Journalists demand punishment for using Pegasus

Baku/15.01.22/Turan: Before the Christmas holiday, Krzysztof Breiza of the Polish opposition Civic Platform party said that from April to October 2019, his smartphone was hacked 33 times. On October 13, 2019, parliamentary elections were held in Poland. At this time, the Polish state television channel TVP released fake emails that were supposed to serve as evidence that the politician was conducting a hate campaign against his competitors. According to Breiza, these letters were stolen from his phone and subsequently changed. It soon became clear that other Polish politicians had also been secretly wiretapped.

Six months before these events, the same scandal erupted in Azerbaijan. The authors of an international journalistic investigation, using data from an anonymous source provided by the international Amnesty International and the French non-governmental organization Forbidden Stories, published a report last summer on surveillance of persons objectionable to the authorities in dozens of countries, and in Azerbaijan. Surveillance is carried out using a telephone program produced by the Israeli company NSO Group. The Pegasus program developed by the Israelis, designed to help government agencies fight terrorism and crime, is possibly used to spy on oppositionists and journalists. This is the main conclusion of the investigation, which is based on a database of about 50,000 phone numbers from about 50 countries.

The Pegasus program allows you to quickly and discreetly access your mobile phone, listen to conversations, read correspondence and watch videos. Definitely establish whether the phone was hacked, only a special examination can. Amnesty International conducted 67 such examinations. According to her, in 23 cases it was proved that the phone was "infected" with spyware, and in 14 - that there was at least one such attempt. Writes about it dw.com.

The NSO Group denied the allegations. When asked by DW, a spokesman for the company pointed out that the journalists were unable to prove "an unambiguous connection" between tens of thousands of phone numbers and the NSO Group and that "there is no large-scale conspiracy." The company said the publications "deliberately mislead readers."

According to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), the Pegasus program was not delivered to Russia, and two of the former Soviet republics are mentioned in the investigation - Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. In Azerbaijan, "many human rights activists" and "at least 48 journalists" are being monitored through Pegasus.

Of the journalists, Khadija Ismailova is mentioned. Traces of spyware on Ismailova's phone were discovered during an examination conducted by Amnesty International Security Lab. According to her, the journalist's phone was "infected" in March 2019, the last time the program was used three weeks before her departure from the country. Surveillance, adds SZ, was also carried out for Ismailova's lawyers.

Other Azerbaijani journalists who may be monitored by local intelligence agencies - Sevinj Vagifgizi and Jasur Mammadov - live in Germany. Fatima Movlanli, who works in Baku, is also among those tapped.

DW appealed to the Azerbaijani authorities with a request to comment on the publications in the press, but no response was received.

Journalist Fatima Movlanli, in an interview with Turan, said that using the phone and social networks, she noticed problems and assumed that she was being watched, but did not think that such serious software tools were used for this. She gave up the smartphone she was using and acquired other means of communication.

F. Movlanly intends to punish those responsible for interfering in her private life. Today she met with the prosecutor of the Binagadi district Khayal Azizov, she was promised an investigation. If Fatima does not achieve legality in Azerbaijan, she will appeal to the Strasbourg Court of Human Rights.

F. Movlanly's lawyer is Yelchin Sadikhov, he is also on the list of those monitored by the Pegasus program. In an interview with Turan, the lawyer stated that, in accordance with the Code of Criminal Procedure of Azerbaijan, surveillance of the citizens of the country without a court order is inadmissible.

Article 16 of the Code of Criminal Procedure of the Republic of Azerbaijan. Ensuring the right to privacy

16.1. In the course of criminal proceedings, no one's right to protection of the secrets of personal life (one's own and one's family), correspondence, telephone conversations, information transmitted by mail, telegraph and other means of communication, and other information may not be limited, except for the cases provided for by this Code.

16.2. Seizure of postal and telegraph and other correspondence, its verification and seizure, interception of conversations conducted by telephone and other devices, information transmitted through other channels of communication and technology, and other information may be carried out in the cases provided for by this Code, and, as rule by order of the court.

Lawyer E. Sadikhov also said that secret wiretapping of citizens' conversations without a court order is contrary to the Constitution of Azerbaijan.

Article 32 of the Constitution of Azerbaijan:

I. Everyone has the right to personal security.

II. Everyone has the right to keep the secret of personal and family life. Except as provided by law, interference with private and family life is prohibited. Everyone has the right to be protected from unlawful interference with private and family life.

III. Collection, storage, use and dissemination of information about someone's private life without his consent is not allowed. Except in cases established by law, no one may, without his knowledge, and contrary to objections, be subjected to surveillance, video and photographic recordings, voice recording and other similar actions, except in cases established by law.

IV. The state guarantees everyone the right to maintain the secrecy of correspondence, telephone conversations, postal, telegraph messages and information transmitted by other means of communication. This right may be restricted in the manner prescribed by law in order to prevent a crime or to reveal the truth during the investigation of a criminal case.

V. Except as otherwise provided by law, everyone can get acquainted with the information collected about him. Everyone has the right to demand the correction or removal (liquidation) of information collected about him that is not true, incomplete, or obtained in violation of the requirements of the law.

VI. With the exception of cases established by law, access to information resources maintained in electronic form or on paper in order to obtain data on third parties is prohibited.

VII. Except in cases where the person to whom the data relates expressly consents to this, the processing of statistical data of an anonymous nature under the condition of non-discrimination and other cases permitted by law, information technologies cannot be used to disclose data about personal life, including those regarding beliefs, religion and ethnicity.

VIII. The range of individual data, as well as the conditions for their processing, collection, transfer, use and protection are established by law.

The lawyer added that the violation of the listed legal rights of citizens entails the possibility of criminal punishment for those responsible for abuse of office. E.Sadikhov repeatedly petitioned for the punishment of those responsible for such a crime, but the effect of his appeal was not given.

In Azerbaijan, according to various sources, the organizer of the use of Pegasus was Ali Hasanov, who was dismissed from the post of presidential assistant for socio-political issues in November 2019. During his tenure in a high position, opposition figures and journalists noticed frequent interference with the operation of telephones and computers. Journalists of the Turan news agency repeatedly observed unknown men "on duty" at the office of the agency, allegedly engaged in surveillance. Despite the fact that, according to experts, Pegasus allows you to read the contents of phones and computers of tracked individuals from a distance.

Since the end of 2019, there have been fewer such cases, but the reason may not only be that Hasanov was fired, and after the revelation of the truth about the Israeli program, the US imposed sanctions against this company and distributors of Pegasus. The fact is that variants of this program have already been developed in other countries and are freely sold. Now, to get information about any person, you do not need to contact the sanctioned NSO Group. There are other competitors and analogues in the spyware market. Experts are talking about the DarkMatter company from the United Arab Emirates and an unknown Russian company, called by the experts ENFER (translated from French - "hell"). It is assumed that ENFER is associated with the FSB of the Russian Federation, and the real name of the company is Positive Technologies.

An equally significant player in the spyware market is the Italian company Hacking Team. Her Remote Control System software is installed on her computer via fake emails with attachments. Then, without the knowledge of the owner, she takes screenshots, connects to a webcam and microphone, and intercepts correspondence and passwords. According to researchers from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, Hacking Team products are in demand among "authoritarian regimes": Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and others. For this, Reporters Without Borders declared the Hacking Team "enemies of the Internet."—0—