.

“There’s a very good chance that I’ve compromised my journalistic sources, and chances are I’m being followed to this day,” she told CPJ. Braam said she plans take legal action to make the intelligence service destroy all the data it collected about her, and stop any ongoing surveillance.

Braam said she was shocked when she read the documents, which revealed that intelligence agents had spoken to anonymous sources about her, although the actual content of those discussions has been redacted. 

“Who were these sources, and what did they say?” she said. “This is terrifying. I cried and then I got angry. What possessed the secret service? Why am I dangerous to the state? I’ve written all my life on important social issues, hoping to move society forward. Apparently, the state thinks otherwise.”

CPJ emailed AIVD for comment, but did not receive any reply.

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

From July 12 to September 24, 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor for local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator, according to news reports and Koukakis, who disclosed the hacking on Monday, April 11, and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Koukakis, who covers financial news, said he was notified about the surveillance by the digital rights group Citizen Lab in late March. Around the time of the surveillance, he covered topics including alleged money laundering and corruption, he said.

“Greek authorities must conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation into the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, find whoever orchestrated it, and hold them to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Journalists must be able to protect their sources, and authorities must ensure that the are able to work without fear that hackers will gain access to their sources or details of their private lives.”

Predator spyware was originally developed by the North Macedonian company Cytrox, and can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts, according to the Greek news outlet Inside Story, which said that the software is now owned by the Cyprus-based company WiSpear.

Koukakis told CPJ that Citizen Lab researchers believed his phone was infected through a text message containing a link that he clicked on July 12.

Koukakis said he previously noticed his phone acting strangely in 2020 and suspected it may have been infected with spyware. That August, he filed a complaint with the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, which later said it did not find any evidence of a breach of privacy on his phone. When Koukakis was targeted by spyware in 2021, he was using a new phone he had purchased since that incident, he said.

Koukakis told CPJ that on April 6, 2022, he filed a new complaint to the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy and sent them Citizen Lab’s report on his case. He said he also planned to file a criminal complaint over the surveillance.

Greek government spokesperson Yannis Economou denied that the government had any involvement in surveilling Koukakis, according to news reports. CPJ emailed the Hellenic Authority for Communications Security and Privacy for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

CPJ was unable to find contact information for WiSpear, as its website did not load. In February, the company was fined in Cyprus for illegally surveilling private communications through the use of a “spy van,” according to news reports.

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

From July 12 to September 24, 2021, Koukakis, a financial editor for CNN Greece and a regular contributor for local and international outlets including The Financial Times and CNBC, had his cellphone surveilled by Predator, according to news reports and Koukakis, who disclosed the hacking on Monday, April 11, and spoke to CPJ in a phone interview.

Koukakis, who covers financial news, said he was notified about the surveillance by the digital rights group Citizen Lab in late March. Around the time of the surveillance, he covered topics including alleged money laundering and corruption, he said.

“Greek authorities must conduct a swift, thorough, and transparent investigation into the surveillance of journalist Thanasis Koukakis, find whoever orchestrated it, and hold them to account,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “Journalists must be able to protect their sources, and authorities must ensure that the are able to work without fear that hackers will gain access to their sources or details of their private lives.”

Predator spyware was originally developed by the North Macedonian company Cytrox, and can monitor a phone’s conversations, text messages, passwords, files, photos, internet history, and contacts, according to the Greek news outlet Inside Story, which said that the software is now owned by the Cyprus-based company WiSpear.

Koukakis told CPJ that Citizen Lab researchers believed his phone was infected through a text message containing a link that he clicked on July 12.

Koukakis said he previously noticed his phone acting strangely in 2020 and suspected it may have been infected with spyware. That August, he filed a complaint with the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy, which later said it did not find any evidence of a breach of privacy on his phone. When Koukakis was targeted by spyware in 2021, he was using a new phone he had purchased since that incident, he said.

Koukakis told CPJ that on April 6, 2022, he filed a new complaint to the Hellenic Authority for Communication Security and Privacy and sent them Citizen Lab’s report on his case. He said he also planned to file a criminal complaint over the surveillance.

