DailyPost 2100
PEGASUS’S EUROPEAN SOJOURN
NSO, the company which has created the most lethal cyber weapon in the world, called Pegasus, the ultimate spyware, has always maintained the it was being sold only to governments. The sale was under strict supervision of the Israeli government, as per the legal protocol and things have been running fine. There have been thick rumors of its misuse for quite some time and in lots of cases, it was becoming difficult to believe that it was being used only for the purposes, it was meant for or sold for. The now beleaguered company NSO was founded in 2010. It has always maintained that it supplied the software to tackle terrorism, drug trafficking and serious crime.
Recently, its misuse has come to light with good amount of substantiation, to keep tabs on political opponents, critics, activists, journalists and lawyers all across the world. India has been no exception to it. One parliament session got washed out only on this count. Currently, a committee is trying to unravel the truth behind it. While India waits with bated breath for the truth to come out, other such enquiries have already started spilling the beans. A special enquiry committee was launched in April 2022 to investigate alleged breaches of EU law. ”The committee is going to look into existing national laws regulating surveillance, and whether Pegasus spyware was used for political purposes,” was the official statement made at the time of its constitution.
NSO admitted to the European Union lawmakers that the Pegasus tool was used by at least five countries of the region. We have seen similar things happening in Facebook Cambridge Analytica sordid saga, where they have been able to hoodwink all authorities of the world; legal, national, legislative, leave aside societal or moral. Democracy / elections have been their snooping arena. The audacious general counsel of NSO said, ”We’re trying to do the right thing and that’s more than other companies in the industry. It seems as if they are doing a favor and the law of the land does not apply to them. The crux of deposition is that they acknowledged that they had ”made mistakes”. No one gets condoned for such mistakes, a word euphemistically used for commission of outright crime.
Undeniably, as individual nations are not able to do enough to fight this scourge, there is a need for an international standard to regulate the government use of spyware. People in power and the crooked in every way, have utilized this lethal tool to the best of their advantage. The hapless ones remain the same, at the receiving end of the spyware. In February itself the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has called for a ban on the development and use of commercial spyware in the region. It was very clear about the tech status of this technology. It stated that the technology’s ”unprecedented level of intrusiveness” could endanger users right to privacy. It needs to dealt in the same manner as in the case of nuclear non-proliferation, otherwise we are trapped in it for good.
LEAVING THE WHOLE WORLD TO THE MERCY OF A SPYWARE SHOULD BE UNACCEPTABLE FOR HUMANKIND.
Sanjay Sahay