Pegasus espionage case: Supreme Court will constitute a committee to investigate whether the government spied or not, the 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 an affidavit on whether it used Pegasus spyware or not.

Seeing the problems of the members of the committee, the order had to be postponed.

The CJI informed this orally to Senior Advocate Chander Uday 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. Therefore, the court will issue an order next week after deciding the members of this technical committee.

The government did not provide any 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 it does not want any information related to national security or defense matters. All it needs is a clarification on whether the government has spied 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. So far 300 names have come up in India too, whose phones were monitored. These include ministers in the government, leaders of the opposition, journalists, lawyers, judges, businessmen, officers, scientists, and activists.

How does Pegasus work?

According to cybersecurity 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 is automatically installed on the phone.

In 2019, when Pegasus was installed on devices via WhatsApp, hackers took a different approach. At that time, hackers took advantage of a bug in the video call feature of WhatsApp. 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.