Benjamin Netanyahu's son was under surveillance using Pegasus? A state commission will be established in Israel
On that day, the Israeli daily "Calcalist" reported that the police used spyware without court permission to spy on the son of former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu - Awner and the former head of government's associates. Benjamin Netanyahu is accused of for fraud and accepting a bribe three times.
I will set up a state investigative commission to "look at the allegations in full," said the head of the Israeli Ministry of Public Security. "I will not allow such reports to go unanswered while I am in office," added Bar Lew.
Earlier that day, Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai called on the government to set up a committee of inquiry to investigate cases of spyware misuse.
"We cannot lose our democracy and our police, and in particular, we cannot lose public trust in them. (This case) requires a deep and thorough investigation," said Israeli President Yitzhak Herzog.
Prime Minister Naftali Benet has yet to comment on the situation, but at least three coalition ministers have called for an independent commission to investigate allegations of illegal wiretapping.>>> Praca.Wirtualnemedia.pl - thousands of ads from the media and marketing
The spyware company NSO claims that it does not conduct Pegasus surveillance itself, that all subscriptions sold for using the program were approved by the Israeli Ministry of Defense, and that the technology is only used by governments to fight crime and terrorism.
The president left NSO
In November last year The U.S. Department of Commerce placed NSO on its blacklist, claiming that an Israeli company sells spyware to foreign governments, which then use the hardware to attack government officials and journalists.
A lawsuit has been filed by Apple, which believes that the use of Pegasus violated US law, because the tool hacked into iPhone operating systems. Microsoft Corp, Facebook's parent company Meta Platforms Inc, Google Alphabet Inc and Cisco Systems Inc have also taken legal action against NSO. Several other IT companies strongly criticized the activities of the Israeli company.
In January, the Israeli Attorney General ordered an investigation into reports that Israeli police have been using Pegasus spyware to hack the phones of civilians, including politicians and anti-government protest leaders, since at least 2015.
At the end of January, Asher Levi resigned as president of NSO Group. He denied that his resignation was related to lawsuits or an international hacking scandal.
Pegasus sold to secret services from all over the world
Israeli authorities have long been helping sell Pegasus and other cyber services in what has been called Israeli "cyberdiplomacy". In July 2021, the results of an international journalistic investigation of 17 media outlets were published, which found that the software allowed the tracking of at least 180 journalists, 600 politicians, including three presidents, 10 prime ministers and one king, as well as 85 human rights activists and 65 business leaders from various countries .
The next day, during the commission's meeting, the president of the Supreme Audit Office, Marian Banaś, stated that in his opinion he had been the victim of illegal surveillance, described the situations from 2017 and 2018 to prove it. He announced that the Supreme Audit Office would like to question Jarosław Kaczyński, Deputy Prime Minister and PiS president, on this matter. The former president of the Supreme Audit Office, Krzysztof Kwiatkowski, showed documents confirming that the license to use Pegasus was purchased by the CBA with funds from the Justice Fund.
In turn, Krzysztof Brejza presented a schedule of attacks on his phone using the Pegasus software, emphasizing that "data of strategic importance" for the KO campaign had been stolen. At the end of January, the Associated Press reported that, according to the findings of Citizen Lab, in 2019, Pegasus was used to hack the smartphones of the head of AgruUnia, Michał Kołodziejczak and Tomasz Szwejgiert, associated with the Wieści24.pl website. Kołodziejczak was heard by the Senate committee this week.
The leader of Agrounia called Miłosz Kłeczek "the ruling apparatchik". He announced a lawsuit against TVPThe Senate committee does not have investigative powers like the investigative committee that can be appointed by the Sejm.
PiS is boycotting the commission, Kaczyński reassured about Pegasus
PiS senators do not participate in the work of the Senate extraordinary committee on the use of the Pegasus system. PiS spokeswoman Anita Czerwińska emphasized that the commission "is political chutzpah". "The point is to give a line of defense to those against whom the proceedings are pending" - she stressed.
President of PiS, Deputy Prime Minister Jarosław Kaczyński stated in an interview with the weekly "Sieci" that the creation and use of Pegasus is the result of a technological change, the development of encrypted messengers that cannot be read by old monitoring systems. "It would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of tool" - he said.
He assured, however, that it was not used against the opposition. "This is complete nonsense," he declared.
Gazeta Wyborcza reported that people associated with PiS were also spied using the Pegasus software: former party spokesman Adam Hofman, former MP Mariusz Antoni K., former Treasury Minister Dawid Jackiewicz and Katarzyna Kaczmarek, the wife of "agent Tomek", and the first of Among the people under surveillance was Bartłomiej Misiewicz, former spokesman for the Ministry of National Defense and head of the political office of the then head of this ministry, Antoni Macierewicz.
