In the course of two months, U.S. major newspapers mostly neglected to provide substantive coverage on expansive reporting on deliberate targeting and surveillance of journalists and activists with Israeli spyware software. One exception was The Washington Post, which is a partner on this collaborative reporting project and has committed “extraordinary resources” to report on the story.
On July 18, Amnesty International and French nonprofit Forbidden Stories, in collaboration with 17 other international publications (including The Washington Post and The Guardian), released The Pegasus Project, a series of ongoing investigative reporting regarding the surveillance software Pegasus, manufactured and sold by Israeli company NSO Group.
The Pegasus investigation has revealed that from 2016 to 2021, “at least 180 journalists in 20 countries” and 85 human rights activists have been targeted by their governments and private clients with the spyware. Over 50,000 phone numbers were found to be possible targets of monitoring. Clients in countries including India, Mexico, and Saudi Arabia have all been implicated in widespread hacking and surveillance of citizens, particularly those who have been involved with journalism and media. Although the NSO Group’s spyware abuses have been documented before, the group recently stated that its spyware is given only to “vetted government agencies” to be used against terrorists. But Amnesty International’s forensic analysis thoroughly undermines the organization’s statement.
The consequences of the Pegasus spyware usage have been wide-ranging and severe. The spyware works by secretly breaking into the operating system of the target’s phone, allowing whomever is monitoring full access to emails, text messages, the exact GPS location of the phone, and more. Not only is this an obvious privacy violation, but Pegasus has been linked to murder, harassment, and kidnapping. Mexican reporter Cecilio Pineda Birto was found murdered in 2017 shortly after “his mobile phone number was selected as a possible target for surveillance by a Mexican client of the spyware company NSO Group.” Princess Latifa of Dubai, who had escaped her home country in 2018, was forcibly taken back, and the Pegasus software has been potentially linked to her family finding her location, as she and her close friends had been “selected as people of interest by clients of NSO Group.” Slain Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi’s fiance was also surveilled by Pegasus clients just days after his death. In India, 40 journalists “from nearly every major media outlet in the country were selected as potential targets between 2017-2021.”
David Kay, former United Nations special rapporteur for freedom of opinion and expression, summed up the destructive nature of this expansive surveillance networking in an interview with the Committee to Protect Journalists, saying: