Manas Dasgupta
NEW DELHI, July 25: As the Congress leader P Chidambaram demanded a clarification from the prime minister Narendra Modi and Shiv Sena spokesman Sanjay Raut posed a question who funded the Israeli spyware, the Rajya Sabha member John Brittas moved the Supreme Court for a court-monitored investigation into the allegations of snooping on activists, politicians, journalists and constitutional functionaries using Pegasus.
The parliamentarian said the government’s response in the House to the allegations was “evasive.” Brittas, a Communist Party of India (Marxist) MP, said allegations pointed to a “critical invasion into privacy.” It actually amounted to a “cyber attack” on citizens. He termed Pegasus as a “weapon” used to “hack” into private smartphones to cause a chilling effect on free speech and expression.
Shiv Sena’s Rajya Sabha parliamentarian Sanjay Raut has called for a probe into funding of the suspected hacking of 300 phones of prominent Indian politicians, ministers, journalists and activists using Israeli spyware Pegasus and alleged that it could have cost at least $48 million in 2019 alone.
The Pegasus app was used to spy over 1,500 people including political workers, human rights activists, two Central ministers and 30 media personnel. According to a report, one licence used to spy on 50 phones costs $8 million per year. If 300 phones were spied on then it cost at least $48 million dollars in 2019. There could [have been] more spending in 2020 and 2021. From whose pocket [was] the money spent? Will there be an investigation on this whole issue?,” Sanjay Raut said in his weekly column Rokhthok, published in party mouthpiece Saamana.
The Pegasus row erupted last Sunday night before the beginning of the current monsoon session of parliament after an international investigative consortium reported that India was among countries that used Israeli company NSO Group’s phone hacking software to potentially target politicians, journalists and activists.
Senior Congress leader P Chidambaram said the government should either call for a joint parliamentary committee probe into the Pegasus snooping allegations or request the Supreme Court to appoint a sitting judge to investigate the matter, and demanded that Prime Minister Narendra Modi make a statement in Parliament clarifying whether there had been surveillance or not.
The former home minister said he was not sure that one can go to the extent of saying that the entire electoral mandate of 2019 was vitiated by the “unlawful snooping” but added that it may have “helped” the BJP to score that victory which has been “tainted” by the allegations.
Chidambaram also said a probe by a joint parliamentary committee (JPC) can be more effective than an investigation by the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology, asserting that the former would be more empowered by Parliament. He doubted the success of the investigation by the IT standing committee headed by his party colleague Shashi Tharoor considering that a majority of the members of the committee belonged to the BJP.
In his petition Brittas pointed out that so far the only response from the government was a statement from Minister for Electronics and Information Ashwini Vaishnaw in the Rajya Sabha that “time-tested processes in our country are well-established to ensure that unauthorised surveillance does not occur”.
Brittas asked the court whether the statement meant if the surveillance was authorised by the government. If so, the MP asked, were the procedures under the Indian Telegraph Act, Information Technology (Amendment) Act, Section 92 of Code of Criminal Procedure and the Indian Telegraph Rules for “lawful interception” followed by the government.
“Hence, the government needs to appraise the reasons for the interceptions made to the gadgets of its own Ministers, staff, constitutional authorities, including Election Commissioners and judges, CBI officers, a Supreme Court staffer, activists, scientists and journalists,” Brittas argued.
On the other hand, if Pegasus was an unauthorised snooping exercise mounted by a foreign power, it would amount to an act of external aggression. The parliamentarian said the most puzzling factor so far was the government’s lack of a clear answer.
“Despite the very serious nature of allegations, the government has not cared to investigate into the allegations involved in the issue but made only a hopeful hope that the time-tested processes in our country are well-established to ensure that unauthorised surveillance does not occur. This statement is as empty as making a hope that there will not be any crimes in India because the Indian Penal Code is there,” Brittas, represented by advocate Resmitha R. Chandran, submitted.
The MP told the Supreme Court that Pegasus was a “slap in the face of privacy” declared by the court as a fundamental right inextricably linked to the right to life and dignity.
Hacking allegedly the phones of the judiciary and a Supreme Court staffer who accused a former Chief Justice of India of sexual harassment showed a “strong interference with the administration of justice”. “This is unprecedented and shocking,” the parliamentarian said.
The interception of the phone of a former Election Commission member shows that “fundamentals of democracy and free and fair elections are also shaken.” The allegation that several Opposition members were snooped on weakens democracy. “The Opposition is an inevitable part of democracy,” the petition said.
The allegation that even “top CBI officials” were watched through Pegasus showed that “either the government has no trust upon its own investigating officers or that some external agencies are accessing the highly confidential data of topmost investigating agency. This is a threat to the independence of the central investigating agencies…”
The MP said whoever used Pegasus did not spare even a well-known Indian virologist which was chilling to hear in the midst of the pandemic. That Pegasus was allegedly unleashed on journalists reflected scant regard for free speech in a democracy.
“The Pegasus spyware incident gives way to apprehensions whether the financial interests of the country are also compromised as the target list involves the phone numbers of the businessmen like the one who was associated with Rafale purchase,” Brittas submitted.
The first report on Pegasus had alleged that at least 38 Indian journalists were among 180 journalists potentially targeted worldwide. Subsequent reports said Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, former election commissioner Ashok Lavasa and two sitting Union ministers including Prahlad Patel and Ashwini Vaishnaw were on the list of potential targets. A highly invasive malware, Pegasus can switch on a target’s phone camera and microphone, as well as access data on the device, effectively turning a phone into a pocket spy.
However, the presence of a number on the list of potential targets does not indicate the individual’s phone was hacked — just that it was of interest. In the absence of digital forensics of specific devices, it is not possible to conclusively establish that the phones linked to these numbers were hacked. The opposition has targeted the government in the parliament over snooping allegations and demanded a probe to establish if the government was complicit in the project. The government, however, has denied the allegations as figment of imagination.