Welcome to the planet of universal surveillance. It's just a large wallet, due to the fact that morality and ethics don't matter. This is the Orwell nightmare that's happening today, right in front of us. Nobody's safe because... We each carry a spy in our pocket. (from the publication description).
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NSOs stress that the Pegasus strategy and method support services for software operators are strictly licensed and only government elected entities have access to them, which can only usage them to prevent and combat crime, and to collect information for intelligence purposes. They emphasize this very strongly, because, my God, imagine what would happen if specified a tool got into the incorrect hands.
The company claims that the developed and continuously developed and improved cyber surveillance system, utilized by over sixty customers in over forty different countries, helped make the planet a much safer place.
The usage of the Pegasus strategy for surveillance of terrorists, criminals and pedophiles (prevention of pedophile crimes is 1 of the main arguments that NSO representatives have spread over the past fewer years) has allegedly saved tens of thousands of human lives. These figures are impossible to verify, but the way the NSO presents the benefits of Pegasus, of course, within the limits set by law and ethics, makes them seem undisputed. Who wouldn't want to halt pedophiles? Or terrorists? Would anyone mind? "Mission control center, we have a problem," said Cherie Blair during the telephone call that warm August evening in 2020.
"NSO learned that their software could have been misused and utilized to monitor the cell phones of Baroness Shackleton and her client, Her Majesty Princess Haya," explained Blair during a court proceedings in London a fewer months later. "NSO executives informed me that the company was very concerned."
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Join us!On the basis of the procedural material collected in the proceedings before the London court, it can be concluded that the concerns of the NSO management were of 2 types. Above all, the case afraid well-known people with advanced social status. Pegasus was utilized for surveillance of a female belonging to the 2 influential mediate east families reigning, as well as her legal representative, an attitudeal British attorney, Baroness Fiona Shackleton. Shackleton is not only a reputable lawyer who specializes in divorce cases, in which she represented the interests of many wealthy and celebrated clients specified as Paul McCartney, Madonna, Prince Andrew or Prince Charles, but besides a associate of the British home of Lords. Even more troublesome for the Israeli company was the fact that infecting the phones of the Baroness and Princess Pegasus detected a cybersecurity specialist unrelated to the NSO. If he managed to discover this 1 case of the Pegasus program, what else could he determine? And how much of this could shortly be made public?
Cherie Blair testified that her caller from the NSO had asked her to “get in contact urgently with Baroness Shackleton so that she could notify Princess Haya of this incident.” "NSO management besides assured me that the company had taken appropriate steps to prevent unauthorised access to both phones."
About the details of Cherie Blair's night call and the operation of spying on the princess and her attorney, public opinion only found out more than a year later, and it was only due to the fact that this information came out in the course of London's kid custody trial between Princess Haya and her husband, Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al Maktoum, Prime Minister of the United arabian Emirates and the Dubai emir. According to the findings of the president of the household department of the British ultimate Court, published in October 2021, Princess's mobile phones, her baronessa Shackleton lawyers, and 4 another closely related persons were hacked utilizing cyber surveillance software, specifically "created by the NSO's Pegasus program".
The justice considered it more than likely that the surveillance “was carried out by officials or agents [of the princess' husband, Sheikh Mohammed Ibn Rashid Al Maktouma], United arabian Emirates or United arabian Emirates”. According to the judge, the surveillance activities were “by explicit or implied consent [of the sheik]”.
The communicative of the princess, Baroness and Pegasus might as well have gone to the gossip press and after a fewer weeks no 1 would have remembered it. A wealthy and powerful man utilized costly software to spy on his wife and her divorce lawyer? Well, if you decide to marry a sheikh and then exposure yourself to him, you can anticipate things to turn bad. In addition, the NSO has successfully managed to reduce the negative effects this full affair may have had on the company. The British court accepted the assurances of NSO representatives that they had broken off their cooperation with the United arabian Emirates and blocked the anticipation for the state authorities of that country to proceed utilizing the Pegasus system; as the justice pointed out, the decision put the NSO at hazard of a "order of respective twelve million dollars". possibly the company has actually suffered specified losses – who knows?
