E-Paper
Listen to people’s voice instead of snooping on Oppn leaders: Akhilesh
Samajwadi Party president Akhilesh Yadav has called for an inquiry into alleged state-sponsored hacking attempts on Apple phones of political leaders. Yadav received a warning from his mobile company that his phone was being hacked or spied on by state agencies. Other leaders, including Mahua Moitra of the Trinamool Congress and Shashi Tharoor of the Congress party, also received warning emails. Apple stated that it does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.
Samajwadi Party (SP) president Akhilesh Yadav on Tuesday said the government should conduct an inquiry into the alleged alert of “state sponsored hacking” attempt on Apple phones of some political leaders.
In response to a question on issue while addressing a press conference at the SP’s headquarters here, he said: “It is sad. Early in the morning, I got a warning from the mobile company that your phone is being hacked or being spied on by state agencies. This is an attack on democracy and privacy. Big leaders of various parties are getting messages. The government should investigate it. Why spying, what use will it be when the entire country (public) is against the government.”
“Doing phone surveillance, spying or hiring hackers, tech experts to do snooping or taking help of other countries for doing snooping are all wrong. Those who do not like democracy and privacy of people are compromising India’s freedom and internal security by doing this,” the SP president alleged.
Some leaders of INDIA bloc such as Akhilesh Yadav himself, Trinamool Congress (TMC)’s Mahua Moitra, Congress’s Shashi Tharoor and Pawan Khera, Shiv Sena’s Priyanka Chaturvedi and Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)’s Raghav Chadha have alleged to have received warning emails from the mobile phone company “that were potentially remotely trying to compromise the iPhones associated with their IDs”.
Akhilesh Yadav addressed the press conference to unveil Samajwadi Party’s plan of building a grand memorial for the party founder the late Mulayam Singh Yadav at Saifai in Etawah district.
Talking about Mulayam Singh Yadav’s 2013 allegation of phone tapping of several MPs by the then Congress-led UPA government, Akhilesh said: “I think you remember that once Netaji had done a press conference here about the phone tapping of our family members (the then SP MPs). That government exited. This government too will exit”.
Later in the day, Akhilesh wrote on X: “I have heard the rulers are spying on opposition leaders phones. It would be better if they listen to the ‘voice of people’ instead of snooping on opposition leaders—in this way they will get a chance for course correction and there will be some work on price rise, corruption, unemployment, law and order, health services, crime against women...there could be some constructive work on caste census and social justice. But don’t know why, but I have heard that their own party people are more scared of this spying. Rulers should work instead of eavesdropping.”
Meanwhile, Apple on Tuesday issued a statement saying “it does not attribute the threat notifications to any specific state-sponsored attacker.” “State-sponsored attackers are very well-funded and sophisticated, and their attacks evolve over time. Detecting such attacks relies on threat intelligence signals that are often imperfect and incomplete,” the statement read.
“It’s possible that some Apple threat notifications may be false alarms, or that some attacks are not detected. We are unable to provide information about what causes us to issue threat notifications, as that may help state-sponsored attackers adapt their behaviour to evade detection in future,” it added.
