The Congress on Sunday said that the verdict in the Pegasus spyware case in the United States proved that 300 Indian users of the messaging application WhatsApp were targeted in 2019, and urged the Supreme Court to conduct a “further inquiry” into the matter.
This came after a district court in the United States on Friday held Israeli cyber intelligence company NSO Group, which owns Pegasus, liable for the unauthorised surveillance of 1,400 WhatsApp users using the spyware.
WhatsApp, owned by United States-based technology company Meta, has been locked in a legal battle with the Israeli firm since 2019. The messaging platform has alleged that the NSO Group’s spyware had been used against 1,400 users of the application over a two-week period in April and May 2019.
According to reports, over 300 of these users were from India, including journalists, ministers and Opposition leaders, among others.
When added to an electronic device, the Pegasus software can generally gain access to phone calls, emails, location information, encrypted messages and photographs without the user’s knowledge.
The spyware is licensed to governments around the world by the NSO Group. The cyber intelligence company says it sells the Pegasus software only to “vetted governments” with good human rights records and that it is intended to target criminals.
In a post on X, Congress leader Randeep Singh Surjewala on Sunday said that it was time for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led Union government to disclose the names of the 300 persons who were allegedly targeted using Pegasus in view of the verdict in the United States.
“What information was retrieved by the BJP [Bharatiya Janata Party] govt and agencies?” he asked on the social media platform X. “How was it used – misused and to what consequence?”
Surjewala also asked if appropriate criminal cases would be lodged against the political executive or officers in the present BJP government involved in the matter and the company owning the NSO Group.
He also asked whether the Supreme Court would take note of the judgement in the United States. “Will the Supreme Court proceed to make public the report of Committee of Technical Experts on Pegasus Spyware, submitted to it in 2021-22?” the Congress leader asked.
Surjewala was referring to the expert committee appointed by the Supreme Court in 2021 after the reports came to light. In August 2022, the court said that some malware was found on five of the 29 phones that the panel examined. However, it was not clear whether the malware was Pegasus.
The judges also took note of a finding by the panel that the Centre did not cooperate with the inquiry.
Surjewala asked: “Will the Supreme Court now conduct further inquiry in view of the judgement affirming targeting of 1,400 Whatsapp numbers, including 300 from India?”
The Congress leader also asked if the top court would ask Meta to disclose the 300 names to “meet the ends of justice” in the matter. “Shouldn’t Facebook [now Meta] now have responsibility to release the names of 300 Indians targeted by Pegasus, considering whatsapp and facebook have the biggest subscriber base in India and they have ‘duty of care & disclosure’ to its clients in India?” he added.
In the judgement on Friday, Judge Phyllis Hamilton of the US District Court for the Northern District of California said that NSO Group violated sections of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and the California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act.
The Computer Fraud and Abuse Act is a federal law in the United States that criminalises unauthorised access to computers, networks and other digital information. The California Computer Data Access and Fraud Act is the state equivalent of the same law.
Hamilton also said that the Israeli firm violated WhatsApp’s terms of service.
Earlier this year, Hamilton ordered the Israeli firm to hand over the code of Pegasus and its other spyware products to WhatsApp as part of the legal proceeding.
On Friday, the judge said that NSO Group dragged its feet throughout the litigation and noted that it repeatedly failed to comply with the court’s orders, The Guardian reported.
The Israeli firm made its code for its spyware available to view only in Israel by an Israeli citizen even though the lawsuit was filed in California, Hamilton said in her ruling, adding that this was “simply impracticable”.
NSO Group will now face another trial in March 2025 to determine the damages it owes WhatsApp, The Guardian reported.
In July 2021, an investigation by a group of 17 media organisations and human rights group Amnesty International showed that Pegasus spyware was being used for the unauthorised surveillance of journalists, activists and politicians across the world, including in India.
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa, Union ministers Ashwini Vaishnaw and Prahlad Singh Patel, industrialist Anil Ambani and former Central Bureau of Investigation Director Alok Verma were among the potential targets, The Wire had reported
The Indian government had denied these allegations. Vaishnaw, the Union information technology minister, told Parliament in July 2021 that illegal surveillance was not possible in India.
The United States government blacklisted the NSO Group in November 2021 after it determined that the company had acted “contrary to the foreign policy and national security interests of the US”.
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