No deal with Pegasus maker NSO Group: Defence ministry
NEW DELHI: The defence ministry on Monday told the Rajya Sabha that it has had no dealings with Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group, which is at the centre of a global controversy over the misuse of its Pegasus spyware to hack phones of journalists, activists and politicians. In response to a question on the subject in the Upper House, minister of state for defence Ajay Bhatt said, “Ministry of Defence has not had any transaction with NSO Group Technologies.”
The minister responded to a question from CPI-M’S V Sivadasan, who asked about the expenditure incurred by the ministry including money spent on purchases made from foreign countries during the last three years.
The ministry’s one-line response to the query pertaining to the NSO Group comes at a time when the Opposition parties have continuously disrupted the functioning of the Parliament over the Pegasus snooping controversy. The Opposition has been consistent in its demand for a discussion on the matter in Parliament.
On August 6, Hindustan
Times reported that the Centre sought to disallow in the Rajya Sabha a question seeking details from the external affairs ministry on whether the government entered into a contract with NSO Group, stating that “the ongoing issue of Pegasus” is sub-judice after “several PILS have been filed in the Supreme Court.”
That question asked whether the government entered into a contract with Israeli cybersecurity firm NSO Group, at the centre of a global controversy over the misuse of its Pegasus spyware to hack phones of journalists, activists and politicians.
The Centre wrote to the Rajya Sabha secretariat earlier this week seeking that a “Provisionally Admitted Question”(paq) asked by CPI MP Binoy Viswam scheduled to be answered on August 12 in the Upper House, not be allowed .
“I have been informed informally that my question was disallowed but I am yet to get a formal response... the government is misusing Rajya Sabha rules and taking an alien stand on truth. They must face questions on the issue of the Pegasus,” said Viswam.
The Pegasus row erupted on July 18 after an international investigative consortium reported that the phones of Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were among the 50,000 numbers from around the world that were potentially targeted by the Israeli company NSO Group’s phone hacking software. The list database was first obtained by France-based nonprofit Forbidden Stories, which shared the information with the reporting partners. The devices of at least 67 of the numbers were analysed by Amnesty International and of these, 37 had signs of being hacked by Pegasus. Of these 37, 10 were in India. NSO says its software is sold only to government customers.
The Indian government has neither confirmed nor denied that it used Pegasus and has ruled out any illegal surveillance. To be sure, as the methodology of the investigation into the alleged snooping explains, the presence of a number on the database of the alleged targeted numbers does not indicate an individual’s phone was hacked — just that it was of interest.