French President Emmanuel Macron called - on Thursday morning - to hold an extraordinary meeting of the Defense Council, after publishing reports on the use of the Israeli spy program "Pegasus" in France, and targeting Macron's phone itself, while the Israeli parliament is heading to recommend changing the defense export policy after this scam.
"The president is closely following this issue," French government spokesman Gabriel Attal said, adding that an unscheduled meeting of the Defense Council "will be devoted to the issue of the Pegasus program and the issue of cyber security."
And the Bloomberg news agency reported today, Thursday, that the Defense Council will discuss the existing investigation into the possible hacking of Macron’s phone, as the investigation seeks to find out whether all the targeted phones were infected, and if data was taken from them.
Two days ago, the French judiciary announced the opening of an investigation into what was revealed by the media about spying on about 30 journalists and newspaper directors, through the “Pegasus” program developed by the Israeli company NSO.
The investigation came after two French journalists and the organization responsible for the "Mediapart" website, filed a lawsuit over the aforementioned espionage.
The investigation will deal with the intrusion and penetration of an automated data processing system, the acquisition, reproduction and manipulation of data, breach of privacy, as well as the installation of hacking devices and equipment and the display of written and graphic materials without a license.
In Israel, Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee Chairman Ram Ben Barak told Israel Army Radio, "We definitely have to reconsider the entire issue of licenses granted by the Defense Export Control Agency."
Ben Barak added that the ministerial team that was formed on Sunday to follow up the file "will conduct reviews, and we will make sure to look at the results and see if we need to fix things here."
On Sunday, a group of 17 international media outlets published a report on the Pegasus program, based on a list obtained by Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International, including 50,000 phone numbers believed to be from people considered by NSO to be of interest since 2016.
The list includes the numbers of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, 85 human rights activists and 65 businessmen, according to the analysis conducted by the group that identified many numbers in several countries, and among the potential targets are Macron, Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan and Moroccan King Mohammed VI.