UK

How a proposed secrecy law would recast journalism as spying

Duncan Campbell and Duncan Campbell

Home Office plans would remove the public interest defence for whistleblowing, and could put reporters in jail

‘Endorsed by the home secretary, Priti Patel, the consultation into secrecy argues that press disclosures can be worse than spying.’ Photograph: Jessica Taylor/Reuters

Tue 20 Jul 2021 

Here we go again. Nearly 50 years ago one of us was arrested under the Official Secrets Act for working on a story for Time Out magazine, where the other one of us was the news editor. This led to the so-called ABC case, named after fellow reporter Crispin Aubrey, a brave ex-soldier whistleblower called John Berry, and the aforesaid Campbell. A lengthy Old Bailey trial followed in 1978 and, with it, a major discrediting of the use of the act against the press.

Soon after, the power of the pre-first world war, empire-era secrecy laws sank further when a jury acquitted the late Clive Ponting, a senior civil servant who sent MPs information about government deception during the Falklands war. A hasty law reform flopped in 2004 when evidence against the GCHQ whistleblower Katharine Gun had to be withdrawn at the last minute. The government feared her trial would reveal that it had been told the Iraq war would be illegal.

The Home Office now wants harder and more extensive secrecy laws that would have the effect of deterring sources, editors and reporters, making them potentially subject to uncontrolled official bans not approved by a court, and punished much more severely if they do not comply. In noisy political times, a government consultation issued two months ago has had worryingly little attention. Although portrayed as countering hostile activity by state actors, the new laws would, if passed, ensnare journalists and sources whose job is reporting “unauthorised disclosures” that are in the public interest.

Endorsed by the home secretary, Priti Patel, the consultation argues that press disclosures can be worse than spying, because the work of a foreign spy “will often only be to the benefit of a single state or actor”.

Calling for parliament to consider “increased maximum sentences”, the Home Office claims that there is now not necessarily a “distinction in severity between espionage and the most serious unauthorised disclosures”, including “onward disclosure” in the press. Journalism could even create “far more serious damage” than a spy. Yet the 66-page document does not mention “journalism” once, and refers only to “onward disclosure … without authorisation”.

A new proposal for so-called civil orders would create “a power of last resort that would enable [the government] to impose a range of restrictions on particular individuals”. The orders “could include a range of restrictive and preventative measures, including measures to prevent an individual associating with certain people or from visiting specified sensitive locations” and ought to “be imposed by the executive rather than the courts”. The orders would create “a significant deterrent against those who may be vulnerable and susceptible to foreign state coercion and influence”.

The process began in 2016 when the Law Commission – a statutory body that reviews the law in England and Wales – started work on “protecting official data”, claiming reforms were needed “to bring the law into the 21st century”. Changes were, supposedly, justified because of the ability of “hostile states” to conduct cyber-attacks and because the potential impact of spying and leaks had increased.

Initial proposals by the commission in 2017 did not attract much attention until an article in The Register, the online technology publication, told readers that “proposals in the UK for a swingeing new Espionage Act that could jail journalists as spies have been developed in haste by legal advisers”. The article pointed out that the proposals would put leaking and whistleblowing in the same category as spying for foreign powers – and that leakers and journalists could face the same extended jail sentences as foreign agents. Sentences would apply even if – like Edward Snowden or Chelsea Manning – the leaker was not British, nor in Britain, or was acting in the public interest.

The Law Commission had neglected to consult widely with either media or freedom of expression organisations. After the article appeared, there were protests in the press across the political spectrum, from the Daily Telegraph to the Guardian to the Daily Mail. An avalanche of criticism from NGOs and press and media organisations, such as the National Union of Journalists, followed; public consultation was extended.

Slowed further by the impact of Covid-19, the Law Commission published revised proposals last autumn. They recommended that “a statutory public interest defence should be created for anyone … including civilians and journalists, that they can rely upon in court”. Journalists and sources should not be convicted if it was in the public interest for the information disclosed to be known by recipients. An independent, statutory whistleblower commissioner “should be established to receive and investigate allegations of wrongdoing or criminality”.

