IT minister denies govt used Pegasus

The press report appeared a day before the Monsoon Session of Parliament. This cannot be a coincidence

NEW DELHI: The Centre on Monday dismissed reports on the use of Israeli company NSO Group’s Pegasus phone hacking software to snoop on 38 journalists, three opposition leaders, a sitting judge, several business persons and activists in India, saying the allegations levelled just ahead of the Monsoon Session of Parliament are aimed at “maligning the Indian democracy”, even as the Opposition demanded an independent judicial or parliamentary committee probe into the issue.

India is among the countries that used the Israeli software to potentially target citizens, an international collaborative investigation involving 17 media organisations including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Die Zeit said. India’s news website The Wire was one of the 17.

In a suo motu statement in the Lok Sabha, Union IT minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said that with several checks and balances being in place, “any sort of illegal surveillance” by unauthorised persons is not possible in India.

“A highly sensational story was published by a web portal yesterday night .... The press report appeared a day before the Monsoon session of the Parliament.

“This cannot be a coincidence. In the past similar claims were made regarding the use of Pegasus on WhatsApp. Those reports have no factual basis and were categorically denied by all parties .... The press report of July 18, 2021 also appeared to be an attempt to malign the Indian democracy and a well-established institution,” the minister said.

The first part of the multi-part investigation, released late on Sunday night, said that 38 Indian journalists (according to The Guardian), including those from mainstream publications (three current Hindustan Times journalists are named, as is one from sister publication Mint), and websites, apart from freelancers were targeted. The 38 are among 180 journalists the report said were targeted worldwide, including the editor of the Financial Times Roula Khalaf, and journalists from the Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, and Le Monte.

In the second part of the investigation released on Monday, The Wire reported that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Union minister of state Prahlad Singh Patel, former chief election commissioner Ashok Lavasa, election strategist Prashant Kishor and the Supreme Court staffer who accused former chief justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment were also targets for surveillance Even Vaishnaw appeared to have been targeted in 2017 when he was neither a minister nor an MP and not a member of the BJP, even as he defended the Modi-led government on Monday.

The investigation was based on a data leak of around 50,000 numbers obtained by Amnesty International and Paris-based Forbidden Stories, a non-profit. To be sure, as the methodology of the investigation explains, the presence of a number does not indicate the individual’s phone was hacked — just that it was of interest. Amnesty International subsequently forensically investigated 67 of these phones, and found 23 hacked and 14 showing signs of attempted penetration.

The Wire reported that 10 of the phones forensically examined in India showed they had either been hacked or signs of an attempted hacking.

NSO Group, in a response to Forbidden Stories and its media partners, said the interpretations from the leaked dataset were misleading. “The alleged amount

of ‘leaked data of more than 50,000 phone numbers,’ cannot be a list of numbers targeted by governments using Pegasus,” it said, and added that it “does not have insight into the specific intelligence activities of its customers”.

The Wire also said many businesspeople, and one constitutional authority were among those targeted.

These names are expected to emerge over the next few days in subsequent installments of the investigation. The website also said relatives of activists accused in the Elgar Parishad case were also targeted.

Pegasus makes it possible for those using the software to intercept all communications on their targets’ device, including stored files as well as messages. The malware also allows for the device’s microphone and camera to be turned on, and its location logs accessed.

According to the Guardian report, the list of governments believed to be NSO customers, and who entered the numbers that were part of the leaked database are: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India, and the UAE.

Vaishnaw said that there were inconsistencies in the report. “One report clearly states that the presence of a number on NSO’s list does not mean it is under surveillance,” he said. “The consortium has accessed a leaked database of 40,000 numbers. The presence of the number does not indicate whether there was an attempted hack, or a successful one,” he said.

Citing NSO’s statement calling the report misleading, the minister said, “The response also states that the names of the countries using Pegasus is incorrect.”

However, opposition parties hit out at the Centre over the alleged phone-tapping of prominent personalities in the country and demanded an independent judicial or parliamentary committee probe.

Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a swipe at PM Narendra Modi on the matter using the hashtag “Pegasus”.

“We know what he’s been reading- everything on your phone,” Gandhi wrote Monday as a tweet-reply to his own post two days ago in which he had asked people, “I’m wondering what you guys are reading these days.”

Terming it a very serious issue concerning national security, Congress leader Shashi Tharoor demanded an independent judicial or parliamentary committee probe.

The Communist Party of India [CPI(M)] said that two years ago, the party had raised in Parliament that this “dangerous spyware” was being used in India as revealed by WhatsApp.

“The Modi government’s response had not categorically denied that it engaged the services of NSO but claimed that there is no “unauthorized surveillance”.

With these revelations, it is clear that this government has engaged NSO for such surveillance against its own citizens,” the party said in a statement.

The TMC said it will raise the issue in Parliament.

“It is a serious issue and the minister in his statement in the House does not deny that the government was using the software. We will raise this issue in Parliament,” said TMC Rajya Sabha MP Derek O’ Brien.