The NSO Group’s spyware is one of the most invasive forms of surveillance that has the potential of turning democracies into dictatorial regimes

By Prema Sridevi

Your innocuous smartphone can become your worst enemy if it has a brush with Pegasus. You don’t have to click a deceptive link or respond to a bait-message. The Pegasus spyware has the ability to remotely penetrate your phone, take control of the device and access your messages, emails, photos and videos through a zero-click approach, meaning you don’t have to do a thing. Pegasus can invisibly infect your phone without you ever knowing about it.

Pegasus is a malware that infiltrates and infects Android and iPhone devices. It can access your calendar and spy on you during your meetings. The spyware also has the ability to switch on your cameras and your microphones and record you even when you are not using your device. What’s worse, Pegasus can successfully break the protective barriers and invade the so-called safer encryption driven apps like Whatsapp, Signal or telegram.

The massive data leak related to the NSO Group that owns Pegasus exposed by the Paris based nonprofit media organisation Forbidden Stories puts to shame governments of at least 10 nations including India that are being accused of allegedly using Pegasus to spy on their journalists. The Pegasus expose is not just limited to snooping on journalists, the data leak suggests that human rights defenders, judges, lawyers, bureaucrats, diplomats, heads of state, presidents, prime ministers and their family members have been victims or were potential targets of such extensive surveillance.

In India, several names of people have emerged who were potential targets of the NSO clients. From Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, former Election Commissioner Ashok Lavasa to sitting Union ministers in the Modi cabinet; from the founding editors of The Wire Sidharth Varadararajan and M.K Venu to journalists like Vijaita Singh from The Hindu, Sandeep Unnithan from the India Today and J Gopikrishnan of The Pioneer, many Indian names have figured in the data leak and the consortium of journalists have promised to make public more names in the days to come.

To be continued....