CAIRO (Dispatches) –
Human Rights Watch is calling for governments to stop the sale, export and transfer of surveillance technology after discovering that a senior staff member was targeted with Pegasus spyware last year.
Crisis and conflict director and head of the Beirut office, Lama Fakih, who oversees HRW crisis response for countries such as Syria, Ethiopia, and the United States, was targeted with the spyware five times between April and August 2021.
With Fakih’s work, which includes documenting and exposing human rights abuses, HRW has said that it may have attracted the attention of various governments, especially those suspected of being NSO clients.
The software, developed and sold by the NSO Group in the occupied territories, is introduced on mobile phones. Once Pegasus is on the device, the phone becomes a powerful surveillance tool, allowing full access to the camera, calls, media, email, and text messages.
“It is no accident that governments are using spyware to target activists and journalists, the very people who uncover their abusive practices,” Fakih said.
“They seem to believe that by doing so, they can consolidate power, muzzle dissent, and protect their manipulation of facts.”
Fakih was notified of the security breach by Apple, who sent an iMessage, an alert, and an email saying that someone was targeting her personal iPhone. HRW also discovered that Fakih’s current and former phones were infected with the Pegasus spyware.
Through an investigation that Amnesty International’s Security Lab reviewed, they found that Fakih’s iPhones had been infected by a so-called “zero-click” exploit that infects a phone without the user doing anything, such as clicking on a link.
During an international investigation last year, it was uncovered that the Pegasus software was used to hack the phones of activists and journalists.
Other key victims of the Pegasus software breach included Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi, who was murdered inside the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in October 2018 by Saudi officials.
In June, Forbidden Stories, a Paris-based non-profit working with 16 media organizations, revealed that more than 50,000 phone numbers had been selected by government clients to be hacked since 2016.
In November 2021, the U.S. Biden administration announced its decision to place the NSO Group on a US blacklist.
Meanwhile, the chairman of NSO Group resigned, following more than a year of reports in the media about the company’s controversial Pegasus spyware.
NSO confirmed to AFP the departure of Asher Levy, who was appointed chairman in 2020, but denied that his exit was linked to the Pegasus controversy or an investigation announced by the occupying regime’s