The Home Office wants to junk these proposals as not “the right balance in this area”. The idea that any unauthorised disclosure of official data could be in the public interest should not be possible, it says. It derides the idea of whistleblower protection, asking for “any evidence … why existing government whistleblowing processes would necessitate the creation of a statutory commissioner?”

Nor, it says, should a whistleblower be allowed to argue that they acted in the public interest. One of the main changes is to widen the scope for prosecutions. “For public servants,” according to proposals, “offences should not continue to require proof of damage, as is currently the case. Instead, they should require proof of a sufficiently culpable mental state, by which we mean, for example, proof of the defendant’s knowledge or belief that the disclosure would cause damage.”

Maximum prison sentences that could be imposed on publishers or sources – currently two years under the Official Secrets Act for unauthorised disclosures – would be multiplied to an unspecified higher level.

Responses to the new proposals are being sought by 22 July. If editors and journalists and advocates of an open society do not highlight the dangers and call a halt, the current gung-ho, authoritarian approach of the government could allow press freedom to be clamped into silence.

• Duncan Campbell is a former Guardian journalist. The second Duncan Campbell is the author of the 2017 Register article referred to above and an investigative journalist specialising in civil liberties and surveillance, and was a defendant in the 1978 trial

Oil giant Shell set to appeal against ruling on carbon emissions

Company hopes to get Dutch court ruling overturned which called for it to cut emissions faster

Shell’s chief executive Ben van Beurden previously said the company had been ‘singled out’ by the ruling. Photograph: Anna Gowthorpe/PA

Jillian Ambrose
Tue 20 Jul 2021

Royal Dutch Shell has confirmed that it will appeal against the landmark Dutch court ruling calling for the oil giant to cut its carbon emissions faster.

A court in The Hague reached the milestone verdict in May this year after Friends of the Earth and over 17,000 co-plaintiffs successfully argued that Shell had been aware of the dangerous consequences of CO2 emissions for decades, and that its climate targets did not go far enough.

The Guardian view on climate change lawsuits: Big Oil is in the dock

Ben van Beurden, Shell’s chief executive, said the company agrees that “urgent action is needed” to reduce carbon emissions, and vowed to accelerate its progress towards becoming a net zero carbon company, but said that Shell would still appeal against the ruling “because a court judgment, against a single company, is not effective”.

“What is needed is clear, ambitious policies that will drive fundamental change across the whole energy system,” he said. “Climate change is a challenge that requires both urgent action and an approach that is global, collaborative and encourages coordination between all parties.”

Friends of the Earth Netherlands, also known as Milieudefensie, said the appeal would send “the wrong signal” and confirm Shell’s “lack of commitment” to tackling the global climate crisis.

Donald Pols, a director at Milieudefensie, said the appeal aimed to postpone any action from Shell and warned that “the longer the delay the more serious the climate consequences will be for us all”.

The court ruled that Shell has an obligation to cut its carbon emissions by 45% by 2030, compared with 2019 levels, under both Dutch law and the European convention on human rights – the right to life and the right to family life – and that the company had known for “a long time” about the damage caused by carbon emissions.

Roger Cox, a lawyer for Milieudefensie, said: “The judges have passed a well-considered judgment on Shell in the verdict. We are confident that this judgment will be reaffirmed on appeal. The science is clear on the consequences of and solutions to dangerous climate change.”

Shell set out its latest carbon emissions goals earlier this year ahead of a shareholder vote on its plan to become a net zero carbon energy company by 2050. However it also signalled to investors that it would continue to grow its gas business by more than 20% in the next few years, despite the urgent need to begin dramatic emissions cuts before the end of the decade.

Big oil companies are driven by profit – they won’t turn green by themselves
Brett Christophers

Although the FTSE 100 group won the support of the majority of its investors it also suffered a significant investor rebellion after a Dutch climate activist group, Follow This, called for the company to set tougher carbon emissions targets and received 30% of shareholder votes.

