Faced with a spurt of allegations under the Pegasus project controversy, the Israel-based NSO Group has said that it will no longer respond to media queries over the matter. In a strongly-worded statement, the tech company has called the Pegasus project a “well-orchestrated media campaign… pushed by special interest groups”. “Enough is enough,” the company’s spokesperson said.
Notably, a consortium of media outlets, including The Washington Post, The Guardian, and The Wire have published a list of targets including world leaders, activists, journalists, opposition figures among others who they claim were being surveilled using the Pegasus software developed and distributed by the NSO Group.
The NSO group, however, has strongly denied the allegations and claimed that the list is not that of targets or potential targets. In a statement released on Tuesday, the Israeli company said that it neither operates the system nor has access to its customer’s data. “they (the customers) are obligated to provide us with such information under investigations,” the statement read.
We “will not play along with the vicious and slanderous campaign,” an NSO spokesperson said.
The company added that any ‘credible’ proof of its technology getting misused will be investigated thoroughly and it will even shut down the system if necessary.
Talking of its mission, NSO Group said that it would continue to help governments around the world to prevent terror attacks, break up pedophilia, sex, and drug-trafficking rings, locate missing and kidnapped
children, locate survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, and protect airspace against
disruptive penetration by dangerous drones.
In India, the list of people alleged to have been targetted through the Pegasus software includes Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, Prashant Kishor, Union IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw among others.
