Spying on journalists and opponents: Pegasus affair sparks outrage

Human rights organizations, media, the European Union and governments were outraged Monday over revelations of global spying on activists and journalists using Israeli-designed Pegasus software NSO Group. Introduced in a smartphone, this software allows you to retrieve messages, photos, contacts and even listen to calls from its owner.

The investigation which reinforces the suspicions weighing long on this company, published Sunday by a consortium of 17 international media, is based on a list obtained by the network based in France Forbidden Stories ("prohibited stories") and the NGO Amnesty International, with 50,000 phone numbers selected by NSO customers since 2016 for potential surveillance.

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- French journalists spied on by the Pegasus software: "It's an attack on our freedoms"

"A major attack on critical journalism" 

The list includes the numbers of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists and 65 business leaders, according to the consortium's analysis - including the French dailies

, the British

and American

- which has located many in Morocco, Saudi Arabia or Mexico. "We are not talking here just of a few rogue states, but of a massive use of spyware by at least twenty countries," Amnesty General Secretary Agnès Callamard told BBC radio on Monday. "This is a major attack on critical journalism," she said.

Questioned, Morocco and Hungary categorically denied Monday the use of the Pegasus software.

The Moroccan government denounced as "false" the information according to which the services of the kingdom "infiltrated the telephones of several national and foreign public figures and leaders of international organizations through computer software".

And the Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto assured that "The software is not used" by the intelligence services of his country.

For von der Leyen, a case "completely unacceptable" if it is proven 

This affair "must be verified", reacted for her part the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, but if it is proven, "it is completely unacceptable". "Freedom of the press is a core value of the European Union," she said. Founded in 2011, NSO, regularly accused of playing into the game of authoritarian regimes since the alert launched in 2016 by an Emirati dissident, Ahmed Mansoor, assures that its software is only used to obtain information against criminal or terrorist networks.

On the list dissected by the media consortium is the number of Mexican journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto, shot a few weeks after his entry on this document. Foreign correspondents from several major media, including the

, CNN, France 24,

, or AFP are also part of it. Other names of personalities appearing on the list - which notably includes a head of state and two European heads of government - will be disclosed in the coming days.