The Congress on Sunday claimed that the party’s General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi had also received a message from WhatsApp in connection with the spyware attack that purportedly infiltrated the phones of several Indians during a two-week period in May. This came hours after a report said that WhatsApp had notified the Centre in early September that 121 Indians were targeted by the Israeli Pegasus spyware.
On Thursday, the central government had asked Facebook-owned WhatsApp to explain the nature of the privacy breach and the steps taken to protect Indian users by November 4. In response to the notice, WhatsApp attached both the vulnerability note filed in May and a letter sent in September to the Centre.
“I want to tell that Priyanka Gandhi also received a similar message from WhatsApp around the same time [when others were being alerted about the hack],” Surjewala said in a press conference in response to a question. The politician said that he had not received information from any other leader about receiving a similar WhatsApp message yet.
Gandhi on Friday had criticised the government over the matter of surveillance, and described it as a “gross violation of human rights and a scandal with grave ramifications on national security”.
The party also released a statement on the WhatsApp surveillance, accusing the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party of colluding in the “illegal and unconstitutional hacking”. “BJP government is the deployer and executor of this illegal and unconstitutional snooping and spying racket,” the statement read.
On Saturday, Congress President Sonia Gandhi criticised the Centre for the WhatsApp hacking. She said such activities are “illegal, unconstitutional and shameful”.
So far, 22 individuals, including human rights activists, scholars and journalists, have confirmed to Scroll.in that they were targeted by the spyware on the messaging platform WhatsApp. Some of them suggested that Indian government agencies may have been involved in the surveillance, as they were told by a Canada-based cyber security group that is assisting WhatsApp in investigating the spyware attack.
Former Union minister and Nationalist Congress Party leader Praful Patel and former Lok Sabha MP Santosh Bharatiya were also targeted by the spyware, according to the Hindustan Times.
Other Indian individuals who were targeted include Chhattisgarh-based Adivasi rights activist Bela Bhatia, Shalini Gera, Academic and write Anand Teltumbde, Nagpur-based lawyer Nihalsing Rathod, human rights activist Degree Prasad Chauhan, former BBC journalist and now peace activist Shubhranshu Choudhary, among others.
The May alert was part of a formal vulnerability disclosure that was made globally by WhatsApp, and the September communication was specific about Indian users who may have been targets. The government had countered WhatsApp’s claims and said that the information shared in May was only about a technical vulnerability but nothing on the fact that the privacy of some Indian users had been compromised.
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