More than 200 Spanish cellphones were selected as possible surveillance targets by a client of NSO Group, an Israeli firm that markets a spyware program named Pegasus, the British newspaper The Guardian reported on Tuesday. This media outlet added that this client is believed to be Morocco, according to a data leak that led to a collaborative investigation known as the Pegasus Project.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .“The mobile number selections believed to have been made by Morocco occurred in 2019, according to time stamps in the data, which includes more than 50,000 numbers of individuals selected as possible surveillance targets by NSO clients around the world,” said the British newspaper citing the leaked database.
One of the numbers belongs to Aminatou Haidar, a prominent human rights activist from Western Sahara, who had been targeted by Pegasus since 2018, according to an Amnesty International analysis. Traces of the Pegasus spy program were found on a second phone belonging to Haidar in November 2021. A number belonging to the Spanish journalist Ignacio Cembrero, whose work focuses on the Maghreb region of Africa, was also found.
The fact that these phone numbers were selected by a client believed to be Morocco does not mean that all the numbers were attacked or hacked, according to the British outlet. But it does indicate that the client seemed to be actively seeking possible targets for surveillance within Spain.
The maker of the spyware, NSO Group, maintains that the fact that a number appears on the leaked list does not indicate whether it has been subject to surveillance with Pegasus. The company defends that its product is intended to fight crime and terrorism, and says that each time it learns about a possible misuse of Pegasus, it tries to find out whether its client bought it for legal purposes or to snoop around in the phones of political opponents, activists, journalists and dissidents. An NSO spokesperson told EL PAÍS that this kind of activity violates the desirable use of these tools.
