After the media revelations about spying on journalists with the Israeli Pegasus software, Paris wants to react.
Paris - France's government spokesman Gabriel Attal reacted in astonishment and indignation to media revelations that journalists were being monitored using Pegasus software from Israeli company NSO.
"This is of course an extremely shocking fact," said Attal on Monday the channel Franceinfo.
He announced - not detailed - investigations.
"We are very attached to freedom of the press," he added.
An international journalist consortium had previously published new allegations against NSO. IT experts reportedly found traces of attacks using the company's Pegasus software on 37 smartphones belonging to journalists, human rights activists, their families and business people. The numbers are part of a data set of more than 50,000 telephone numbers that the journalists evaluated together with the organizations Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International. According to the reports, the numbers were apparently selected by NSO customers as potential spying targets. NSO rejected the allegations on Sunday.
The "Süddeutsche Zeitung", NDR, WDR and "Zeit" are also involved in the consortium. According to their presentation, the research of the "Pegasus Project" suggests that hundreds of journalists, human rights activists, opposition activists and politicians have been selected to monitor them with the software. The numbers of more than 180 journalists from different countries are on the list. Numbers of German journalists are not among them.
As the daily newspaper "Le Monde" reported on its website, the Pegasus list includes around 30 journalists and heads of media companies in France. The online platform “Mediapart” reported that the cell phones of two of the company's journalists were targeted by the Pegasus software between 2019 and 2020 - Moroccan secret services were behind them, according to the allegation. "We are filing a complaint with the Public Prosecutor of the Republic in Paris," wrote "Mediapart". Government spokesman Attal did not comment on possible backgrounds of the affair and did not comment on the allegations that are directed against Morocco in this context. dpa
