Dirty Tricks by State

SC Pegasus Ruling Historic; An Indictment of Modi Government: Dushyant Dave https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Er8fzUM8g Oct 27, 2021

In a 18-minute interview to Karan Thapar for The Wire, Dushyant Dave, a former President of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said the judgement is based on the Supreme Court’s assumption that Pegasus was used and that the right to privacy of Indian citizens was breached. He says the language used by the Supreme Court about national security and privacy “clearly establishes the Court is worried about the infringement of citizen’s right”.

Dushyant Dave says: “The Supreme Court has clearly and categorically stood with the citizens of India”. He adds: “It has told the government enough is enough”. He says the Supreme Court has said: “We are here as watchdogs”.

Pegasus Project: जासूसी कांड पर Supreme Court का ऐतिहासिक आदेश, कटघरे में Modi सरकार | Arfa Kahnum https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6YE9PfKVrkE 27 Oct 2012

The Supreme Court on Wednesday constituted a committee of experts to probe the case of alleged spying of Indian citizens through Israeli spyware 'Pegasus'. The court said that privacy cannot be violated under the guise of national security.
The Supreme Court said its endeavor is to uphold the constitutional aspirations and rule of law without indulging in "political rhetoric", but added that the petitions filed in the matter raise "Orwellian concerns".
Orwellian refers to that unjust and authoritarian position, idea or social condition, which is destructive to the welfare of a free and open society.
A bench of Chief Justice NV Ramana, Justice Surya Kant and Justice Hima Kohli quoted English novelist Orwell as saying, "If you want to keep something a secret, you must also hide it from yourself."

"Won't Be A Mere Spectator": SC's Earful For Modi Govt, Appoints Committee To Probe Pegasus Case https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnjDHtFBneA Oct 27, 2021

"More than a month after reserving its interim order in the Pegasus Snooping Case, the Supreme Court finally today announced its order in the case. The Supreme court appointed an independent committee comprising three technical experts who will be supervised by its retired judge Justice R V Raveendran. The committee has been tasked to conduct a “thorough inquiry” into allegations of use of Pegasus software for unauthorised surveillance by the govt. A bench headed by Chief Justice of India N V Ramana said the committee will “enquire, investigate and determine” whether Pegasus Spyware was used to snoop upon the Indian citizens? What steps did the GoI take? Were there any enquiries conducted post-2019 revelations regarding the Pegasus spyware? and whether it was the Government of India which bought the Pegasus spyware?
A very important order has been given by the Supreme Court today. The Pegasus snooping row has already kicked up a political storm with much of the monsoon session being disrupted over the issue. But the issue is beyond just a political slugfest between ruling party and the opposition. The Issue is about the Citizens of India and their rights. That Right to Privacy is a fundamental right and snooping of citizens means breaching that fundamental right. it is important to find out who is responsible for this.
Today, the Supreme court of India has asked the committee to submit its report within 2 months. Additionally, the Supreme Court had some very pertinent observations for the Government of India which has remained rather stubborn over the Pegasus issue calling it a conspiracy by anti-national elements.

Prime Time With Ravish Kumar | Pegasus Snooping Case Highlights: Supreme Court Forms Probe Panel https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JczpmsqBJ2k  Oct 27, 2021

Pegasus: The Law May Permit the State to Intercept Phones but Not to Weaponise Them by  Soutik Banerjeehttps://thewire.in/law/pegasus-our-law-permits-the-state-to-intercept-phones-but-not-to-weaponise-them 18/Aug/2021

The distinction between intercepting information sent through a phone and a phone working as a spy cam to record one’s actions and communications which were not carried out through the said device is crucial.

While the government is suggesting that any public discussion on the use of Pegasus may pose a threat to national security – the CJI has said that the court will be mindful of this – that in itself does not prevent a discussion on the legal regime of surveillance in India and whether the use of Pegasus would fall within or without the confines of the law.

Rule 2(f) of the Information Technology (Procedure for Safeguards for Interception, Monitoring and Decryption of Information) Rules, 2009, which were passed in furtherance of Section 69 of the IT Act which provides power to issue directions for interception, decryption or monitoring of information.

Interception is defined to mean the acquisition of the contents of any information so as to make the contents of the information available to any person other than the sender, recipient or intended recipient of the communication. Thus, it is amply clear that ‘interception’ can only be done of the contents of information that forms part of some ‘communication’ through a computer resource, and not of actions and conversations that simply happen to be near a computer resource.

The ‘yes or a no’ the Court must ask about Pegasus Gautam Bhatia
https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/the-yes-or-a-no-the-court-must-ask-about-pegasus/article36953053.ece   OCTOBER 12, 2021

The issues before the Court were simple: did the Government of India authorise the use of Pegasus upon the individuals whose names had appeared in the list? If it did, was there any justification for the use of such intrusive surveillance upon individuals who, admittedly, were not accused of any wrongdoing? And if it did not, was it not a breach of the
Government’s constitutional obligations to protect its citizens from the use of military-grade surveillance by rogue actors?