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The “Guardiana” editorial squad was just minutes after the 18th hr of French refreshed the website of the partner editorial board. Paul Lewis picked up the telephone to call Craig Timberg from the "Washington Post". They were peers, both worked for respective of the most respected English-speaking journalism organizations in the planet and usually fiercely competed for interesting topics on both sides of the Atlantic. But present was different. “Hi, Craig,” said Paul, who made a friendly joke. “Why don’t you just publish? You're gonna play it right now? Oh, okay. We thought you might have chickened out.”
Craig encouraged Paul to watch the “Washington Post” video footage devoted to the Pegasus Project.
"Oh, I guess I'll gotta subscribe. Oh, no. I'm already signing you up. You guys have good graphics. Even very nice.”
Craig wasn't certain if Paul was inactive joking.
"No, I truly like it," Paul swore. “And you even have these fashionable scrolling news. We didn't have time for this. Our graphic designers will be furious erstwhile they see this. Well, congratulations on bringing the task to an end."
One minute I gained access to a vast array of articles from all over the world. Looking through them, I caught myself looking for the name of the individual who inspired me and encouraged me to initiate the Pegasus Project. The first name I identified on our list, in a rented flat in Berlin, during our first gathering with Claudia and Donncha. Names of Ishmail's Chadja.
The awareness that her communicative was made public and heard about it on all continents, that hundreds of millions of people met her, was very satisfying. Meanwhile, Chadija returned to Baku that day. He may not be able to free himself from government surveillance (and accompanying threats and persecution), but I hoped that thanks to the results of our consortium's work he would be a small better protected. Of course, she had already worked on another journalistic investigation into Aliyev's government, leading a solitary conflict for democracy in her homeland, which she did not want to leave.
One of the articles that appeared on the first day of task Pegasus quoted the words of Chadja, which caught my attention:
"It is crucial that people see examples of journalists who proceed to operate despite attempts at intimidation.
It's like war. erstwhile you leave your trench, it is occupied by the enemy... You gotta hold your position, or it will be occupied and you will have little space, little space, your space will shrink and yet it will be hard to breathe.”
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During that first week, our phones rang almost constantly, and many of the callers had the same request. delight check if my number is on the list? French government officials and prosecutors wanted to get acquainted with our list, and the police sent an officer to present the case to me personally. I agreed to meet him outside the cafe close Gare de Lyon. He came to meet me on a motorcycle and made an awesome impression from the first moment. To begin with, he gave me a communicative about riding a motorcycle around Paris. Then he said that he had read all the publications related to task Pegasus, which seemed very informative to him. He assured us that we were on the same side and began to explain why I should make the list available to the French authorities. As he stated, we and they are looking for actual and possible victims of Pegasus. “Think of all these people,” he said. “Don’t you care to defend them?”
The conversation took place in a friendly speech even after I explained to him that we are not state officials, but journalists. We did our part, informing the planet of the dangers of Pegasus. The list was not our property, and we were not authorized to pass it on to anyone; we besides committed not to uncover the identity of our informant, who was inactive in danger.
The police officer assured that he respected journalistic ethics and understood the resulting work to defend the origin of information. But he warned me that if I did not cooperate voluntarily, the French law enforcement authorities would most likely effort to get a court order to release a letter or a search warrant.
I felt a small sorry for him due to the fact that his superiors sent him to this gathering alone, which made him play both a good and bad cop. He asked me to effort to realize the force the prosecutor has on him. There were quite a few crucial people's telephone numbers on the list. Do I not think that it is our patriotic work to aid the authorities in this situation? He kept pushing me for a while, but erstwhile he realized I wasn't going to step down, he went back to being a good cop. He said he respects our position and thinks it's right. He added that he would stand up for us if the D.A. actually tried to get a subpoena or a search warrant. Before we divided up, he asked me a question I expected from the beginning of the meeting. Could I run any numbers for him? See if they're on the list?
