The Congress on Tuesday again demanded an investigation into the use of the Pegasus hacking software to spy on journalists, ministers, activists and Opposition leaders in India, reported PTI.
Pegasus is developed, marketed and licensed to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group. The company says that it licenses its software only to “vetted governments” and that Pegasus is meant to be targeted at criminals.
But, a leaked list, featuring more than 50,000 phone numbers “concentrated in countries known to engage in surveillance of their citizens”, was accessed by Paris-based media nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, which shared it with 17 news organisations as part of the Pegasus Project.
According to The Wire, which focused on the Indian portion of the list, “the numbers of those in the database 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”.
The revelations have triggered a political row in India, with the Opposition staging protests in the Parliament on the first two days of the Monsoon Session. Congress leader Rahul Gandhi is among those identified as a potential target of the spyware. On Monday too, the Congress had sought an inquiry into the matter.
During the second day of the Monsoon Session on Tuesday, the party reiterated its demand, seeking a Joint Parliamentary Committee investigation. Congress spokesperson Shaktisinh Gohil said the Union government should clearly say whether it has bought the Pegasus spyware or not.
“We had given adjournment notices in both Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha to hold a discussion on the violation of national security and the fundamental rights under the Constitution over the phone tapping issue,” Gohil told reporters.
Meanwhile, the Delhi unit of the Congress also staged a protest in the national Capital and sought a judicial inquiry into the alleged use of Pegasus for surveillance.
Delhi Congress chief Anil Kumar Chaudhary led the protest march in which party workers raised slogans and carried placards from the party office on DDU Marg to the nearby Bharatiya Janata Party headquarters. The police stopped them at a barricade.
Chaudhary told reporters that the matter was a national security threat and alleged the government had a role in the snooping row.
The Pegasus project
On Sunday, The Wire revealed the names of dozens of journalists and activists on the list, including its own founder-editors Siddharth Varadarajan and MK Venu, The Hindu’s Vijaita Singh, the Hindustan Times’ Shishir Gupta, as well as scholars and activists on the Committee for the Release of Political Prisoners and relatives, lawyers and friends of those arrested in the Bhima Koregaon case and the accused themselves.
Apart from Gandhi, Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw, Prahlad Singh Patel, and virologist Gagandeep Kang were among the big names revealed on Monday as potential targets of surveillance using the Pegasus hacking software.
The list also contained numbers of an ex-Supreme Court staffer who accused former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment.
NSO group, however, has refuted the allegations, saying that the reports about surveillance were “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories”.
On Monday, the Centre categorically denied the allegations, saying there was “no unauthorised interception” by the Union government agencies. Later in Parliament, Union Home Minister Amit Shah and Information Technology Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had dismissed the allegations.
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