Politics

Modi’s government targeted Indian journalists with Israeli spyware, says Amnesty

New Delhi, Dec 28 (EFE).- Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has allegedly targeted high-profile Indian journalists with Pegasus, the Israeli spyware that makes a phone’s encrypted messages, camera, and microphone vulnerable to third-party access.

The fresh cases of Pegasus infections found in the iPhones of at least two Indian editors were revealed during a forensic investigation by Amnesty International’s Security Lab. The global rights group carried out the forensic probe in partnership with The Washington Post.

The Post said that an additional examination, with the help of New York security firm iVerify, found that opposition Indian politicians had also been targeted.

The surveillance software is created by Israeli firm NSO Group and sold only to governments around the world. It is used to access a phone’s messages and emails, peruse photos, eavesdrop on calls, track locations, and even film the owner with the camera.

The new cases add to the evidence that the Indian government was using powerful surveillance tools against its critics, civil society organizations, journalists, and activists.

The two targeted journalists are Siddharth Varadarajan, Founding Editor of The Wire portal, and Anand Mangnale, the South Asia Editor at The Organised Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP), with the latest identified case occurring in October 2023.

“The use of Pegasus…comes amid an unprecedented crackdown by the Indian authorities on freedom of peaceful expression and assembly, which has had a chilling impact on civil society organizations, journalists, and activists,” Amnesty’s Security Lab head Donncha Ó Cearbhaill said.

Ó Cearbhaill said the findings showed that Indian journalists face “unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs.”

“Despite repeated revelations, there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”

The rights group said it first observed indications of renewed Pegasus spyware threats towards individuals in India during a regular technical monitoring exercise in June 2023, months after media reported that the government was seeking to procure a new commercial spyware system.

In October 2023, Apple issued a new round of threat notifications globally to iPhone users who may have been targeted by “state-sponsored attackers.” More than 20 journalists, and opposition politicians in India were reported to have received the notifications.

As a result, Amnesty’s lab undertook a forensic analysis on the phones of individuals around the world who received these notifications, including Varadarajan and Mangnale.

It found traces of Pegasus spyware activity on devices owned by both Indian journalists.

The lab recovered evidence from Mangnale’s device of a zero-click exploit that was sent to his phone over iMessage in August, designed to covertly install the Pegasus spyware.

“The attempted targeting of Mangnale’s phone happened at a time when he was working on a story about an alleged stock manipulation by a large multinational conglomerate in India,” the rights group said, referring to Modi’s longtime ally, Gautam Adani, an Indian energy and infrastructure tycoon.

The OCCRP published a joint investigative story with the Financial Times and the Guardian on how Adani’s longtime associates had routed funds through offshore shell companies into publicly traded Adani shares.

Adani denied the allegations, but opposition leaders reiterated accusations that Modi’s government was protecting Adani out of loyalty to the billionaire.

The NSO has declined to comment on specific customers, stressing that all of its software purchasers “are vetted law enforcement and intelligence agencies that license our technologies for the sole purpose of fighting terror and major crime.”

“The company has no visibility to the targets, nor to the collected intelligence,” it told The Post.

The NSO said its policies and contracts provided mechanisms to avoid targeting of journalists, lawyers, and human rights defenders or political dissidents who are not involved in terror or serious crimes. EFE

Related Articles

Back to top button