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India’s highest court ordered an investigation on October 27 to determine whether the state spied on political opponents, journalists and activists through Israeli software. The decision is seen as a significant victory for the complainants following the repeated avoidance of an investigation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s administration.
An alleged mass espionage network has the Indian Government on the ropes. The country’s Supreme Court ordered the formation of an independent committee to investigate the state for allegedly spying on dozens of political rivals, activists, businessmen and journalists, among others.
The group of experts is empowered to call witnesses, demand official documents, and take action against those allegedly involved or the government if they refuse to cooperate with the investigations.
The delegation will be made up of three cybersecurity experts and their work will be supervised by a retired judge from the highest court. The results of the inquiries must be presented within a maximum period of two months.
According to the accusations, the authorities would have intercepted the devices using Pegasus software, from the Israeli company NSO, a cybernetic tool capable of intercepting a smartphone, extracting its content, turning on the microphone and camera and listening to the calls of its owner without leaving the slightest trace.
The Indian opposition has demanded that the Indian authorities explain how and for what they allegedly used the Israeli intelligence mechanism.
The judges of the Indian court criticized the refusal of the Government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to pronounce against the accusations and affirmed that so far New Delhi has only delivered “a vague denial of the accusations”.
“The state cannot get a free pass (for allegedly spying) raising national security concerns. No prohibition can be claimed against judicial review ”, the magistrates stressed.
Siddharth Varadarajan, founder and editor of the Indian non-profit website ‘Wire’ and who collaborated in the journalistic investigation, assured in an interview with ‘The Guardian’ that this Wednesday’s announcement “is a good start. The Supreme Court has rightly refused to buy into the government’s ‘national security’ logic, ”he said.
The journalistic investigation that sparked the wiretapping scandal
The order of the Indian court comes after the investigation of a Forbidden Stories consortium, made up of 17 international media outlets that last July revealed a report in which it ensures that the mobile phones of 50,000 people of interest in different countries were hacked by their governments.
Among those allegedly spied on is Hatice Cengiz, the fiancée of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, murdered at his country’s consulate in October 2018, in Istanbul; as well as foreign correspondents from France 24, reporters from other media such as the US news agency AP, ‘CNN’, ‘The New York Times’,’ Le Monde ‘,’ Financial Times’ and the Arab network ‘Al Jazeer ‘a, among others.
In India, among the alleged targets spied on, there is a list of more than 1,000 telephone numbers corresponding to journalists and political opponents such as the leader of the opposition, Rahul Gandhi, government officials and human rights defenders, some of them imprisoned today.
Investigations in that country could have far-reaching repercussions, as surveillance laws allow wiretapping but prohibit “piracy”, even by the state.
With AP, AFP and local media
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source https://pledgetimes.com/supreme-court-orders-investigation-against-government-of-india-for-alleged-espionage/
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