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Pegasus report suggests that 100's of phones of scribes, judges, ministers were spied

Pegasus report suggests that 100's of phones of scribes, judges, ministers were spied

NEW DELHI: A report called 'The Pegasus Project' published in an international media consortium of 17 international publications which includes The Wire news portal from India has revealed that hundreds of mobile phones including that of journalists, bureaucrats, political leaders and even ministers may have been hacked through spyware and these would have been used to snoop on the user. 

Developers of the 'Pegasus' spyware software, the NSO Group is an Israeli company that sells its services only to government agencies around the world intended for surveillance on terrorists or criminals involved in serious crimes.

According to the report, in India, more than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, of over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders, two serving ministers, bureaucrats and one sitting judge besides scores of business persons and activists could have been targeted for hacking through the spyware.

The government has however outrightly dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance calling the report baseless and without any truth associated with it whatsoever.

In 2020, a list of over 50,000 phone numbers believed to belong to individuals identified as 'people of interest' by clients of the NSO Group was leaked to Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, a media nonprofit organisation based in Paris, France. 

This information was, in turn, passed along to 17 media organisations under the umbrella of 'The Pegasus Project' and over the past many months over 80 journalists from these media houses, including The Guardian, Le Monde, Radio France, The Washington Post, Frontline and The Wire from India investigated the spying abuses.

The report in The Wire says that forensic tests conducted as part of the media investigation project on a small cross-section of phones associated with these numbers revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian.

The Wire reported that the numbers of those in the database from India include over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving ministers in the Narendra Modi government, current and former heads and officials of security organisations and scores of businesspersons, as also a sitting judge.

According to the Pegasus report among those whose phones were in the leaked list of potential targets include that of Congress top brass Rahul Gandhi, along with five close friends and other party officials, Prashant Kishor, a political strategist, former Karnataka chief minister H. D. Kumaraswamy and senior Congress leader from the state Siddaramaiah and Abhishek Banerjee, nephew of incumbent Chief Minister of West Bengal Mamata Banerjee.

Along with the phone number of Siddharth Varadarajan founder of The Wire, the leaked data includes the numbers of top journalists at big media houses like the Hindustan Times, India Today, Network18, The Hindu and Indian Express, The Wire report said.

Interestingly, as per the report, the recently inducted Minister of Electronics and Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw's number also figures in the list. 

Vaishnaw however defended the government's stand in the parliament and said the project’s claims about Indian surveillance were an attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions.

“In the past, similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp. Those reports had no factual basis and were denied by all parties,” Vaishnaw replied to opposition benches who were protesting during the monsoon session.

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