..Throughout the hearings, the Government continued upon its track of evasion.. whenever the question of widespread and serious rights violations arises, the Government recites the words “national security” like a mantra, not simply to avoid providing answers, but to hint that even asking the question is somehow illegitimate. In this way, “national security” becomes a cloak for impunity.

A record of the hearings so far indicates that the Court has allowed the Government to get away with much of its evasion. Despite the passage of two and a half months, the Court is yet to pass anyconsequential orders 

On the last date of hearing, September 13, the Court indicated that it would establish a Committee to look into the matter.

In India, we have a long experience of “death by Committee”: issues that require urgent attention linger for many months in a Committee, and once public memory has dulled, are given a quiet burial.

We Thought It Was Fiction https://www.radicalecologicaldemocracy.org/we-thought-it-was-fiction/ 
September 18, 2021 Alfredo Lopez, Melanie Bush, Hamid Khan and Ken Montenegro, from "May First Movement Technology", discuss the threat posed by Pegasus, the malicious hacking software, and how the progressive and “alternatives” communities should organize to push back against this steady erosion of people’s rights, and work to end tech dominance and intrusion into our lives

Extracts: 

Techno-colonization is rapidly creating a world of haves and have-nots in its own culture and practice of profound dependency. Even those who don’t use technology and the internet are impacted by it in many aspects and in the control over their lives.

The governments usually don’t comment — this is spy activity, after all — and many “civil society” NGOs will only say that it provides needed software support for governments fighting terrorism, human trafficking, and other crimes. However, Pegasus has been found on the phones of thousands of activists, politicians, journalists, researchers and educators. 

For the most part, the victims are opponents or observers of very repressive governments in developing countries, which makes this mega-surveillance even more predictable.

Pegasus is a weapon that embattled governments use to keep tabs on and then repress their opponents.

It’s a nightmare for popular and liberation movements. Although activists have deployed social media in their liberation movements as in Egypt and other places, it has come back to haunt them once the tech driven stalker state has gathered, stored, and shared information on the activists and launched massive witch hunts.

The people most affected by this growth in surveillance, movements for social change, face a vexing contradiction: in a climate ravaged, capitalism collapsed world where society itself seems to be falling apart, how important is “privacy” and is privacy even the right framework for this fight?

How do you have a successful movement against a government and its policies while the government is examining, logging and analyzing every single thing you do and say?

The only answer to Pegasus, and the galloping intrusion it represents, is a multi-pronged response. There is no universal law on privacy, nor any real attempt to urge the world’s government to develop a law with some strength and specificity. The laws that exist, dis-unified and sometimes contradictory, are as toothless as a sloth. Pushing that, through organizations like the Association for Progressive Communications, is one prong of a potential effective approach. But to be effective, it must be blanket: no more spying software. Abolition. Period.

Perhaps most important, all organizing, education and lobbying must be internationally coordinated. A framework that demystifies and decolonizes the language that surrounds such tools to help communities understand its capacity and scale of harm. That would represent an act of growth, learning, and love; but the Pegasus adventure (taking advantage of disparate national laws and uncoordinated national movements) should teach us how important international coordination and solidarity are.

Email Poser from Hari DK

1) "But to be effective, it must be blanket: no more spying software. Abolition. Period."

We live in a path-dependent world. A lot of the acceleration of spying technologies has been in the aftermath of 9/11 and we should factor that into the explanation of its presence. Would you still support the abolition of spying software if it meant a 9/11 this year? This week? Tomorrow? Every day?

2) Keeping the above in mind, surely surveillance to a *reasonable extent *is the price we have to pay in order to secure ourselves from ourselves. "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty".
Could I suggest that, if this is so, instead of a blanket abolition of spying, we should push for better and more oversight through proper governance and process?

3) If you say that better process on when and how to engage spying technology is not possible, then may I say to you - your agenda of "revolution" to achieve this seems to be much more impossible! What are you going to do - force every spying node on the Internet to decommission its tech? How? By pointing a gun to their head?

Cristine Dann:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/04/surveillance-state-september-11-panic-made-us-vulnerable It gives a very detailed account of how biased, excessive and either damaging or ineffective the state and corporate spying in the USA has been post 9/11.

how the spying potential of IT is abused by states is available from the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab ( https://citizenlab.ca/).

One of the few clever and positive uses of technology to keep people safe recently is the international anti-drug smuggling initiative reported on here -
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/sep/11/inside-story-most-daring-surveillance-sting-in-history 
In this instance, however, only those people who were known bad actors or in close contact with bad actors were targetted for surveillance - and this is how any legitimate surveillance operation should work.

Sadly, it is far more common for 'good actors'

No chance that the military-industrial complex (now including Big Tech) is about to stop working for and with the Market-State any where any time soon, and as demands for ethical behaviour don't cut any
ice on this issue as with climate change and so many others, I think the only realistic position for good actors, be they activists or journalists, is to assume that their digital communication devices can and will be hacked at any time, and to take every precaution accordingly.

"Why Abolition Is The Response To Surveillance" https://gitlab.com/-/snippets/2179387