The head of the Polish ruling party PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has admitted the acquisition of Israeli espionage software of the type Pegasus by Poland.
Polish services should have this type of device, Kaczynski told the weekly Sieci in an interview that was published in excerpts on Friday.
The Pegasus software developed by the Israeli company NSO is able to read all data from cell phones that have been attacked with it.
In addition, Pegasus can switch on the device's camera and microphone unnoticed.
When asked whether the government in Warsaw had used Pegasus to eavesdrop on opposition politicians, Kaczynski replied that the software was used to “fight crime and corruption in many countries”.
This is under the control of courts and prosecutors.
In Poland, "the monitoring system for such activities is one of the strictest in Europe".
He described the opposition's allegations in this context as "much ado about nothing".
The research group Citizen Lab, based in Canada, had confirmed that Pegasus was used against the lawyer Roman Giertych, the prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek and the opposition politician Krzysztof Brejza when he helped organize the election campaign for the Center Party Civic Platform in 2019.
Kaczynski: "No secretly obtained information"
Kaczynski denied using the software during the election campaign.
The opposition "lost because they lost," said the head of the PiS party.
"No Pegasus, no services, no secretly obtained information of any kind played a role in the 2019 election campaign."
The human rights organization Amnesty International said on Friday that it also had independent information that Brejza had been spied on by Pegasus.
"These findings are shocking, but not surprising," said the organization.
Amnesty called for a worldwide stop to the export, sale, transfer and use of surveillance technology "until a solid legal framework in line with human rights is in place".
The use of the Pegasus software in Poland gives "cause for serious concern, not only for politicians, but for the entire Polish civil society".
At the end of December, opposition leader Donald Tusk complained about a “deep crisis in democracy” in Poland and called for an investigative committee to investigate the allegations that the Polish government and Pegasus are trying to find out about opposition politicians.