2023-06-16 15:39:52
In response to a vote by members of the European Parliament urging the European Union (EU) to more strictly regulate the use, manufacture and trade of spyware, Rebecca White, campaign manager for the Technologies Task Force of Surveillance of Amnesty Tech, has stated:
“This European Parliament vote sends governments across Europe and around the world an unequivocal political signal: that the misuse of spyware must stop.. However, the signals are not enough. The report and recommendations should lead Member States, the European Commission and the Council of the European Union to take swift and meaningful action. If adopted, the recommendations would strengthen human rights safeguards in relation to the use and export of spyware, but in their current form they are not far-reaching and not binding.”
“It is especially disappointing that there is no call for an immediate suspension of the sale, acquisition, transfer and use of spyware. In the two years since the Project Pegasus revelations, we have not seen any real efforts by European states to address the misuse of spyware.. Amnesty International and other research teams and civil society organizations have shown time and again the magnitude and devastating impact of this global crisis and the impunity with which the surveillance industry operates. Now the Member States and the European Commission must take this opportunity to do something about it.
“Amnesty welcomes the promise of the members of the PEGA Commission to put pressure on the Commission and the Council of the EU and on the Member States and to monitor progress. However, even full implementation of the recommendations cannot protect people from surveillance tools like Pegasus, which is why these highly invasive forms of spyware need to be banned urgently.”
Given the fact that the European Commission of Investigation has confirmed the espionage of 65 people from the pro-independence environment of Catalonia by Spanish authorities and that the Spanish government has not wanted to collaborate with this committee, alleging reasons of national security, the Amnesty researcher International, Virginia Álvarez has reiterated:
“Spain has to investigate these events, it has to guarantee that those people who may have been illegally spied on have the right to justice and to be compensated, and the Prosecutor’s Office must show a firm commitment to promoting this investigation.”
“The organization recalls that until there is a profound reform of the Law on Official Secrets and the law that regulates the actions of the CNI, these acts of espionage can happen again.”
Today’s vote ends a year of work by the European Parliament’s PEGA Committee of Inquiry into spyware misuse, set up in response to the Project Pegasus revelations in 2021. The resolution passed overwhelmingly in the European Parliament with 411 votes in favour, 97 against and 37 abstentions.
The Pegasus Project, the result of the collaboration of more than 80 journalists, with the technical support of Amnesty International’s Security Laboratory, revealed the presence of traces of Pegasus spyware on the mobile phones of activists, political figures, journalists and advocacy and had major repercussions that continue to reverberate around the world. Amnesty’s Security Lab played a crucial role in uncovering expert evidence that the data could be linked to NSO Group’s Pegasus surveillance program.
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