Pegasus espionage case: Supreme Court will constitute committee to investigate whether the government spied or not, order will be passed next week

The Supreme Court is soon going to constitute a technical committee to investigate the case of alleged spying of journalists, activists, politicians and many prominent people of the country through Pegasus software. CJI NV Ramanna said on Thursday that the court will issue an order in this regard next week.

On September 13, CJI NV Ramanna, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli had reserved the interim order in the Pegasus espionage case. Earlier, the central government had refused to file any affidavit on whether it used Pegasus spyware or not.

Seeing the trouble of committee members in order postponed
The CJI informed this orally to Senior Advocate Chander Udai Singh, who appeared in Pegasus’s petitions. The CJI said that the court wanted to issue the order this week, but the orders were deferred for some time.

Some of the people the court wanted to include in the technical committee were skeptical about being part of it. So court next week will issue an order after deciding member of the Technical Committee.

The government gave no information on Pegasus, citing national security
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that the matter pertains to national security, so it cannot be made public. He said the government cannot tell whether it used spyware or not as it would alert terrorist organizations.

However, considering the seriousness of the matter, the Center has agreed that a committee should be constituted to investigate the matter and the committee will submit its report to the court. The bench said that no information about him from the national security or defense matters. It just needs cleaning that the government has made spying on citizens or not.

What is the Pegasus Controversy?
An international group of investigative journalists claims that Pegasus, the spy software of the Israeli company NSO, spied 50,000 people in 10 countries. India has also emerged so far 300 names, which went monitored phone. These include ministers in the government, leaders of the opposition, journalists, lawyers, judges, businessmen, officers, scientists and activists.

How does Pegasus work?
According to cyber security research group Citizen Lab, hackers use different methods to install Pegasus on a device. One way is to send an “exploit link” via message to the target device. As soon as the user clicks on this link, Pegasus gets installed in your phone.

In 2019, when Pegasus was installed on devices via WhatsApp, hackers took a different approach. At that time, hackers took advantage of a reduction in the video call feature of WhatsApp (bug). The hackers made video calls to the target phone through a fake WhatsApp account. During this time, Pegasus was installed in the phone through a code.