Pegasus Tapes: Explosive details emerge on massive snooping by governments

Human rights activists journalists and lawyers across the world have been targeted by authoritarian governments using hacking software sold by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group according to an investigation into a massive data leak the Guardian reportedThe consortiums analysis of the leaked data identified at least 10 governments believed to be NSO customers who were entering numbers into a system Azerbaijan Bahrain Kazakhstan Mexico Morocco Rwanda Saudi Arabia Hungary India and the United Arab Emirates UAERwanda Morocco India and Hungary denied having used Pegasus to hack the phones of the individuals named in the list The governments of Azerbaijan Bahrain Kazakhstan Saudi Arabia Mexico and the UAE did not respond to invitations to commentThe Wires analysis of the data shows that most of the abovementioned Indian names were targeted between 2018 and 2019 in the runup to the 2019 Lok Sabha general electionsWhile some journalists appear to have been added to the list at more or less the same time suggesting official interest in the group others figure as standalone entries perhaps for the stories they were working on at the time And these stories are not always the obvious onesThe investigation suggests the Hungarian government of Viktor Orban appears to have deployed NSOs technology as part of his socalled war on the media targeting investigative journalists in the country as well as the close circle of one of Hungarys few independent media executivesAlso read Financial Times Editor Roula Khalafs phone was selected as possible target by UAEThe leaked data and forensic analyses also suggest NSOs spy tool was used by Saudi Arabia and its close ally the UAE to target the phones of close associates of the murdered Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the months after his death The Turkish prosecutor investigating his death was also a candidate for targeting the data leak suggestsThe investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSOs hacking spyware Pegasus which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terroristsPegasus is a malware that infects iPhones and Android devices to enable operators of the tool to extract messages photos and emails record calls and secretly activate microphonesThe leak contains a list of more than 50000 phone numbers that it is believed have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016In India reports suggest phone numbers of 40 journalists were targetedForbidden Stories a Parisbased media nonprofit organisation and Amnesty International initially had access to the leaked list and shared access with media partners as part of the Pegasus project a reporting consortiumGuardian said the presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack However the consortium believes the data is indicative of the potential targets NSOs government clients identified in advance of possible surveillance attemptsForensics analysis of a small number of phones whose numbers appeared on the leaked list also showed more than half had traces of the Pegasus spywareThe Guardian and its media partners will be revealing the identities of people whose number appeared on the list in the coming days They include hundreds of business executives religious figures academics NGO employees union officials and government officials including cabinet ministers presidents and prime ministersThe list also contains the numbers of close family members of one countrys ruler suggesting the ruler may have instructed their intelligence agencies to explore the possibility of monitoring their own relativesThe disclosures begin on Sunday with the revelation that the numbers of more than 180 journalists are listed in the data including reporters editors and executives at the Financial Times CNN the New York Times France 24 the Economist Associated Press and ReutersAnalysis of the data suggests the NSO client country that selected the most numbers more than 15000 was Mexico where multiple different government agencies are known to have bought Pegasus Both Morocco and the UAE selected more than 10000 numbers the analysis suggestedThe phone numbers which were selected possibly ahead of a surveillance attack spanned more than 45 countries across four continents There were more than 1000 numbers in European countries that the analysis indicated were selected by NSO clientsThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever