Poland’s most powerful politician has admitted that the country has bought advanced spyware from Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group, but denied it was being used to target his political opponents.
Jarosaw Kaczyski, the leader of Poland’s ruling conservative party, Law and Justice, said in an interview that many countries are using the secret services. Pegasus Software to combat crime and corruption.
Kaczynski said the use of such spyware came in response to the increasing use of encryption to mask data in transit, which defeated earlier surveillance techniques. By hacking the phone, it lets authorities monitor communications, as well as real-time conversations where they are not encrypted.
“It would be bad if Polish services didn’t have this kind of equipment,” Kaczynski said in an interview to be published in the Monday edition of the weekly magazine Siasi. The news portal wPolityce.pl published excerpts on Friday.
The interview follows exclusive reports by The Associated Press that Citizen Lab, a cyber watchdog group at the University of Toronto, found that three Polish government critics had been hacked. of NSO Pegasus.
On Thursday, Amnesty International independently confirmed Citizen Lab’s finding that Sen. Krzysztof Brezza had been hacked multiple times in 2019, while running the opposition’s parliamentary election campaign.
Text messages stolen from Breja’s phone were broadcast by state-controlled TV in Poland and broadcast as part of a smear campaign in the heat of the race, which was won by the populist ruling party.
Brezza now says the election was unfair because the ruling party would have access to the strategic thinking and plans of his campaign.
The hacking revelations have rocked Poland, with comparisons to the 1970 Watergate scandal in the United States and calls for an inquiry commission in parliament.
Kaczynski said he sees no reason for setting up such a commission, and denied that surveillance played any role in the outcome of the 2019 election.
“There is nothing here, no facts, except the frenzy of the opposition. There is no Pegasus case, no surveillance,” Kaczynski said. “No Pegasus, no service, no secret information played no part in the 2019 election campaign. They lost because they lost. They shouldn’t be looking for excuses like this today.”
The other two Polish targets were confirmed. civil laboratory Roman Geertic, a lawyer who represents opposition politicians in a number of politically sensitive cases, and Eva Razocek, a free-minded prosecutor.
Asked by the AP in December whether Poland had bought Pegasus, state security spokesman Stanisaw Zarin would neither confirm nor deny it. However, several Kaczynski colleagues publicly expressed skepticism over suggestions of government use of Pegasus.
Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki called the Citizen Lab-AP’s findings “fake news” and suggested that a foreign intelligence service could be spying – an idea rejected by critics who said any other government could have three Polish targets. Wouldn’t be interested.
“The Pegasus system is not in the possession of Polish services. It is not used to track or survey anyone in our country,” Deputy Defense Minister Wojciech Skrkiewicz said in late December.
Polish media reports said that Poland bought Pegasus in 2017 using money from the so-called Justice Fund, which is meant to help victims of crimes and rehabilitate criminals.
According to an investigation by broadcaster TVN and daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza, the software is used by the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, a special service created to tackle corruption in public life that is under the political control of the ruling party.
“Public money was spent on an important public purpose, related to the fight against crime and the protection of citizens,” Kaczynski said.
Dozens of high-profile cases of Pegasus abuse have been uncovered since 2015, many last year by a global media consortium, showing the NSO group malware lurking journalists, politicians, diplomats, lawyers and human rights activists from the Middle East was planned. Mexico.
The Polish hacks are considered particularly serious because they did not take place in an oppressive autocracy, but in a member state of the European Union.
Amnesty International’s Poland director, Anna Blaszak, alleged in a statement on Friday that spying on the opposition would be in line with the behavior of the Polish government under law and justice. The European Union has criticized Poland for judicial interference and other actions considered undemocratic.
“These findings are shocking but not surprising. They raise serious concerns not only for politicians, but for Poland’s civil society in general, especially the government’s record of relentlessly destroying human rights and the rule of law.” In terms of,” Blaszak said.
Get the latest from the Consumer Electronics Show at Gadgets 360, our CES 2022 Hub.
,