Reports show how Israeli company, NSO’s Pegasus has been used on journalists, others

NSO is an Israeli tech company that has developed the Pegasus software. The software is a sophisticated programme that can jailbreak any device and spy on victims.

A new collaboration from leaked documents involving 17 media organisations, that Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International had access to shows that more than 50,000 phone records were selected as targets by clients of NSO Group for surveillance, including journalists.

Analysis of these records by Forbidden Stories and its partners, shows that the phones of at least 180 journalists were selected in 20 countries by at least 10 NSO clients.

These government clients range from autocratic (Bahrain, Morocco and Saudi Arabia) to democratic (India and Mexico) and span the entire world, from Hungary and Azerbaijan in Europe to Togo and Rwanda in Africa. Among the selected victims are journalists, human rights defenders, political opponents, businesspeople and even heads of state as targets of this invasive technology.

Ghana and Pegasus

Sometime in 2016, the Ghana government through the National Communication Authority (NCA) obtained the Pegasus machine. The country however, didn’t pay for the software. The NCA paid $4 million for the machine.

The NCA officials during whose tenure the machine was bought was subsequently tried, found guilty and jailed.

BY Emmanuel K. Dogbevi