A fortnight after the ruling, Van Beurden said in a statement on his LinkedIn page that he was disappointed that Shell was “singled out” by a ruling that “does not help reduce global CO2 emissions”.

He wrote: “Imagine Shell decided to stop selling petrol and diesel today. This would certainly cut Shell’s carbon emissions. But it would not help the world one bit. Demand for fuel would not change. People would fill up their cars and delivery trucks at other service stations.”

UK CITIZEN SCIENTISTS

‘Part-time adventurers’: amateur fossil hunters get record haul in Cotswolds

More than 1,000 scientifically significant specimens taken from former quarry after discovery

Sally Hollingworth (left) with her husband Neville (centre) and Dr Tim Ewin from the Natural History Museum as they inspect a slab during the dig in the north Cotswolds. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

Miranda Bryant
Wed 21 Jul 2021 

When Sally and Neville Hollingworth started going stir crazy in lockdown, rather than baking bread or doing quizzes on Zoom, the amateur palaeontologists turned to Google Earth.

The couple passed the time planning for their next trip – using the satellite images to inspect sites that had previously yielded fossils – when they stumbled across a quarry in the Cotswolds. From the exposure of the geology Neville, who has a PhD in geology, could tell the site was promising, but he was not expecting it to yield one of the best fossil finds in the UK in decades.

Their 167m-year-old discovery has been described by the Natural History Museum as the largest find of Jurassic echinoderms – a group of animals that includes starfish, brittle stars and feather stars – ever found in the UK.

“As soon as lockdown lifted, we got permission and had a look around the quarry,” said Sally, 50, who works in accounts for a construction company in Swindon.

Initially, she said the slab they took home from the quarry “looked a little bit boring” but after preparing it in the garage, Neville, 60, was soon shouting for her to come and have a look.

So far, more than 1,000 scientifically significant specimens have been excavated from the site – the exact location of which is not being made public – including an unprecedented collection of rare feather stars, sea lilies and starfish fossils. They have also found three new species: a type of feather star, a brittle star and a sea cucumber. Experts say the discovery will provide key information that will contribute to explaining the evolutionary history of these sea creatures.

A isocrinus fossil found during the work after the Hollingworths discovered the site. Photograph: Andrew Matthews/PA

“They look pretty boring and then you start revealing all this detail and the preservation is just amazing,” she said. “I’m looking at this poor little critter, 167m years old. It’s unreal isn’t it. These little guys were around when the dinosaurs were about.”

When they realised the importance of what they had found, the couple contacted Dr Tim Ewin, a senior curator for invertebrate palaeontology at the Natural History Museum, at the end of last year. He said he immediately knew from the pictures that “we had something quite special on our hands”. But because of coronavirus restrictions it was months before he could investigate further.

Ewin said: “We couldn’t act straight away because of Covid restrictions and things like that, which just got worse and worse. So it was a little bit frustrating having to sort of hang on tenterhooks for the restrictions to ease so we could go out and investigate the site a bit more.”

After a week extracting specimens from the site – which is no bigger than two tennis courts and would have been underwater 167m years ago – he confirmed the find was of global significance.

He said: “It’s the greatest collection in terms of the quality of the preservation, just the sheer numbers of the individuals and the diversity of the individuals.”

The single specimen discovered by the Hollingworths was in itself “really exciting”. But, he added, the fact that they could trace the bed across the quarry floor “and get even more specimens in greater numbers is just unprecedented and incredibly exciting”.

He added: “I feel very honoured to be lucky enough to be alive at the right time that this find was made.”

The Hollingworths have previously found a complete mammoth skull from the ice age, but nothing of this gravity. “We say we’re full-time admin bods but part-time adventurers,” said Sally, who returned to the site earlier this year to celebrate her 50th birthday with a picnic.

“We always say let’s go out, travel with hope and not expectation and take a good picnic and have a good day out and if we find any treasure it’s a bonus. But I think this has been a crazy journey so far and of course this is just the beginning of the journey.”

After three days of excavating the site, the team have collected 100 slabs of clay, which are being prepared for future study and which the museum hopes to put on public display.