Greek government spokesperson Yannis Economou denied that the government had any involvement in surveilling Koukakis, according to news reports. CPJ emailed the Hellenic Authority for Communications Security and Privacy for comment, but did not immediately receive any reply.

CPJ was unable to find contact information for WiSpear, as its website did not load. In February, the company was fined in Cyprus for illegally surveilling private communications through the use of a “spy van,” according to news reports.

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

Kitatta, a photojournalist and reporter, has been in hiding and unable to work since March 11, he told CPJ via messaging app, after a group of 12 men thought to be plain-clothed government security officers were seen allegedly surveilling the offices of the Vision Group, a Kampala-based state-owned media company that publishes Kitatta’s work in its New Vision  and Bukedde newspapers, according to a report by New Vision and a statement by the local press rights group, the Human Rights Network for Journalists-Uganda.

Since February 24, Kitatta has reported two other incidents of being followed and attacked by people he believed to be security officers, he told CPJ. Kitatta believes the security personnel planned to detain him following a February 22 incident in which a police officer attached to the elite Presidential Protection Guard, which provides security to high-ranking government officials and delegates, kicked him while he was covering an opposition protest in Kampala outside the home of Anita Among, who has since been elected speaker of parliament, according to media reports.

The attack was widely publicized, and Kitatta told CPJ that a picture of the incident was published on the front page in the Daily Monitor, a large privately owned newspaper. Kitatta also wrote a first-person account that was published by New Vision.

“It is a shame that a Ugandan journalist has been forced to go into hiding out of fear simply because he spoke out about being attacked while on assignment,” said CPJ sub-Saharan Africa Representative Muthoki Mumo. “Authorities should hold the police officer who kicked Lawrence Kitattta on February 22 accountable and provide guarantees that the journalist will be allowed to continue his work safely.”

In the February 22 incident, Kitatta heard the police officer making disparaging comments about the media and saying he did not like journalists before covering his face with a mask, chasing protesters, and assaulting Kitatta, the journalist told CPJ.

In a tweet, Asan Kasingye, an assistant inspector general and chief political commissar of the Uganda police force, accused Kitatta of attempting to grab the police officer’s weapon and suggested the officer was only trying to protect his gun. Kitatta told CPJ that when the officer went to kick him, he put out his arm in front of his body in a self-defensive reflex, not to grab the police officer’s gun. 

Kitatta first suspected he was being surveilled on February 24, when a man in civilian clothes approached the journalist while he was walking back to the Vision Group following a lunch break, Kitatta told CPJ. The man called him by name but walked away when Kitatta responded.

“I think he was trying to confirm it was me, to confirm my identity,” Kitatta said.

On the evening of February 28, when he was riding his motorcycle home from the Vision Group offices, he noticed a man riding another motorcycle without a license plate following him, Kitatta told CPJ. The man followed him for about two miles (three kilometers), then tried to run him off the road. Kitatta told CPJ that he stopped and waited for the other man to drive off before taking an alternative route home.

On March 1, accompanied by a Vision Group lawyer, Kitatta reported both incidents to police at the Jinja Road station, in Kampala, according to a report published by the newspaper, which CPJ reviewed.

Kitatta told CPJ that he believed that the group of men outside the Vision Group building on March 11 incident was connected to these two earlier incidents. In its reporting, New Vision said that some of the men, riding motorcycles without license plates, watched the building’s exit while another group waited in an idling car. 

When one of the men was asked by Vision staff what they were doing outside the Vision Group offices, the man claimed to be looking to hire space for a conference — a service the media company does not provide. Kitatta told CPJ that at least one of the men approached a Vision Group security officer, asking for Kitatta’s whereabouts.

Kitatta told CPJ that he was warned by his colleagues that there were men looking for him, so he hid in the Vision Groupoffices throughout the afternoon until they left.

In a telephone call on March 31, Kasingye said he had no comment on the case and referred CPJ to police spokesperson Fred Enanga and the Criminal Investigations Department spokesperson Charles Twiine for comment.

Twiine asked CPJ to visit his office for a response to queries sent via messaging application and did not respond to a further request to communicate his comments either via email or WhatsApp. Enanga did not answer multiple calls and messages from CPJ requesting comment.  CPJ’s March 26 email to the police was also unanswered.

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

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.