News Analysis India

Tag: Snooping row

  • Won’t allow Parliament to function till Pegasus issue is discussed: Opposition parties

    By Express News Service
    NEW DELHI: The Opposition parties have unanimously decided to continue with their protest in both the Houses of Parliament over the alleged use of spyware Pegasus by the Centre to track politicians, journalists, and other prominent persons.

    Leaders of the Opposition parties in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha met on Tuesday morning before the Parliament proceedings started. It was agreed upon that the Centre should take up the issue of Pegasus.

    Prime Minister Narendra Modi has convened an all-party meeting Tuesday at 6 pm where top health ministry officials will give a presentation to some MPs on the matter. Congress and Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) have decided not to attend the meeting.

    The Congress demanded that the presentation should happen in Central Hall so that all the members could attend it. However, SAD said that they will boycott it pending their demand to repeal the three farm laws.

    Congress Chief Whip in Lok Sabha K Suresh said that it has been decided that the Opposition will collectively continue to protest inside both the Houses on the matter from Thursday. Parliament is closed Wednesday on the occasion of Bakrid.

    ALSO READ | Pegasus row: Congress demands probe by Joint Parliamentary Committee

    Lok Sabha did not function on Tuesday while it was agreed upon in the Rajya Sabha to take up the short discussion on the management of the Covid pandemic.

    “Discussion in Rajya Sabha was agreed upon under special circumstances keeping in mind the importance of the matter and not participating in the discussion would have projected the Opposition unsympathetic to people who have suffered due to pandemic,” said a senior Congress leader in Rajya Sabha.

    The leader further said that the Business Advisory Committee under the Chairmanship of Rajya Sabha Chairman M Venkaiah Naidu agreed to take up the discussion earlier while the Pegasus report having named prominent political leaders being snooped by the government came later.   

    “We will not allow the Rajya Sabha and Lok Sabha function till the Pegasus issue is discussed in the House. Today is different as Rajya Sabha took the discussion on Covid as the Centre does politics on the issue. Pegasus is the number 1 issue, it is a national security issue and no compromise on that,” said Derek O’Brien, TMC Rajya Sabha floor leader.

    He said that repeal of three farm laws is also the topmost priority for the party and would continue pressing for the same in the Parliament.

  • Two mobiles of Rahul Gandhi selected as potential targets for Pegasus: Report

    By Online Desk
    Two mobile phones used by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi were selected as potential surveillance targets by an official Indian client of the Israeli surveillance technology vendor NSO Group, according to a report published in the Guardian.

    Also, phones belonging to at least five of Rahul Gandhi’s aides and other party leaders were identified as potential targets of the spyware, report has stated.

    Election manager Prashant Kishor’s was another notable name in the list of 300 verified Indian numbers, according to the British daily.

    A forensic analysis by Amnesty’s Security Lab on June 14 was said to have found that the phone of Kishor, a political strategist most recently involved in Mamata Banerjee’s victorious Bengal campaign, was indeed hacked using Pegasus.

    The examination found that Kishor’s phone calls, emails and messages were being monitored throughout the final weeks of the Bengal elections in April.

    Kishor said the findings were “really disappointing”. “Those who did [the hacking] were looking to take undue advantage of their position of power with the help of illegal snooping,” The Guardian quoted Kishor as saying.

    The two numbers of Rahul Gandhi, which he has since given up, appear to have been selected for targeting from mid-2018 to mid-2019 when the Lok Sabha elections were held.

    “Targeted surveillance of the type you describe whether in regard to me, other leaders of the opposition or indeed any law-abiding citizen of India is illegal and deplorable,” Rahul was quoted as saying by The Guardian. “If your information is correct, the scale and nature of surveillance you describe go beyond an attack on the privacy of individuals. It is an attack on the democratic foundations of our country. It must be thoroughly investigated and those responsible be identified and punished.”

    As the Congress made attempts to take up the snooping row to the Parliament on Monday, Rahul  tweeted: “We know what he’s been reading-everything on your phone! #Pegasus.”

    With this, he tagged his July 16 tweet saying: “I’m wondering what you guys are reading these days.”

    ALSO READ | Reports of snooping on Indians aimed at maligning Indian democracy: IT and Communications Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

    More than 300 verified mobile phone numbers, including those of two serving ministers, over 40 journalists, three opposition leaders, and one sitting judge besides scores of business persons and activists in India could have been targeted for hacking through Israeli spyware sold only to government agencies, an international media consortium had earlier reported on Sunday.

    However, the NSO Group, an Israeli company that sells Pegasus spyware worldwide, denied all allegations and reports of such surveillance in India. 

    The Indian government too dismissed allegations of any kind of surveillance on its part on specific people, saying it “has no concrete basis or truth associated with it whatsoever”.

    Asserting that “India is a robust democracy that is committed to ensuring the right to privacy to all its citizens as a fundamental right”, the government dismissed the media report as an attempt to play “the role of an investigator, prosecutor as well as jury”.

    The report was published by The Wire news portal from India as well as 16 other international publications including the Washington Post, Guardian and Le Monde as media partners to an investigation conducted by Paris-based media non-profit organisation Forbidden Stories and rights group Amnesty International into a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers from across the world that are believed to have been the target of surveillance through the Pegasus software of Israeli surveillance company NSO Group.

    The Wire reported that forensic tests conducted as part of the media investigation project on a small cross-section of phones associated with these numbers revealed clear signs of targeting by Pegasus spyware in 37 phones, of which 10 are Indian.

    The initial report came just a day before the start of the Monsoon Session of Parliament on Monday and has created quite a storm.