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It is India’s internal matter: Israel envoy on Pegasus issue
The Israeli ambassador’s remarks came a day after the Supreme Court set up a three-member expert committee to inquire into the alleged use of Pegasus spyware for surveillance of Indian citizens
Israel’s ambassador Naor Gilon on Thursday said his country allows the sale of spyware such as Pegasus only to governments, but declined to discuss its alleged use in India on the grounds that it is an internal matter.
Gilon’s remarks came a day after the Supreme Court set up a three-member expert committee, to be supervised by a three-member monitoring committee led by its former judge, to inquire into the alleged use of Pegasus for surveillance of Indian citizens.
The top court noted that the issues raised in the matter concern “the potential chilling effect” on the right to privacy and said the state’s power to conduct surveillance in the name of national security is not absolute.
“NSO [Group] is a private Israeli company. I was dealing with it in the past. Every export of NSO or [such companies] needs an export licence of the Israeli government. We grant this export licence only [for] exporting to governments,” the envoy said in response to questions on the Pegasus issue at his first news briefing after presenting his credentials.
“This is the only main requirement that... under the requirements, they cannot sell it to non-governmental actors. What’s happening here in India is an internal thing for India and I [would] rather not go into your internal matters,” he said.
The Supreme Court on Wednesday said that the technical committee will go into issues related to the right to privacy, procedure followed for interception, and involvement of foreign agencies in conducting surveillance on Indian citizens.
The Pegasus row erupted on July 18 after an international consortium of media outlets and investigative journalists reported that the phones of Indian ministers, politicians, activists, businessmen and journalists were among the 50,000 that were potentially targeted by Pegasus, NSO’s phone hacking software.
