Amnesty International has called on the Spanish government to clarify whether it uses the Pegasus spyware program, the human rights organization said in a statement issued this Friday. "In response to recent media reports about the alleged use in Spain of the Pegasus spyware program developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, we have written to the Spanish government asking it to reveal information about all the contracts it has with private digital surveillance companies,” said the group.
Amnesty added that this same request "has been made repeatedly to different governments around the world, with the aim of imposing a moratorium on the sale and transfer of such surveillance equipment until a regulatory framework which is adequate in human rights terms is established on this matter".
Amnesty International also conveyed to the Pedro Sánchez government "the need for all digital surveillance to be subject to public oversight mechanisms, as well as to include a process of public approval, notification and consultation on new surveillance acquisitions and periodic publication of information".
"International human rights law protects all people from arbitrary and illegitimate interference with their privacy. Any interference by the state in the right to privacy must comply with the law and be necessary, proportionate and legitimate," said Esteban Beltrán, director of Amnesty International in Spain.
This ruling comes a day after Barcelona's court of instruction number 32 has accepted for consideration the complaint filed by two prominent pro-independence politicians, the speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Roger Torrent, and the leader of the ERC party in Barcelona, Ernest Maragall, after their mobiles phone were hacked using Pegasus spyware. This controversial espionage program is only sold by its manufacturers to national governments, and a Vice magazine report has claimed that Spain is the first European customer of Pegasus.
The victims of Pegasus
Amnesty explains that "the Pegasus program, which can take control of the keyboard, camera and microphone of the mobile phone, has already been used against a broad sector of civil society, which embraces at least 24 human rights activists, journalists and members of the Mexican Parliament, Saudi activists Omar Abdulaziz, Yahya Assiri and Ghanem Al-Masarir, Moroccan investigative journalist Omar Radi, award-winning Emirati human rights activist Ahmed Mansoor, Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, and an Amnesty International member, among others. This information has not been refuted by NSO Group ", denounces the human right group.
"NSO Group has a worrying track record in terms of digital surveillance, so Amnesty International has called on the Israeli Ministry of Defence to revoke export license of the firm, which has ignored the growing amount of data linking the company to attacks on human rights defenders. This request was rejected by a Tel Aviv court last July," it concludes.