New Zealand falls for stranded baby orca, but dilemma looms over ‘life support’

Time could be running out for killer whale named Toa, who has charmed the nation but depends on round-the-clock care to stay alive

A volunteer with Toa the baby orca in his makeshift pen at Plimmerton near Wellington. Rescuers are trying to reunite Toa with his pod. Photograph: Eva Corlett/The Guardian

Eva Corlett in Wellington
Wed 21 Jul 2021 

When Toa, the orphaned baby orca, sees food coming he sticks his large pink tongue out of his wide gummy mouth in happy anticipation. He gurgles and belches as he hungrily tugs at the specially designed latex teat. Four volunteers in wetsuits and beanies cradle him and coo that he is “a good boy” as he feeds. When he is done, he rolls over, revealing his cream white skin, and nudges a volunteer for a belly rub. If they dare stop, he nudges them again. When he is excited he zooms about his holding pool, playing with the volunteers, and when a large tentacle-like piece of kelp is heaved into the water, he snuggles under it, as though it were a blanket, or the protective weight of his missing mother.

The young calf, thought to be between two and six months old, became stranded in the rocks near Plimmerton, north of Wellington 10 days ago with minor injuries.

Toa the baby orca plays with kelp in his makeshift pen at Plimmerton near Wellington, New Zealand. Photograph: Eva Corlett/The Guardian

Since then, a cast of hundreds, including the Department of Conservation (DOC), whale rescue teams and the local iwi (tribe) Ngāti Toa Rangatira, along with a revolving door of volunteers, have been caring for Toa, which means brave or strong in Maori, while the nationwide search for his pod continues.


The whale sentinel: two decades of watching humpback numbers boom

Volunteer and Plimmerton local, Brianna Norris, 21, is into her eighth day volunteering. She, and her 17-year-old brother Ben, who found Toa on the rocks, have formed a special relationship with the calf.

“He is really affectionate and really gentle. It’s super special, but we are just desperate for him to get back to his family. One day with him would have been plenty.”

The collective efforts have been considerable but fraught with difficulties. Last week, a once-in-a-decade storm ripped through the Wellington region, bringing winds up to 140km/h, four-metre swells and flooding. The teams were forced to move Toa out of the sea-pen they had created in the harbour, into a 32,000-litre seawater holding pool set-up in the carpark of the Plimmerton boating club. Keeping him in the ocean could have caused injury to both whale and staff during the wild weather.

Toa remains there still. Flooding from the storm put pressure on the wastewater pipes, causing sewage to spill out into the harbour and rendering it a health and safety hazard for staff. With another storm forecast in the coming days, rescuers have decided it is better to limit the number of times Toa is moved between sites.

Crowds have gathered to watch Toa in its makeshift pen in Plimmerton. Photograph: Marty Melville/AFP/Getty Images

His life may have become reduced to a small pool while the search for his family endures, but the story of his plight has captured the nation’s imagination, with hundreds of volunteers scouring the shorelines hoping to spot his missing pod. There have been a number of unverified sightings and some that are credible, but the storm prevented rescuers from investigating further.

For the most part, Toa’s health is good, aside from some stomach upsets, while the vets try to find the right balance for his milk formula, DOC said.

So far, the rescue operation has cost the taxpayer NZ$10,000 but other expenses are being paid for by the Orca Research Trust, and countless hours of volunteer time.


Killer whales spotted near Cornwall coast in rare UK sighting


It is an exercise in devotion, but some scientists are questioning whether keeping an infant whale on a type of human life-support for this long is ethical.

Dr Karen Stockin, a marine biologist, said internationally recognised practice for separated cetaceans this young is either lifelong human care or euthanasia.

“New Zealand has no captive or rehabilitation facility that could support Toa. Of course, we all crave a Disney happy ending, but what matters most here is not our understandable human sentiment and emotion, but notably the viability and welfare of Toa.”

Annie Potts, a professor in human-animal studies at the University of Canterbury, highlighted the incongruence between how humans treat a whale calf compared with, say, the farming of bobby calves for veal.

