Polish MPs will begin their investigations on Monday into the Pegasus spyware which allegedly made it possible to illegally “follow” numerous personalities, MPs, judges, lawyers and journalists.
In Poland, a parliamentary commission of inquiry will begin on Monday its investigative work on the Pegasus spyware scandal (but also on other means of surveillance) which would have made it possible to “follow” a very large number of people in a manner illegal.
On Tuesday, the new Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, announced that he had documents detailing a “very long” list of victims of Pegasus spyware, illegally placed under electronic surveillance by the former government (nationalist Law and Justice party, PiS), which ruled the country for eight years.
This notorious opponent of the previous government tells how he was spied on in his privacy.
Bartosz Kramek, Open Dialogue Foundation: “It was about eavesdropping, it was also about recording visuals in my hotel rooms, also about obtaining data on the transactions I was carrying out with my credit card in terms of hotel services , and also of an alleged provocation.”
At this stage no one knows the exact number of personalities who would have been monitored by the former government.
In addition to the parliamentary investigation which will begin, complaints have already been filed. This victims’ lawyer explains the illegal nature of this surveillance.
Jacek Dubois, lawyer, vice-president of the State Court: “The only constitutional limitation is surveillance with the consent of the court, which has strictly defined rules, at certain times and only for specific cases. What is material outside of these cases must be destroyed (…) The State has no right to control citizens, to be the guardian of their morality. The constitution has in effect been invalidated.”
Blacklisted, the national conservative party recognized in 2022 the use of Pegasus softwareu name of the fight against corruption notably. This MP nevertheless asserts that the special services acted legally.
Jacek Ozdoba, deputy of the PIS party, member of the Parliamentary Commission: _”_Pegasus is essential (in the face of new technologies) but I do not think that any officer would have taken the risk of taking operational measures without gather evidence which was then transmitted to the prosecutionthen sent back to court.”
But this prosecutor, herself a victim of spyware, insists that the courts did not know the details of how Pegasus worked.
Ewa Wrzosek, prosecutor, victim of Pegasus: “The Polish courts, when granting such authorizations for operational control, were not aware, were not aware that this type of spyware, this software that breaks all the security of the phone, was being used. On the basis of all this information, (…) (within the services, within the prosecutor’s office, the conclusions of the (parliamentary) commission), decisive and categorical measures will finally be taken.”
In 2021, a consortium of media coordinated by Forbidden Stories revealed that software marketed by the Israeli company NSO Group was used on a large scale by several countries to spy on journalists, lawyers or political opponents.