Pegasus: global espionage of heads of state | Hundreds of politicians, businessmen, journalists and activists fell victim to software developed in Israel

More than 50,000 telephone numbers of journalists, politicians, human rights activists and businessmen, including those of the French President, Emmanuel Macron and his Mexican counterpart, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, have made the object of possible espionage via the mobile program. Pegasus, developed by NSO Group, a private Israeli company. The information came to light after an international investigation known as Project Pegasus of Forbidden stories, a non-profit association based in Paris and Amnesty International and which was subsequently published by 17 international media. Pegasus is software sold by Israel to governments and secret services in other countries. The spy program provides access to all data on a smartphone and can also control the camera and microphone of the cell phone.

The Paris prosecutor’s office announced on Tuesday the opening of an investigation into the spying of French journalists as part of the revelations about Pegasus, the Israeli spyware. The French government’s investigation concerns a list of ten crimes, including “invasion of privacy”, “interception of correspondence”, “fraudulent access” to a computer system and “criminal association”. Among the 50,000 possible espionage targets, there is that of the French president, Emmanuel Macron, and members of his government, the director of Forbidden stories, Laurent Richard.

“We found these phone numbers, but obviously we were not able to conduct a technical investigation on Emmanuel Macron’s phone” to check if it is infected with this software, Richard explained to the LCI channel, confirming information from the French newspaper. The world. “This does not tell us if the president was actually spied on, but it shows in any case that there was an interest in doing so,” added the executive. The world revealed that the figures, including those of the former prime minister Edouard Philippe, appeared “in the list of telephones selected by a security service of the Moroccan State, user of the spyware Pegasus, for possible piracy “.

Global espionage

According to the British newspaper The Guardian, Morocco, a client of the NSO group, reportedly declared espionage of interest to Director of the World Health Organization (WHO), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesusas well as the current President of the European Council, Charles Michel, when he held the post of Prime Minister in Belgium. While another client of the Israeli firm, Rwanda, reportedly spied on the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa and Carine Kanimba, daughter of Rwandan activist Paul Rusesabagina, who inspired the movie Hotel Rwanda. The list also includes reporters from CNN, The Associated Press, Voice of America, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Le Monde, Financial Times y Al Jazzera.

According to the American newspaper The Washington Post, “The evidence of these smartphones, revealed here for the first time, calls into question the Israeli company’s promises to monitor its customers for human rights violations.” So far, the newspaper’s investigation has confirmed the successful hacking of 37 smartphones belonging to human rights activists, businessmen and journalists. He also discovered that two people close to his Saudi correspondent, Jamal Khashoggi, assassinated in 2018 at his country’s consulate in Istanbul by a command composed of Saudi agents, had been spied on.

The Red line

The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, former President of Chile Michelle Bachelet, has warned that surveillance measures can only be justified in well-defined circumstances and with legitimate objectives. “If the recent allegations about the use of Pegasus are also only partly true, then this red line has been crossed over and over again with impunity.”Bachelet alerted.

The Israeli firm dismissed the “fraudulent accusations” on Monday. “Until today, we had not received any evidence that anyone on this list was a target of the system. Pegasus“, He said Oded Hershkovitz, a spokesperson for the group, speaking to Israeli radio. “We would like to point out that NSO sells its technologies only to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of certain governments for the sole purpose of saving lives by preventing crime and terrorist acts,” he added.

For its part, the Israeli Ministry of Defense, responsible for offering the final authorization for the sale of spyware, assured that “it does not have access to information collected by customers of NSO”, while affirming that they will take the “appropriate measures”. If your customers violate the terms of use.