“We reserve our love, compassion and empathy for ‘extraordinary species’ like whales which we can celebrate ‘saving’.”

Dr Ingrid Visser has been at the site, coordinating care for Toa, since the beginning. She is rugged up in layers of warm clothing with a hot water bottle held close to her chest. Despite her intermittent sleep, she is constantly alert to what is happening in Toa’s pool, and gently offers volunteers directions over what to do with him.

Dr Ingrid Visser, an expert on orcas, at Plimmerton in New Zealand where rescuers are working to keep baby killer whale Toa alive. Photograph: Eva Corlett/The Guardian

Visser is the only person in the country with a Phd in New Zealand Orca and is frequently called upon to offer expert advice internationally. She is using her own network of international orca and stranding experts to assist her in Toa’s care.

She said there is no doubt that DOC will take into account perspectives from other scientists, but that her focus is not on “the naysayers, but doing what is right for Toa”.

DOC’s marine species manager Ian Angus said while the rescue operation is entering into a delicate stage, the focus remains on reuniting Toa with his pod. The team has at least a few more days up their sleeves to attempt this, Angus said.

“We are optimistic that we may find the pod, and the orca’s health is still stable, but we are also being realistic as we consider the ongoing welfare of this animal – that has to be our number one concern.”

Germany’s Greens cautious over linking floods to climate crisis

Party leaders hope public will draw its own conclusions from last week’s catastrophic floods

A fireman stands in front of a completely destroyed house in the village of Mayschoß, Germany. Photograph: Boris Roessler/AP


Philip Oltermann in Berlin
@philipoltermann
Tue 20 Jul 2021 16.10 BST


It was a slogan that cut to the chase: “Everybody is talking about Germany. We talk about the weather.”

The provocative message – itself an inversion of the title of an essay by Red Army Faction terror group founder Ulrike Meinhof (“Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t”) – was at the heart of the West German Green party’s 1990 election campaign, but has rarely felt more relevant than today as catastrophic floods in western Germany have brought extreme weather events to the centre of the national debate little more than two months before federal elections.

And yet the German Greens in July 2021 are noticeably cautious of drawing an explicit link between the climate emergency and weather that has devastated towns across the country and claimed the lives of at least 164 people.

Annalena Baerbock, the Greens’ candidate for chancellor, cut short her summer holiday to visit the affected area last week but declined to take TV camera crews with her. Her co-leader, Robert Habeck, sent a video message from northern Germany: “Now is the time of rescue helpers and not politicians like me, who would only stand in their way”, he said.

One Green delegate, Konstantin von Notz, on Wednesday posted a picture of upended cars amid floodwater and debris on Twitter, criticising other parties’ reluctance to commit to carbon reduction measures and insisting only his party would make climate protection “priority number one”. Within 24 hours, Von Notz deleted and apologised for his “polemical tweet”.


German flood alert system criticised for ‘monumental failure’

When Baerbock finally spoke up on Monday, giving an interview to news magazine Der Spiegel, she listed “ambitious climate protection” measures only as the third of three steps required to address the situation: centralising the country’s disaster management system and adjusting the design of German cities and waterways to prepare for future floods, she insisted, were of equal importance.

The strategic thinking rests on the hope that the electorate will draw its own connection between the increase of freak weather events and a climate crisis unfolding over the long term. Making the link explicit would open up the Greens to charges of politicising a catastrophe before the bodies of the dead have been recovered, and playing into its image as a Besserwisserpartei, a party of know-it-alls.

And although its “we talk about the weather” slogan may hit a nerve in 2021, in 1990, the year of German reunification, it played disastrously with the electorate. The Greens only maintained a presence in the Bundestag thanks to an alliance with ecological outfits in the former east.

Like so many villages and towns in western Germany,, homes and roads in Schuld were destroyed in the flooding. Photograph: Sascha Steinbach/EPA

Since Baerbock and Habeck took over the party leadership in 2018, the Greens have worked hard to come across a party that does not only talk about the weather, but also about Germany. In this election’s poster campaign, launched earlier this month, they go out of their way to sway voters who fear radical policies could damage the economy: “Effective climate protection: secure jobs”, reads one poster, “Economy and climate without crisis” another.

