Politico: Polish authorities monitored political opposition with Pegasus spyware
Photo: Slawomir Kaminski / Reuters
Researchers from the observation group Citizen Lab in Toronto have accused the Polish authorities of using the Israeli Pegasus software to spy on members of the political opposition. It is reported by Politico.
According to the publication, the victims of the program were the well-known lawyer Roman Giertych and the prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek. They said that their phones were hacked for the purpose of surveillance. However, the Polish government denied these accusations. “Any suggestions that the Polish services are using operational methods for the sake of political struggle are false,” said the country's secret service minister, Stanislav Zharin.
The European Parliament criticized the Polish authorities for using Pegasus spyware for political purposes. MEP Radoslaw Sikorski stressed that this puts Warsaw on a par with other authoritarian regimes that use illegal technologies to spy on rivals.
In September, it became known that the mobile phones of five French ministers had been infected with Pegasus spyware and had been tapped. In 2019 and 2020, French secret services have identified traces of Pegasus on the devices of members of the Cabinet of Ministers.
On July 18, Forbidden Stories and 17 media outlets from different countries published an investigation in which they accused the intelligence services of several states of using Pegasus to spy on journalists, oppositionists and politicians. The victims of the program could have been French Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, 14 French ministers and French President Emmanuel Macron.