The next day, I received an authoritative call to issue the list. Later, I was contacted by a fresh friend of mine from the police department and he stated that he was very disappointed that we did not want to aid them defend the victims. He added that if we do not comply with the call and issue the list, the situation may become heated.
"We are on our way to get a search warrant," he warned.
“I thought you promised to defend us,” I reminded him.
In the end, we were not forced to hand over the list to the French law enforcement authorities, and the prosecution did not even effort to get a search warrant. However, I did a favour to a very advanced - ranking French authoritative who followed the Pegasus case closely and asked me to see if any of his numbers were on the list. All the numbers he gave me were only six digits, alternatively of the standard tens, which made me incapable to find who they belonged to. I agreed to look for them on the list due to the fact that I was hoping that the authoritative would rematch us with the names of their users, which we could later usage in a possible publication. It seemed beautiful apparent to me that these were the numbers of French officials whose phones were subjected to forensic analysis by the French service and evidence was found to infect these devices with spyware. any of them were actually on our list.
“It’s worse than I thought”, said the authoritative erstwhile I gave him this message.
“Have you found traces of infection in ministers' phones that we did not mention in our publications?” I asked. He admitted that it was. "I'm starting to wonder," he added grimly, if there are any who have avoided infection at all".
Official confirmations of the attacks by Pegasus, which we have reported in our articles and reports, as well as confirmations of attacks that have not been detected before, began to appear in the first weeks after our publications were published and appear to this day. At the same time, the themes we raised were taken by another media around the world. We felt that this subject would shortly vanish from the front pages of the newspapers. The studies conducted by the French National Agency for the Safety of Information Systems (ANSSI) confirmed Claudia and Donnchy's findings regarding attacks on the phones of Edwy Plenel and Lénaïg Bredoux; a writer from the tv station France24 was besides added to the Pegasus's list of victims. Mediapart later reported that ANSSI had stated ‘the presence of suspicious traces’ on the phones of 5 French government ministers.
In the end, ANSSI confirmed almost all the cases of Pegasus attacks on French citizens, and besides identified many fresh victims of NSO spyware in France.
Security laboratory found evidence that Pegasus was being watched by a British lawyer who was the legal typical of a United arabian Emirates princess. The court papers published in London in early October indicated that Dubai's emir most likely commissioned Pegasus to spy on his separated wife, leading her divorce case to a well-known lawyer (and besides a associate of the British Parliament), as well as a fewer people from the closest vicinity of the emir's spouse. A Dublin NGO caught Israel utilizing Pegasus to analyse six Palestinian human rights activists (these findings were confirmed by 2 independent analyses by Citizen laboratory and safety laboratory specialists). It turned out that a fewer weeks before the study was released, the Israeli government cleverly classified the employers of the 3 spy activists as “terrorist organizations”, but this formal run was applied long after the illegal surveillance.
Thanks to evidence collected by Carmen Aristegui and her informant in Mexico in early November 2021, a erstwhile Uri Ansbacher worker was arrested and accused of utilizing Pegasus for surveillance of at least 1 writer – Carmen herself was the confirmed mark of surveillance. This was the first revealed case of Pegasus being utilized by a private company to spy on a private person.
Such consequences consequence in a deficiency of control over the usage and distribution of military class cyber weapons.
But the Mexican government now promised the public full transparency and began to uncover various shocking information. "Last week the chief investigator of the government's anti-money laundering commission revealed that erstwhile government administrations had spent about $300 million from the state budget to acquisition spyware," reported the Associated Press agency. "According to the head of Mexican Financial Intelligence, bills for government agencies' acquisition of software specified as the Pegasus strategy appear to be inflated and any of the profits made by the entities selling the software could have been paid to government officials in the form of bribes".
It shortly turned out that Pegasus was utilized not only by the governments of Mexico, Hungary or India to spy on political opponents, but besides by Poland and Spain.
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