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No Substance In Pegasus Allegations; It’s An Attempt To Malign India: IT Minister

Mumbai: There’s no substance in the “sensational” reports of Pegasus spyware being used to snoop on journalists, ministers and activists in India, IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Monday.

The reports were an attempt to “malign Indian democracy and its well-established institutions”, he added.

Vaishnaw, who is giving his maiden speech in Parliament as the new MeitY minister, said the “highly sensational story” has created many people “from above”, but there is “no substance behind them”.

“It is not a coincidence that the report has been published a day before the monsoon session of Parliament,” he said. “In the past, similar ones [about the use of Pegasus] were made on WhatsApp, but these have no factual basis and have been categorically denied.”

India is among countries that used the Pegasus phone hacking software of Israeli company NSO Group to potentially target politicians, journalists and activists, an international association of 17 media organizations including The Guardian, The Washington Post, and Die Zeit said. India’s news website The Wire was one of the 17.

The first part of a multi-part investigation released late Sunday said that 38 Indian journalists (according to The Guardian), including three current journalists from mainstream publications (Hindustan Times named the publications as Sister Mint One). is), and other websites. Freelancers were targeted.

The 38 are among 180 journalists the report said were targeted worldwide, including the editor of the Financial Times Roula Khalaf, and journalists from the Wall Street Journal, CNN, New York Times, and Le Monte.

The NSO Group, in response to Forbidden Stories and its media partners, said the interpretation of the leaked dataset was misleading. “The alleged amount of leaked data of more than 50,000 phone numbers may not be a list of numbers targeted by governments using Pegasus,” and added that it “does not have insight into the specific intelligence activities of its customers.”

Vaishnaw said there were discrepancies in the report. “A report clearly states that the presence of a number in the NSO’s list does not mean that it is under surveillance,” he said. “The union has gained access to the leaked database of 40,000 numbers. The presence of the number does not indicate that there was an attempt to hack, or that one was successful,” he said.

Citing NSO’s statement calling the report misleading, the minister said, “The response also states that the names of the countries using Pegasus is incorrect.”

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