NEW DELHI: In a startling revelation, Facebook-owned messaging platform WhatsApp has revealed that respected members of the civil society in India were targets of surveillance by operators using Israeli spyware Pegasus, The Indian Express reported on Thursday.
Express’s report said more than 20 Indians, including academics, lawyers, and Dalit activists, who were arrested over their alleged involvement in the Bhima-Koregaon Dalit riots near Pune in January last year and journalists were among those who were targeted.
They were contacted and alerted by WhatsApp that their phones had been under state-of-the-art surveillance for a two-week period until May 2019.
“Indian journalists and human rights activists have been the target of surveillance and while I cannot reveal their identities and the exact number, I can say that it is not an insignificant number,” a WhatsApp spokesperson told the daily.
Blame Game
The controversy immediately snowballed into a political one, with several Congress leaders blaming the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) orchestrating the WhatsApp snooping on human rights activists.
Congress Party spokesperson Sanjay Jha tweeted: “Big Bro is watching, reading and analysing your #WhatsApp message”.
The BJP was yet to react to the allegations.
Facebook has sued an Israeli surveillance company NSO Group accusing it of helping government spies its 1,400 WhatsApp users.
Pegasus– highly sophisticated malware
According to Facebook, the NSO Group violated laws including the US Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and used a flaw in WhatsApp to hack into user’s smartphones.
The highly sophisticated malware known as Pegasus developed by Israeli firm, NSO was designed to be remotely installed to hijack devices using the Android, iOS, and BlackBerry operating systems to gain access to the encrypted messages and other communications.
According to WhatsApp, the NSO Group used the flaw to hack into user’s smartphones.
Pegasus, a highly invasive tool can reportedly switch on a target’s phone camera and microphone, and access data on it.
The NSO Group came to prominence in 2016 when researchers accused it of helping spy on an activist in the United Arab Emirates.