Daily Post 1264
PEGASUS AND THE POCKET SPY
Pegasus, created by NSO of Israel goes down as the deadliest tool made for compromising smartphones. The tales of Jamal Khassogi’s friend’s phone being compromised can send down chill through anybody’s spine. NSO is best known for marketing Pegasus. This is a highly invasive tool which is said to switch on a target’s cellphone camera & microphone and access it’s data. In real terms the phone is turned into a pocket spy. The Golden Age of espionage has begun.
What is could mean to the future of democracy need not be debated. The usage of this tool is to go through the Israeli govt. route. Facebook in October, owner of WhatsApp filed a suit against NSO in US levelling charges that this company has been using this popular messaging service as a platform to conduct cyber espionage. It claims this sort of an espionage was conducted on nearly 1,400 journalists, diplomats and human rights activists worldwide.
It’s been used as a political tool is the claim. Seniors officials of over 20 countries allied with US have reportedly been the targets of the hacking campaign. NSO on the other hand has the requested the court to sanction Facebook for $17,000 in legal fees. It challenges the basic premise of the lawsuit stating that it only provides software to governments with the only purpose of fighting terrorism and crime.
This seems to the replay of the FBI and Apple case, though this time both the parties to the case are private business entities. In the interplay of these two legendary companies comes the roles of governments and how data / fact / official work and approval is devised and taken through. Hence, the capability of being able to get, use and manipulate data by hook or by crook is turning out to be the winning combination. The legal battle will always be an after thought.
YOUR OWN SMARTPHONE CAN BE USED IN SMART WAYS AGAINST YOU.
Sanjay Sahay