PRAGUE: European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen said Monday the spyware scandal involving an Israeli software firm and up to 50,000 smartphone numbers was “completely unacceptable” if true.
“This has to be verified, but if it is the case, it is completely unacceptable,” she told reporters in Prague.
Media outlets including The Washington Post, The Guardian and Le Monde drew links Sunday between the Israel-based NSO Group, accused of supplying spyware to governments, and a list of tens of thousands of smartphone numbers, including those of activists, journalists, business executives and politicians around the world.
Von der Leyen, who was in Prague to present a Czech post-Covid recovery plan worth 7 billion euros ($8.2 billion) approved by the EU, slammed the alleged attack on journalists’ phones.
“Free press is one of the core values of the European Union,” she said after meeting Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis.
The NSO Group and its Pegasus malware — capable of switching on a phone’s camera or microphone, and harvesting its data — have been in the headlines since 2016, when researchers accused it of helping spy on a dissident in the United Arab Emirates.
The leak consists of more than 50,000 smartphone numbers believed to have been identified as connected to people of interest by NSO clients since 2016, the news organizations said, although it was unclear how many devices were actually targeted or surveilled.
NSO has denied any wrongdoing.
Founded in 2010 by Israelis Shalev Hulio and Omri Lavie, NSO Group is based in the Israeli hi-tech hub of Herzliya, near Tel Aviv.
Pegasus spyware affair ‘completely unacceptable’ if true: EU chief
https://arab.news/m7vya
Pegasus spyware affair ‘completely unacceptable’ if true: EU chief
- The NSO Group and its Pegasus malware have been in the headlines since 2016
Costa Rica says plot to assassinate president uncovered
- Security services unveiled that a hitman had been paid to assassinate president Rodrigo Chaves
SAN JOSE: Costa Rica’s government on Tuesday said it had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Rodrigo Chaves on the eve of national elections, in which his right-wing party is tipped for victory.
Jorge Torres, head of the Central American nation’s Directorate of Intelligence and National Security, cited a “confidential source” as informing the agency that a hitman had been paid to attack Chaves.
The purported plot comes two weeks before the country holds presidential and parliamentary elections.
Chaves, who is barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive term, has backed one of his former ministers, Laura Fernandez, to succeed him.
Opposition groups have warned against what they see as possible interference in the election from the iron-fisted president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Chaves has invited Bukele to Costa Rica on Wednesday to lay the founding stone of a new mega-prison modelled on El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Thousands of young men are being held without charge in CECOT, as part of Bukele’s war on gang violence.
