The world has been taken by storm by the not so recent news of the israeli spyware, Pegasus, being used by governments as a surveillance tool for their own citizens, instead of the terrorists it was originally intended to be used against.
Almost 20 media outlets investigated the use of this spyware, and the leaked list that named India as one of its buyers, along with several other “reputed” countries like Azerbaijan, Bahrain, India, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the U.A.E.
Out of the 50,000 numbers under scrutiny, about 300 belong to Indians.
In 2019 too, there was a furore in India and other countries after WhatsApp confirmed that some of its consumers were targeted with spyware. A total of 121 users from India, including activists, scholars and journalists, were affected by the breach. Experts said this suggested the complicity of state agencies in India.
However, it is still not clear where the new leaked list came from, who ordered the hack or how many phones have actually been hacked.
Like in 2019, NSO has again denied any misconduct on its part.
Now we’ve known for a while the state of affairs in our country, and, like the Family Man show pointed out ages ago, privacy is a myth. The shock comes, therefore, not so much by the lack of privacy, but by the sheer abundance of denial on the part of our authorities.
Or as they would like to say, by “the ploy of international media to disrupt the Monsoon session of India”.
So let us explain to you the chronology of events in terms that even they will understand.
Indian authorities’ very distasteful reaction to the pegasus spyware news is an intentional way of keeping its citizens in the dark. They’ve taken a shine to making any and every excuse available in the book, instead of acknowledging the storm brewing on the horizon and taking immediate measures to weather through it.
And as usual, most of our media outlets are hell bent on declaring this very serious allegation as a storm in a teacup, and they’re probably snowed under trying to give this a yet another masterstroke spin.
And we, as responsible citizens of a country in turmoil, are more interested in Bollywood scandals, instead of analyzing crucial issues under the cold light of the day and holding leaders accountable. But even if we do, we’d have more luck chasing rainbows than getting the authorities to listen, unless of course the pegasus news is true, and they already are.
But with the ever increasing cases of breaches of privacy, frequent arrests, and the general tone of limited freedom among the masses, a spring cleaning of all major political statements and decisions is in order, but who will do it?
Who can?
Because every cloud may well have a silver lining, but not every democracy has a good opposition. And we can say from experience, the latter is much, much more crucial and just as rare.