Bihar CM Nitish Kumar breaks silence over Pegasus row, calls snooping 'dirty, worthless'

As if the heat of the Opposition was not enough, now the ally of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Janata Dal-United has come forward to indirectly criticise the government over reports of journalists, judges, and ministers in India being targeted with Pegasus spyware. He called such acts of snooping by misusing technology "dirty" and "worthless". 

"All this is dirty. This is worthless. It is not good to disturb anyone like this. All this new technology that has come...and its misuse...the effect it has...people are troubled...their work gets hindered," Kumar told the media. 

The statement by Nitish Kumar comes inspite of the government refuting all claims. The IT Minister, during his address in the Parliament, categorically called the Pegasus Project report and the uproar over it "sensationalism". 

"The basis of this report is that there is a consortium which has got access to a leaked database of 50,000 phone numbers. The allegation is that individuals linked to these phone numbers were being spied upon. However, the report says that: The presence of a phone number in the data does not reveal whether a device was infected with Pegasus or subject to an attempted hack. Without subjecting a phone to this technical analysis, it is not possible to conclusively state whether it witnessed an attack attempt or was successfully compromised. Therefore, the report itself clarifies that the presence of a number does not amount to snooping," the IT Minister said while reading the NSO statement before the House.

NSO refutes snoopy claims 

A report by sixteen media houses claimed that 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers were allegedly spied upon using Israeli surveillance technology firm Pegasus - which only has 36 vetted governments as its clients. As per the leaked database of Pegasus, numbers of those allegedly spied upon include over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving cabinet ministers, current and former heads, and officials of security organizations and businessmen. The target also includes the eight activists currently accused of the Bhima Koregaon case. The report claims that the leaked numbers mainly belong to ten countries - India, Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Republic Media Network, in this connection, wrote to Israeli-firm NSO Group, which in its reply outrightly refuted any connection between the 50,000 phone numbers and the United States. Citing a renowned newspaper, the firm stated that 'the purpose of the list could not be conclusively determined' and the list does not 'identify who puts the numbers on it or why'. The firm further added, in the report,  it is mentioned that 'how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled was unknown'.