Israel Pegasus, software to dismantle a terrorist commando or a Big Brother to spy?
Spy Who's Who of Pegasus-Infected Phone Victims
A mobile phone of French President Emmanuel Macron
was among the espionage targets
in charge of the Israeli Pegasus program, the media consortium that revealed the scandal reported on Tuesday. The information does not specify if Macron's phone
could have finally been spied on
by the Israeli program, since for this it is necessary to analyze the terminal in search of the intrusion.
"If the facts are confirmed, they are obviously very serious," an Elysee source told reporters, adding that these revelations will be fully clarified. The phone numbers of the then prime minister,
Édouard Philippe, and fourteen other members of the French Executive
were also selected as possible targets
, according to
Le Monde
, one of the media outlets of the international consortium that uncovered the scandal last Sunday.
Macron uses several mobile phones
and the number of one of them would have been entered, by a Moroccan security agency among the objectives of the spy program, the consortium of 17 international media said on Tuesday. The French press recalls that in March 2019 the French Government
was very concerned about the internal tension in Algeria
, a neighboring country and at the same time a bitter rival of Morocco.
The investigation revealed
that
up to 50,000 mobile phone numbers
may have been reported
by a dozen countries (including Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India or Azerbaijan) to the Israeli technology company NSO Group for possible espionage.
NSO sells Pegasus as a tool to combat terrorism
or organized crime, but the journalistic investigation uncovered that several of those countries used the program to spy on journalists, political opponents, human rights activists or lawyers.
Pegasus, once it enters a mobile phone,
can detect all the information on the terminal
, including conversations on social networks or camera and microphone activity.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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