[LINK] Spyware can make your phone your enemy. Journalism is your defence

[Kim Holburn]

https://www.theguardian.com/world/commentisfree/2021/jul/19/spyware-can-make-your-phone-your-enemy-journalism-is-your-defence

> The Pegasus project poses urgent questions about the privatisation of the surveillance industry and the lack of safeguards for citizen
>
> Mon 19 Jul 2021 09.01 AEST
>
> Today, for the first time in the history of modern spying, we are seeing the faces of the victims of targeted cyber-surveillance. 
> This is a worldwide scandal*– *a global web of surveillance whose scope is without precedent.
>
> The attack is invisible. Once “infected”, your phone becomes your worst enemy. From within your pocket, it instantly betrays your 
> secrets and delivers your private conversations, your personal photos, nearly everything about you. This surveillance has 
> dramatic, and in some cases even life-threatening, consequences for the ordinary men and women whose numbers appear in the 
> leak**because of their work exposing the misdeeds of their rulers or defending the rights of their fellow citizens.
>
> All of these individuals were selected for possible surveillance by states using the same spyware tool, Pegasus, sold by the NSO 
> Group.
>
> Our mission at Forbidden Stories is to pursue – collaboratively – the work of threatened, jailed or assassinated journalists. For 
> the Pegasus project, we investigated this new threat against press freedom for months, working alongside more than 80 journalists 
> from 16 media organisations.
>
> This investigation 
> <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/revealed-leak-uncovers-global-abuse-of-cyber-surveillance-weapon-nso-group-pegasus> 
> began with an enormous leak of documents that Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had access to. In this list of**more 
> than 50,000 phone numbers identified in advance of potential surveillance**by clients of NSO Group, we even found the names of 
> some of our colleagues – journalists we had worked with on past investigations.
>
> But the scale of this scandal could only be uncovered by journalists around the world working together. By sharing access to this 
> data with the other media organisations in the Forbidden Stories consortium, we were able to develop additional sources, collect 
> hundreds of documents and put together the harrowing evidence of a surveillance apparatus that has been wielded ferociously 
> against swaths of civil society – outside of all legal restrictions.
>
> Among those**whose phone numbers appear in the data: human rights defenders, political opponents, lawyers, diplomats, and heads of 
> state – not to mention more than 180 journalists 
> <https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/18/ft-editor-roula-khalaf-among-180-journalists-targeted-nso-spyware> from nearly two 
> dozen countries. Some are local reporters, others renowned television anchors. Many investigate corruption and political scandals 
> that threaten the highest levels of power. Most already face censorship and intimidation. But few of them could have imagined 
> having been selected by their governments**for possible targeting by such an invisible and invasive form of surveillance.
>
> The list of journalists targeted using Pegasus is long: award-winning Azerbaijani journalist Khadija Ismayilova; reporter Szabolcs 
> Panyi from Direkt36, a Hungarian investigative media outlet; freelance Moroccan journalist Hicham Mansouri; the director of the 
> French investigative site Mediapart, Edwy Plenel; and the founders of the Indian independent media the Wire, one of the few news 
> organisations in the country that does not rely on money from private business entities.
>
>
> For NSO Group’s government clients, Pegasus is the perfect weapon to “kill the story”. Invasive surveillance of journalists and 
> activists is not simply an attack on those individuals; it is a way to deprive millions of citizens of independent information 
> about their own governments. When they hack a journalist’s phone, they are able to extract the most sensitive information that it 
> holds. What was that journalist working on? Who are their sources? Where are they stashing their documents? Who are their loved 
> ones? What private information could be used to blackmail and defame them?
>
> Journalists have long thought that new technologies – the armada of encrypted communications that they rely on – are their allies, 
> critical blockades against censorship. With the existence of cyber-surveillance tools as advanced as Pegasus, they have been 
> brutally awoken to the fact that the greatest threats are hiding in the places they once thought to be the safest. The Pegasus 
> project poses important questions about the privatisation of the surveillance industry and the lack of global safeguards for 
> everyday citizens.
>
> When a threat as large as this emerges, imperilling fundamental rights such as the right to free speech, journalists need to come 
> together. If one reporter is threatened or killed, another can take over and ensure that the story is not silenced. Forty-five 
> years ago, the first collaborative journalism project was launched after the murder of Don Bolles, a journalist in Phoenix, 
> Arizona. In 2018, Forbidden Stories coordinated the Daphne project in the wake of the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia in 
> Malta. We have continued to pursue the work of journalists who have been murdered for their work – whether that was investigating 
> environmental scandals or tracking Mexican drug cartels – alongside dozens of news organisations.
>
> The collaboration of journalists from around the world is without a doubt one of the best defences against these violent attacks 
> on global democracy.
>

-- 
Kim Holburn
IT Network & Security Consultant
+61 404072753
mailto:kim at holburn.net  aim://kimholburn
skype://kholburn - PGP Public Key on request