Pakistan condemns India’s spying operations against Imran, urges UN to investigate

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has strongly condemned India’s use of Israeli spyware Pegasus to conduct spying operations against notable personalities, including Prime Minister Imran Khan.

An investigation published by 17 media organisations last week revealed India was one of the countries using the spyware to attempt and successfully hack smartphones of government officials, journalists, and human rights activists around the world.

“We have noted with serious concern recent international media reports exposing Indian government’s organised spying operations against its own citizens, foreigners as well as Prime Minister Imran Khan, using an Israeli origin spyware,” the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday.

“We condemn in strongest possible terms India’s state-sponsored, continuing and widespread surveillance and spying operations in clear breach of global norms of responsible state behaviour.”

The FO said Pakistan is closely following the revelations and intends to bring the Indian abuses to the attention of appropriate global platforms. It called on the relevant UN bodies to thoroughly investigate the matter and hold the Indian perpetrators to account.

Israel’s NSO Group and its Pegasus malware have been in the headlines since at least 2016, when researchers accused it of helping spy on a dissident in the United Arab Emirates.

The recent revelations raise privacy and rights concerns and reveal the far-reaching extent to which the private Israeli company’s software may be being misused by its clients internationally.

On July 19, it emerged that the Israeli company’s spyware was used in attempted and successful hacks of 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, government officials and human rights activists around the world, according to an investigation by 17 media organisations published on Sunday, wherein it was revealed that at least one of the tracked numbers on the list belonged to Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Reacting to the revelations, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said he was “extremely concerned” by the reports. “Unethical policies of Modi government have dangerously polarised India and the region,” he tweeted.

Federal Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari also addressed the development and said: “part two” of the report on how the Indian government had spied on its own ministers was expected today.

The extent of Pegasus use was reported by The Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and other news outlets who collaborated on an investigation into a data leak.

According to The Post, more than 1,000 phone numbers in India appeared on the surveillance list while hundreds were from Pakistan, including the one PM Imran once used. However, The Post did not specify whether the surveillance attempt on PM Imran’s number was successful.

Indian investigative news website The Wire reported that 300 mobile phone numbers used in India — including those of government ministers, opposition politicians, journalists, scientists and rights activists — were on the list.

The numbers included those of more than 40 Indian journalists from major publications such as the Hindustan Times, The Hindu and the Indian Express, as well as two founding editors of The Wire, it said.

Reacting to the revelations, Federal Minister for Information and Broadcasting Fawad Chaudhry said he was “extremely concerned” by the reports. “Unethical policies of Modi government have dangerously polarised India and the region,” he tweeted.

Federal Human Rights Minister Shireen Mazari also addressed the development and said “part two” of the report on how the Indian government had spied on its own ministers was expected today.

The Indian government denied in 2019 that it had used the malware to spy on its citizens after WhatsApp filed a lawsuit in the United States against NSO, the Israeli company producing the spyware, accusing it of using the messaging platform to conduct cyber espionage.

Israel’s NSO Group and its Pegasus malware have been in the headlines since at least 2016, when researchers accused it of helping spy on a dissident in the United Arab Emirates.

The leak was of a list of more than 50,000 smartphone numbers believed to have been identified as people of interest by clients of NSO since 2016, the media outlets said.

One of the organisations, The Washington Post, said the Pegasus spyware licensed by the NSO Group was also used to target phones belonging to two women close to Jamal Khashoggi, a Post columnist murdered at a Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018, before and after his death.

The Post said the list was shared with the news organisations by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and Amnesty International. The newspaper said the total number of phones on the list that were actually targeted or surveilled was unknown.

The Post said 15,000 of the numbers on the list were in Mexico and included those of politicians, union representatives, journalists and government critics.

The list reportedly included the number of a Mexican freelance journalist who was murdered at a carwash. His phone was never found, and it was not clear if it had been hacked.

The Guardian, another of the media outlets, said the investigation suggested “widespread and continuing abuse” of NSO’s hacking software, described as malware that infects smartphones to enable the extraction of messages, photos and emails; record calls; and secretly activates microphones.

Among the numbers on the list are those of journalists for Agence France-Presse, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Mediapart, El Pais, the Associated Press (AP), Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters and Voice of America, the Guardian said.

“We are deeply troubled to learn that two AP journalists, along with journalists from many news organisations, are among those who may have been targeted by Pegasus spyware,” said Director of AP Media Relations Lauren Easton.

“We have taken steps to ensure the security of our journalists’ devices and are investigating,” she added.

Reuters’ spokesman Dave Moran said, “Journalists must be allowed to report the news in the public interest without fear of harassment or harm, wherever they are. We are aware of the report and are looking into the matter.”

Meanwhile, Amnesty International decried what it termed “the wholesale lack of regulation” of surveillance software.

“Until this company (NSO) and the industry as a whole can show it is capable of respecting human rights, there must be an immediate moratorium on the export, sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology,” the rights group said in a statement.

The use of the Pegasus software to hack the phones of Al Jazeera reporters and a Moroccan journalist has been reported previously by Citizen Lab, a research centre at the University of Toronto, and Amnesty International.

The Post said the numbers on the list were unattributed, but the media outlets participating in the project were able to identify more than 1,000 people in more than 50 countries.

They included several members of Arab royal families, at least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, 189 journalists and more than 600 politicians and government officials including heads of state, prime ministers and cabinet ministers.

The reports said many numbers on the list were clustered in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Moroccan security services used the spyware to target around 30 French journalists and media executives, according to the investigation.

Pegasus is reportedly a highly invasive tool that can switch on a target’s phone camera and microphone, as well as access data on the device, effectively turning a phone into a pocket spy.

In some cases, it can be installed without the need to trick a user into initiating a download.

NSO issued a denial on Sunday that focused on the report by Forbidden Stories, calling it “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories”, and threatened a defamation lawsuit.

“We firmly deny the false allegations made in their report,” NSO said.

“As NSO has previously stated, our technology was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi,” the company said.

“We would like to emphasise that NSO sells its technologies solely to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of vetted governments for the sole purpose of saving lives through preventing crime and terror acts,” it said.

Citizen Lab reported in December that about three dozen journalists at Qatar’s Al Jazeera network had their mobile devices targeted by Pegasus malware.

PAKISTAN CONDEMNS MEA COMMENTS:

The government has denounced the “gratuitous and unwarranted” remarks by the spokesperson of the Indian Ministry of External Affairs about the recent incident involving the daughter of Afghan Ambassador to Pakistan Najibullah Alikhil and urged New Delhi to refrain from its smear propaganda campaign.

On Thursday, India described the abduction as a “very shocking” incident and said Pakistan is “stooping to a new low” with its denial of the victim’s account, to which Foreign Office Spokesperson Zahid Hafeez Chaudhri replied on Friday: “India has no locus standi, whatsoever, on the matter”.

He said that India’s malicious smear campaign against Pakistan is well-known and independent organisations including EU DisinfoLab had established India’s credentials as a purveyor of anti-Pakistan propaganda globally.

Even in the wake of the reported incident involving the daughter of the Afghan ambassador, the FO spokesperson said that Indian propaganda machinery against Pakistan was active and fake pictures of the ambassador’s daughter were being circulated by Indian Twitter handles and websites.

“It is unfortunate that India used such an incident to peddle false narrative against Pakistan,” he added.

with additional input from INP