Featured: Pegasus software revelations
Audio 04:07
The Pegasus software activates a phone's camera and microphone, acting like a pocket spy.
(Illustrative image) REUTERS / Dado Ruvic / File photo
By: Sébastien Duhamel Follow
9 mins
Publicity
Pegasus is spyware that simply lets you know the contents of a phone.
Messages, emails, photos… All the content!
Software designed by the Israeli company NSO Group and sold exclusively to States.
Revelations brought by a consortium of 17 major international media coordinated by the Forbidden Stories team.
Le Monde,
the French newspaper is one of them, and it speaks of a total of ten states that have used Pegasus, including two on the African continent.
Morocco and Rwanda, where "
it is above all,
we can read,
journalists, opponents, lawyers, human rights defenders who are the main targets of this software
".
Morocco and Rwanda, for the record, respectively 136th and 156th in the last ranking on press freedom.
What is the press saying today in these two countries?
While it is interesting to observe what the press tells us, it is also sometimes interesting, sometimes, to observe what it does not say. In Rwanda,
The New Times
speaks to us about the Internet this morning, but to explain to us that Rwandans “
demand a more reliable Internet
”, because “
the majority are turning to remote work, due to the restriction of travel in parts of the country
”.
And if you look up the word Pegasus on
the newspaper's website,
only one article dates from 2016. After an investigation by Citizen Lab, it warned of what is touted as malware, malicious software that can affect all phones.
The newspaper said then that no platform "
is really secure
" but at the time we did not know the real nature of Pegasus and that only States could use it.
Nothing else available on the subject this morning in the Rwandan media.
The Moroccan press not very talkative?
So on the internet too, no trace of these revelations on the
Tel Quel site
.
On the other hand, an article dating from a few days ago
tells us that the Shereefian Kingdom signed a cybersecurity cooperation agreement with Israel last week. No trace of Pegasus either on the
360
site
,
another Moroccan media. No more than on the site
of Al Bayane
or the newspaper
Today Morocco
. Only one media is talking about it this morning in the kingdom, it is
Le Desk,
often presented as the head of independent journalism in the country and which has obviously been targeted by espionage, we learn. The
Desk
Director
, Ali Amar, was targeted, as was Fatima Zahra Lqadiri who founded the media alongside him. But also the journalist Taoufik Bouachrine continues the article, the founder of
Akhbar al Yaoum,
a critical newspaper which closed this year ... The former correspondent of the France Presse agency was also spied on, Omar Brouksy, as well as Hamid El Mahdaoui, creator of the Badil.info site.
The Desk
also recalls that it was around the case of Omar Radi, another journalist, that Amnesty International revealed the use of Pegasus by the Moroccan authorities. Rabat is also said to have spied on French journalists. The Moroccan authorities have reacted: basically, they say they do not know what we are talking about.
In Guinea, the debate on illegal migration relaunched ...
Her name was Sadigatou Barry.
“
Better
known under the name of Nourdine
, tells us the cultural site
Gnakrylive
,
she lost her life a few days ago in the Mediterranean while she was trying to reach the West
”.
Nourdine was an actress, a member of the troupe "Missal Diama" and his death comes after that of another actor, said
the Djely,
namely Elhadj Kana Bah Tangan troop Djike bonata 2017. And that therefore "
two actors who were trying to rally to Europe and who will never realize their dreams because they are dead
”, writes
Le Djely
.
The artistic community is struck says the article which gives the floor to the comedian Mamadou Thug, also president of the Association of artistic troops of Guinea (ATAG).
He underlines that "
irregular immigration is illegal and that it has left thousands of African and Guinean families in mourning
".
"
Nourdine set off in search of happiness
", affirms Mamadou Thug and again and again, for him, States and public and private partners must make young people understand that "
yes, it is possible to live happy and fulfilled in Africa
".
We will leave the last words to him.
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