“We are reporting facts that are contrasted and that are reliable. They are not assumptions”, assured Bolaños, who considered these “illegal and external” interventions to be “extremely serious”, although he did not clarify whether there could be a State behind the maneuver.
Interference?
“We are absolutely certain that it is an external attack because in Spain, in a democracy like ours, all interventions are carried out by official bodies and with judicial authorization,” he said. “In this case, neither of the two circumstances has occurred and that is why we are sure that it is an intervention that is external,” he added.
The Government filed a complaint yesterday before the National High Court, which is the judicial body in charge of cases of national or international relevance, such as those of terrorism.
As soon as it infects a phone, Pegasus allows access to data, messaging services or remote activation of cameras and microphones.
NSO assures that this program, whose export requires the authorization of the Israeli authorities, is only sold to States to help them fight against terrorism and crime. Pegasus and NSO are, however, the subject of serious accusations since a media consortium revealed last year that it had been used to spy on hundreds of politicians, journalists, human rights activists or businessmen in various countries.
According to the NGO Amnesty International, this software could have been used to hack up to 50,000 mobile phones in the world.
Bolaños indicated that “two intrusions” had been detected in Sánchez’s cell phone in May 2021 and one in Robles’s, in June 2021. In both cases, the interventions made it possible to extract “a certain volume of data from both mobile phones”, added the minister, without giving further details.
Information
According to the newspaper El País, the hackers extracted 2.6 gigabytes from the phone of the head of government in the first incursion and 130 megabytes in the second, in addition to nine megabytes from Robles, but it is still unknown what type of information was stolen and its sensitivity. In both cases it is their official telephone numbers, provided by the State.
These latest revelations come in the midst of political turmoil in Spain, where the socialist government has been under intense tension for days with the Catalan separatists, who accuse the National Intelligence Center (CNI) of having spied on them through the aforementioned software.
The case exploded on April 18, when Citizen Lab, a cybersecurity project at the University of Toronto, published a report that identified more than 60 people from the pro-independence orbit – mostly Catalan – who would have had their mobile phones attacked. or infected between 2017 and 2020 with the Israeli program.
Without clarifying whether the secret services of the State had spied on or not, Sánchez announced last week that the CNI would open an internal investigation and promised to “be accountable.”
For the Catalan separatists, however, the Executive’s response was insufficient and yesterday they once again demanded forceful measures.
complaints
“When the massive espionage is against the Catalan institutions and the independence movement, silence and excuses. Today, everything is rush. Responsibilities must be assumed now ”, the president of the Catalan regional government, Pere Aragonès, reiterated yesterday on his Twitter account. “The double standard of measurement is evident. Against independence, anything goes,” he added.
This crisis has a very serious dimension for the left-wing government of Sánchez, which needs the support of the Aragonès formation in Parliament to remain in power until the end of the legislature, at the end of 2023.
“What is clear is that the Spanish government is solely responsible for this case of espionage, whether by action or omission,” criticized the spokeswoman for the Catalan regional executive, Patricia Plaja, who once again demanded that measures be taken as soon as possible. “An investigation commission is already needed and we must go to the end,” she requested.
Source: Ambito
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