Indian government accused again of targeting journalists with Pegasus software

The Indian government did not immediately react to the revelations published in the pages of the American daily Washington Post, jointly with Amnesty International.

“Increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of illegal surveillance, simply for doing their work,” alarmed a representative of Amnesty International. In a survey carried out jointly with the Washington Post, the NGO revealed, Thursday, December 28, that the Indian government recently targeted prominent journalists with the Pegasus spyware. This method adds “to other tools of repression, such as imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment and intimidation”, said Donncha O’Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty’s Security Lab.

The report claims to have found traces of Pegasus software in the journalist’s Apple-branded cell phones. The Wire Siddharth Varadarajan and Anand Mangnale of the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project.

In 2021, 17 international media outlets revealed that Pegasus software, designed by the Israeli company NSO, had been used to spy on the phones of hundreds of politicians, journalists, human rights activists and business leaders. company around the world. At the time, New Delhi denied accusations against the government regarding the use of this spyware.

A recent attack

The attack dates back to October 2023 for Siddharth Varadarajan, who it also turned out had already been targeted by the spyware in 2018, according to the NGO. For the moment, the Indian government has not reacted to the publication of this investigation.

Last month, Indian media reported that the country’s cybersecurity services were investigating allegations of wiretapping by opposition politicians, who received a warning message from Apple about“state-sponsored attackers”. Ashwini Vaishnaw, the minister for electronics and information technology, said at the time that the government was “concerned” by these complaints.