Hearing on the implications of the Pegasus spyware at Committee on Legal Affairs and Human Rights, Parliamentary assembly Council of Europe https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=27455&LangID=E
Statement by United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet 14 September 2021
widespread use of the spyware commercialized by the NSO group, affecting thousands of people in 45 countries across four continents. The targeting of human rights defenders, journalists and politicians is just another example of how tools allegedly meant to address security risks can end up being weaponized against people with dissenting opinions.
Abuses facilitated by the surveillance industry have grown so common that only days before the Pegasus revelations, another report described opaque deals involving the marketing of a different spyware, Candiru. That spyware was said to have similarly targeted at least 100 human rights defenders and journalists in at least 10 countries.
Governments and companies have developed numerous surveillance tools, citing real security threats and noting the urgent need to fight criminal activity online and offline. And this surveillance industry has thrived in the absence of minimal levels of regulation and control at both national and global levels. A surveillance technology market has dangerously flourished in the shadows, far from justice oversight and public scrutiny –both in authoritarian countries and in democracies. The prevailing opacity and lack of regulation created the perfect conditions for broad security claims to be translated into new measures of repression.