After the launch of its campaign in April led the Greens to briefly leapfrog the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) of Angela Merkel and her designated successor, Armin Laschet, into the top spot, the environmental party has in recent weeks struggled to get on the front foot, hampered by a prolonged public debate about Baerbock’s qualifications and plagiarised passages in a non-fiction book bearing her name.

The hope in the Greens’ camp is that events of the last week could change the dynamics of the campaign trail and finally allow its candidate to play to her strengths. Even then, few Green supporters are confident their party can close the 10-point gap to the Christian Democrats.

In postwar German history, floods have often made or remade political careers – if those politicians had their hands on the levers of power at the time. Decisive handling of the flooding of Hamburg in 1962 raised the profile of Helmut Schmidt, then the city’s senator of the interior, later Germany’s chancellor. In 2002, the leadership of the incumbent chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, during the flooding of the River Oder wrenched victory from the jaws of a widely expected defeat at the hands of the conservatives one month later.

At a time of national crisis, as the Greens know, parties in opposition can only wait in the wings while the executive bestrides flooded plains in wellington boots, and hope for their opponents to shrink rather than rise in the electorate’s estimation in the process.

India’s PM Modi accused of ‘treason’ over Pegasus spyware scandal

Opposition accuses Modi of compromising national security following revelations that dozens of Indians were potential targets of snooping by Israeli-made spyware.

At least two serving ministers in the Modi government also feature in the leaked database [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

By Bilal Kuchay
20 Jul 2021
India’s main opposition Congress party has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “treason” and compromising national security following revelations that dozens of Indians were potential targets of snooping by an Israeli-made spyware.

More than 1,000 phone numbers in India were among nearly 50,000 selected worldwide as possibly of interest to clients of the Israel-based NSO Group, maker of the Pegasus spyware, an investigation by a consortium of media organisations revealed on Sunday.
KEEP READINGIndia’s excess deaths during COVID could be over 4 million: StudyFahadh Faasil: Crusader of a New Wave in India’s Malayalam cinemaIndia’s internet law adds to fears over online speech, privacySulli Deals: Indian Muslim women offered for sale in ‘auction’

The leaked list, shared with the news outlets by Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based journalism nonprofit, and rights group Amnesty International, showed the identities of people targeted with more than 300 of those phone numbers in India, including politicians, dozens of journalists, businessmen and even two ministers in the Modi government.

Indian media reports said Modi’s main rival, former Congress party president Rahul Gandhi, was among dozens of Indian politicians, activists and government critics identified as potential targets of the Pegasus spyware.

“Is spying on India’s security forces, judiciary, cabinet ministers, opposition leaders including Rahul Gandhi, journalists and other activities through a foreign entity’s spyware not treason and an inexcusable dismantling of national security?” Congress spokesman Randeep Surjewala said at a press conference in New Delhi on Monday.

Gandhi’s phone numbers, which he has since given up, appear to have been selected for targeting between 2018 and mid-2019, when the parliamentary elections were held in India.

The Congress party on Monday demanded an investigation into the roles of Modi and his closest aide, Home Minister Amit Shah, in the scandal.

“Our first demand is the immediate sacking of Minister of Home and Internal Security Amit Shah and a probe into the role of the prime minister in the matter,” Surjewala said.

Among others whose phone numbers were reportedly targeted are a top virologist, a woman who had accused a former chief justice of India of rape, a former election commissioner who oversaw the 2019 national polls, and leading political strategist Prashant Kishor.

What is the Pegasus Project?

Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had access to a list of tens of thousands of phone numbers worldwide that were potentially targeted by Pegasus spyware, and shared it with media organisations from different countries.

While Forbidden Stories oversaw the investigation, called the Pegasus Project, Amnesty’s International’s Security Lab provided forensic analyses and technical support during the probe.

Pegasus is spyware owned by NSO Group, an Israeli technology firm. It enables the remote surveillance of smartphones, secretly unlocks the contents of a target’s mobile phone and transforms it into a listening device.

