Parliament Committee discusses Pegasus espionage software

A new European Parliament committee is meeting today to discuss the use of foreign surveillance technology against European government officials, journalists, activists and others. The committee was established in early March for the purpose of investigating the use of Pegasus and how it should apply to EU law. 

“We need to have a legal framework in Europe to face up to mass espionage and to this end I think the European Parliament has a critical role to play,” Diana Riba i Giner said. “We have been working tirelessly to reach the bottom of this case and to compel those responsible to be held [accountable] and to foster the necessary legislative changes to ensure that acts like this do not happen again. Acts which jeopardize our democracy [and] rule of law.”

Pegasus is a cutting-edge spyware developed by Israeli firm NSO. The company sells the spyware to governments for the purpose of combating crime and terrorism. However recently governments, researchers and newspapers have found that the software has been used against targets within EU countries. The software allows the customer of the software, not NSO, to track text messages, take screenshots, download the browsing history and even turn the camera or microphone on in a target’s phone.

A New Yorker article released yesterday highlighted the practices of NSO, the legal fight of tech companies like Facebook and Apple against them and the people who have already been affected by the spyware. Some of the victims of the spyware include Members of the European Parliament, which partly prompted the investigation of the committee. Several of the MEPs and other EU government officials whose technology has been infected with Pegasus were associated with the Catalan independence movement. 

These revelations come at a time when digital security and surveillance are increasingly hot topics in Europe. The Greek government was recently accused of unlawfully conducting surveillance on journalists. At a press conference today, Anna Julia Donath acknowledged the ability of Hungary, her home state to surveil anyone in the country without much oversight. 

The European Commission is calling this the “Digital Decade” for Europe, setting specific goals for clean, effective and useful technology around Europe by 2030. However in an effort to harness the increasing amount of data available in the EU, the EU will likely have to consider the cybersecurity side of that debate. MEPs who met today discussed the role future EU law might have in regulating the surveillance of EU citizens and how to address foreign spyware when it is discovered being used against EU governments and other institutions.

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