On Tuesday, 15 February, MEPs once again expressed not only their anger to the European Commission and the French Presidency of the Council of the EU but also their concerns about practices of using spyware such as the Israeli Pegasus software to illegally surveil journalists, political opponents, judges, or social activists.
On this occasion, they stressed the need for the European Parliament to equip itself with a committee of inquiry tasked with investigating the use of this software in the EU, which has been proven in Hungary and Poland and for which national investigations have, incidentally, been opened.
The European Parliament’s political group leaders could give this committee of inquiry the green light this week; the committee would also be in charge of investigating in place of the European Commission or the Council of the EU, which “do nothing” but condemn, according to Sophie in ’t Veld (Renew Europe) of the Netherlands.
“We cannot overemphasise the severity of this situation”, Dutch MEP Jeroen Lenaers (EPP) said in reaction, condemning the fact that, “at all times”, people can know “your exact whereabouts” via this software. “I know it scares me!” he admitted. While he considered law enforcement’s use of new technologies to fight criminal groups or terrorism to be legitimate, “this is about the abuse of technology”, he added.
Greens/EFA Co-President Philippe Lamberts (Belgium) also denounced this “scandal” and the abusive and illegal spying practices that can affect anyone and that are no longer the prerogative of totalitarian regimes such as China.
For his part, French Secretary of State for European Affairs Clément Beaune insisted on the work needed to strengthen cybersecurity in the EU and called on co-legislators to quickly reach an agreement on the network security directive (NIS2) when the trilogue meeting on the draft is held this week.
Reaching an agreement on this directive “is one of the objectives of the French Presidency”, said the Frenchman, who also reiterated that the EU is founded on values such as freedom of the media and the protection of privacy, that journalists in Europe “must always feel safe”, and that political opponents or civil society associations must be able to express themselves freely and champion their causes.
For his part, European Commissioner for Justice Didier Reynders called on the European Parliament to make progress on the e-Privacy regulation, which will be one of the tools used to strengthen the protection of privacy and communications, and reiterated that any invasion of privacy by public authorities must be strictly proportionate and necessary.
EDPS wants to ban Pegasus
The European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS) has called for a ban on the Pegasus software. In particular, the EDPS emphasises that using Pegasus could lead to an “unprecedented level of intrusiveness, which [...] is able to interfere with the most intimate aspects of our daily lives”.
The EDPS also believes that a “ban” on such software would be “the most effective option” to protect fundamental rights and freedoms and insists that it is necessary to pursue a discussion that is focused not only on technology but also on privacy.
Link to the EDPS’s position: https://aeur.eu/f/c3 (Original version in French by Solenn Paulic with Thomas Mangin)