The firm claims the spyware is sold exclusively to “vetted governments” around the world to combat “terrorism” and other serious crimes.

The company, which does not confirm the identity of its customers, has termed the Pegasus Project’s findings “exaggerated and baseless”.

Though the Indian government has not accepted so far whether any of its agencies is using the spyware, the investigation suggests the widespread and continuing abuse of the hacking spyware in the country.

Indian news website The Wire, along with The Guardian and The Washington Post on Monday reported that most of these individuals, including Gandhi, were targeted in the run-up to the 2019 national elections, which saw Modi return to power with a bigger majority than in 2014.

The expose has caused a major political controversy in India with the Congress calling Modi’s right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) the “Bharatiya Jasoos Party” – “jasoos” means a spy in Hindi – and accusing it of listening to people’s “bedroom conversations”.

Who all were targeted in India?

Though it is not known how many of the phones on the list were targeted for surveillance or how many of those attempts were successful, The Washington Post said forensic analyses performed on 22 smartphones in India whose numbers appeared on the list showed that at least 10 were targeted with Pegasus, seven of them successfully.

Among the Indians whose phones had been targeted with the NSO-owned spyware was Ashok Lavasa, the former election commissioner of India, who had faulted Modi for violations of the model code of conduct before the 2019 election.

Also, at least 11 of those phone numbers belonged to a former Supreme Court staffer and her family. The woman, whose identity cannot be revealed for legal reasons, had accused former Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi, of rape in April 2019 and was soon fired from her job.

The expose said the phone numbers belonging to the woman and her family began to be surveilled the same week when her allegations against Gogoi were first reported. Gogoi is currently a BJP member of the Indian parliament.

Also appearing in the Pegasus spyware list are more than 40 Indian journalists belonging to different news organisations.

Vijaita Singh, who covers internal security for The Hindu newspaper, is among them. She told Al Jazeera that until a few days ago, she was not aware of any intrusion into her phone.

“It was disconcerting and unsettling,” she said. “These days, our phones literally contain every aspect of our lives.”

Journalist Ritika Chopra covers India’s election commission and education ministry for the Indian Express newspaper.

She said she discovered that her phone number figured in a leaked list of potential targets of surveillance only last week after The Wire reached out to her, seeking a comment.

“I was told that I was possibly targeted in 2019. I would not like to speculate on who is behind this. This is a breach of my privacy and freedom, but it will not affect my work as a journalist,” Chopra told Al Jazeera.

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, writer and former editor of Economic and Political Weekly, whose phone was also compromised, told Al Jazeera the expose has had a “chilling effect” on him.

“It sends out a signal and a message to others that you can be snooped on,” he told Al Jazeera.

Thakurta said a “very small section” of the Indian media is “actually playing the role of the fourth state and holding truth to power”.

“Look at who these 40-plus journalists are? They are all journalists who have been critical of the government, so this is clearly sending a message that we can invade your privacy,” he said.
What does the government say?

At least two serving ministers in the Modi government – Ashwini Vaishnaw and Prahlad Singh Patel – also feature in the leaked database of numbers believed to be selected by clients of the NSO Group as potential targets for surveillance.

Ironically, Vaishnaw, who was recently inducted as information technology minister, on Monday defended the government on the issue in the parliament, saying the expose was an “attempt to malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions”.

“In the past, similar allegations were made [about the use of Pegasus] on WhatsApp but there is no factual basis to these and have been categorically denied,” he said.

Vaishnaw said “any form of illegal surveillance” is not possible with the “checks and balances in our laws and robust institutions”.

Home Minister Shah alleged the Pegasus Project report published by the “disrupters” was timed to help the “obstructers” in the parliament as it began its monsoon session.

“Disrupters are the global organisations which do not like India to progress. Obstructers are political players in India who do not want India to progress. People of India are very good at understanding this chronology and connection,” he said on Monday.

In a statement on Monday, Access Now, an organisation defending the digital rights of global users, said it was outraged that products sold by NSO were allegedly “used to hack and invade the private communications” of thousands of people across the globe.

Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia Pacific Policy Director and Global Cybersecurity Lead at Access Now, told Al Jazeera that hacking is a crime, with no exceptions to be made even if it is directed by a government. He demanded that the Indian government must answer whether its agencies or security services were dealing with NSO.

“Previous statements have evaded the question, and vaguely asserted that safeguards are followed to avoid overboard surveillance. This is clearly not the case,” he said.

“The largest democracy in the world cannot be at the mercy of a shady, private company.”
SOURCE: AL JAZEERA

The Guardian view on spyare sales: the proliferation risks are real

Editorial

This week’s revelations around NSO’s Pegasus snooping software is an argument for an immediate moratorium on trade in the technology

‘Is political dissent now a form of terror? Are activists’ thoughts crimes? For some regimes the answer is, unfortunately, yes.’ Illustration: Ali Assaf/Guardian Design

Mon 19 Jul 2021 1

The Israeli surveillance company NSO Group has created, developed and sold hacking software, known as Pegasus, that covertly allows access to mobile devices. Once it gains access, via hitherto unknown flaws in everyday apps, the code can extract messages, photos and emails, record calls and secretly activate microphones. Such is their ubiquity that mobile phones offer a window into our souls. What spyware, like that hawked by NSO, provides is access to our most intimate secrets.

One might have thought those peddling such intrusive powers would have imposed onerous responsibilities. NSO says that it only sells its software to vetted government clients to prevent “terrorism and serious crime”. Unfortunately, that does not appear to have been the case. And it’s not just NSO. Instead, an unregulated global industry has grown up in the shadows to provide cheap spying tools that were once the preserve of the most advanced state intelligence services.

NSO says that as it does not operate the spyware systems it sells, and does not have access to the data of its customers’ targets, the company cannot supervise their use. This is a self-serving argument that persists because of corporate secrecy. It is also contradicted by the work of a reporting consortium, which included the Guardian, Amnesty and the Paris-based non-profit Freedom Stories, on a large data leak. It revealed this week that journalists, human rights activists and opposition politicians are being targeted by authoritarian regimes and rightwing populist governments.

Is political dissent now a form of terror? Are activists’ thoughts crimes? For some regimes the answer is, unfortunately, yes. A murdered journalist’s number was selected by a Mexican NSO client. The company’s spyware was used to try to monitor people close to the journalist Jamal Khashoggi both before and after he was murdered, according to the CIA, by the Saudi government in October 2018. In India, the phone numbers of hundreds of opponents of the Hindu nationalist Modi government, including a senior Congress party leader, Rahul Gandhi, are in the leaked data. Mr Gandhi called it “an attack on the democratic foundations of our country”. He’s right.

In the light of such revelations, the notion of mobile phone privacy seems a quaint one. The sheer scope of the dataset points to a slew of significant breaches of privacy rights meant to be protected under international law. This is not some esoteric debate. A society lacking the virtues of democracy, such as freedom of speech and association, risks a descent into tyranny. In George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four, the surveillance state of Oceania operated in plain sight since its acquisition of total power had done away with any need for subterfuge.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor turned whistleblower, described NSO as “infectioneers” selling “ways to cause a kind of disease for devices. They find weaknesses, unvaccinated points of entry.” NSO’s defence is that its spyware is already subject to Israeli export controls and the company’s processes. This is a bad argument that promotes a failed model of industry oversight.

In 2019, David Kaye, the former UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, called in the Guardian for an immediate moratorium on the transfer of spyware until viable international controls were in place. He said that there should be government sanctions for hi-tech companies that traded with persistent human rights offenders. Prof Kaye advocated a legal framework so that “victims of spyware could hold governments, or the complicit companies, accountable for abuse and misuse”. These are all sensible steps to take. What would not be prudent is to persevere with light-touch regulation that is ineffective at preventing violations of human rights by repressive regimes or at protecting individuals or companies from unlawful hacking.

FOR MORE  SEE The Pegasus project | The Guardian