The development of increasingly sophisticated spyware poses an “existential” threat to investigative journalism, forcing sources to keep quiet for fear of being identified, the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) warned on Thursday. ) which in a new report calls on States to act.
“It’s an established fact for me that a lot of people are afraid to talk to me. Many people are afraid to write to me, they are afraid that my phone will be monitored”, explains in this report the Moroccan journalist Aida Alami, who works in particular for the New York Times.
Same observation with the Hungarian Szabolcs Panyi, journalist for the site Direct36.huwhose name appeared among the personalities spied on by Pegasus when the resounding scandal around this software from the Israeli cybertechnology company NSO broke out in the summer of 2021.
“The biggest fear today is that this case (Pegasus) will have a chilling effect on the sources and that, paradoxically, this huge scoop will be an obstacle for our work in the long term”, he adds, quoted him also in the CPJ report.
This sentiment is one of the main findings of the New York-based CPJ, which recalls the demand, formulated by “more than 180 non-governmental organizations” and UN experts, for a moratorium on the sale, use and transfer of technologies related to this spyware, the time to establish a regulatory framework guaranteeing respect for human rights.
More worryingly, for CPJ, “the old methods of defense do not work” against “the new generation of spyware”, which can infiltrate a phone without the target opening a link or downloading an attachment, but simply with “an unanswered call”, or even “an invisible SMS”.
Increasingly sophisticated tools that “pose an existential threat to journalism and press freedom around the world”.
The committee warns that “even in democratic societies, the political will to restrict spyware,” used for purposes like counterterrorism, “may be lacking.”
Beyond a moratorium, CPJ calls for the establishment of import and export restrictions to countries that use these technologies as an instrument of repression and the creation of an international treaty limiting their trade.
With regard to companies that develop this software, the committee calls in particular for the insertion of explicit clauses prohibiting spying on journalists in contracts and licenses as well as the possibility of revoking access to spyware when abuse is detected.