Is Pegasus Snooping Hacking India’s Democracy?

With just a single text it can bypass your phone’s security and install spyware that grants complete access to your device without you even being aware of it.

The spyware technology that makes this possible is called Pegasus.

It is the most advanced piece of technology ever developed and effectively the most invasive form of surveillance ever imaginable.

The Pegasus Project is an investigation initiated by 17 media channels along with forbidden stories and amnesty labs.

The 10-day-long and continuing report on the hacking of phones of opposition leaders, union government ministers, officials in high places, army and police officers, corporate leaders, civil society activists, and journalists have revealed the extent of subversion of democracy and its institutions in India.

The Pegasus scandal is a very crucial matter for Indian democracy. The widespread and unaccountable use of surveillance is morally disfiguring. Privacy is an essential component of dignity and agency. So surveillance needs to be treated as a moral affront.

Preserving privacy is directly about preserving democracy.

The power that comes about as a result of knowing personal details about someone is a very particular kind of power, although it also allows those who hold it the possibility of transforming it into economic, political, and other kinds of power.

When governments, ruling parties, political executives, or corporations start holding and using that data in unlawful ways, they hold power disproportionate to that held by citizens and thus distort democracy.

The Israeli NSO Group has publicly said that it sells Pegasus spyware only to “vetted governments” and expects them to use it for specific national security and criminal investigations.

But the question here is why are constitutional authorities, judges, and journalists being selected as possible candidates for surveillance?

The hacking in India by spyware opposes the lawfully laid out system of surveillance that may be mandated by demands of national security. In India, hacking phones, even if ‘authorized’ by secretaries to the Government of India in the Ministry of Home Affairs, has no legal sanction. It is not to be mistaken for surveillance. The new minister for IT has tried to sit on the fence by neither denying nor accepting responsibility, but as the digital rights group Internet Freedom Foundation puts it:

It is important to note that no such power to hack the phones of Indian citizens exists under Indian law, and the pre-existing surveillance powers available under the Telegraph Act, 1885 and the Information Technology Act, 2000 do not permit the installation of spyware or hacking mobile devices. The hacking of computer resources, including mobile phones and apps, is a criminal offense under S[ection] 66 of the Information Technology Act, 2000.

Democracies are based on a supposition of a level playing field, ensuring all political players are governed by a similar set of rules. If invasive software is deployed by the state, then how can free and fair elections be conducted? How can there be an autonomous judiciary? How can journalists confidently research and telecast unbiased news? How can there be privacy in anyone’s life?

If the Pegasus hacking is not thoroughly investigated and if those who approved the use of the spyware are not held accountable, India will have an ending that is far from cheerful. Future historians would find it hard to believe that democracy in India was allowed to be strangulated in broad daylight.