Furore erupts over WhatsApp spying exposé

The confirmation by WhatsApp that the mobile phones of several Indian rights activists and journalists had been hacked into has sparked a furore with privacy activists asking the government to clarify. The spyware — Pegasus — sold by Israel’s NSO Group was used to tap into 1,400 WhatsApp accounts globally.Responding to queries from ET, the NSO Group disputed the allegations. “The sole purpose of NSO is to provide technology to licensed government intelligence and law enforcement agencies to help them fight terrorism and serious crime. Our technology is not designed or licensed for use against human rights activists and journalists. It has helped to save thousands of lives over recent years,” the company said in a statement.On Thursday, IT minister Ravi Shankar Prasad took to Twitter to reiterate the Centre’s concern at the breach of privacy of Indians, and said his ministry had sought an explanation from the app. WhatsApp has to reply by November 4. Home ministry officials said ‘attempts to malign the government’ for the reported breach were misleading.Privacy Experts Voice Concern“The government operates strictly as per provisions of law and there were adequate provisions to ensure that no innocent citizen was harassed or his privacy breached,” said one of the home ministry officials. They added that the government was committed to protect the fundamental rights of citizens, including the right to privacy, and would take strict action against any intermediary responsible for any breach. A WhatsApp spokesperson confirmed to ET that Indian users were among those contacted this week. Facebook and WhatsApp had filed a lawsuit against the Israeli company in a California court on October 29.Some of the affected Indian activists include lawyer Nihal Singh Rathod, activists Bela Bhatia and Degree Prasad Chauhan, academician Anand Teltumbde and former BBC journalist Shubhranshu Choudhary. They were alerted by WhatsApp earlier this month that their phones had been under surveillance for a two-week period in May 2019. The Indian Express reported the development on Thursday.Rathod, Bhatia, Chauhan and Teltumbde are connected with the Bhima Koregaon case, in which 10 human rights activists were arrested last year on charges of links with a banned Maoist outfit. They claimed they were first contacted by Canadian security research unit The Citizen Lab — which has volunteered to help WhatsApp in the investigations — and later by the messaging app. They were advised to change their phones as well as passwords.Teltumbde said that according to The Citizen Lab, his phone was hacked sometime in March-May. “Pegasus is a sinister software and I noticed my phone was misbehaving. There is rampant spyware hacking in this country. What to do? I don’t know how to live in this country,” he said.SEEKING TIGHTER LAWSTerming the developments as “unprecedented”, privacy experts demanded tighter laws on such surveillance in the country. “It (the government) needs to answer, whether it procured such spyware and why, since under the Telegraph Act or the IT Act there are no powers to install spyware or malware on smartphones,” Apar Gupta, executive director of the Internet Freedom Foundationtold ET.In a post on October 29, The Citizen Lab — housed in the University of Toronto — said NSO Group’s spyware was being sold to government clients without appropriate controls over how it is used by the clients. “They are, in turn, using NSO’s technology to hack into the devices of members of civil society, including journalists, lawyers, political opposition, and human rights defenders — with potential lethal consequences,” it said.Rathod, who represents several of the accused in the Bhima Koregaon case, including Dalit lawyer Surendra Gadling, told ET that he had suspected his phone was being spied on in 2018 and raised a complaint with WhatsApp in March 2019. Experts contend that surveillance powers in India are not being reconciled with the reality of the Supreme Court’s privacy judgment delivered by a ninejudge bench, and that there is no movement for surveillance reforms either through judicial oversight or parliamentary reporting.‘EXPANSION IN SURVEILLANCE POWER’“There is a tremendous expansion of the existing surveillance power of the government,” said Gupta of IFF, which has challenged in the Supreme Court the December 2018 notification of the home ministry authorising 10 central agencies to intercept, monitor and decrypt any computer information.Raman Jit Singh Chima, Asia policy director and senior international counsel at Access Now, said hacking is a criminal offence under the IT Act. “Last week, the Bombay High Court passed a judgment against the CBI in a corruption case over illegally intercepted conversations and said it is against the Supreme Court order on privacy. The HC said this can be allowed only in the case of public emergency or in the interest of public safety,” he said.Access Now is an international non-profit, human rights, public policy and advocacy group that works towards an open and free internet. It has worked with The Citizen Lab in discovering how activists have been targeted, and tried to direct attention on the human rights concerns around how surveillance tech firms such as NSO Group operate.Trying to put fears at rest, IT minister Prasad said, “Government agencies have a well-established protocol for interception, which includes sanction and supervision from highly ranked officials in central and state governments, for clear stated reasons in national interest.”71845641

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