IT Ministry seeks WhatsApp's response by Nov 4 on Israeli spyware Pegasus spying on Indian journos, activists

The Government of India, concerned by the threat to privacy posed by an Israeli spyware on WhatsApp, has asked the Facebook-owned messaging service to submit a detailed report by November 4. The response is sought on the issue of Indian journalists and human rights activists on WhatsApp allegedly being targeted by the Israeli spyware.

WhatsApp has claimed that Indian journalists and human rights activists were among those globally spied upon by unnamed entities using an Israeli spyware Pegasus.

Seeking an answer to this, the Information and Technology (IT) Ministry on Thursday asked WhatsApp to explain the breach and the requisite steps that can be taken to safeguard the privacy of citizens. Union IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said that the Government of India is concerned at the breach of privacy of citizens of India on the messaging platform Whatsapp. ''We have asked Whatsapp to explain the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of millions of Indian citizens,'' Prasad said in a tweet.

Government of India is concerned at the breach of privacy of citizens of India on the messaging platform Whatsapp. We have asked Whatsapp to explain the kind of breach and what it is doing to safeguard the privacy of millions of Indian citizens. 1/4 pic.twitter.com/YI9Fg1fWro

— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) October 31, 2019

The IT Minister also said that the government is committed to protecting the privacy of all Indian citizens and that the government agencies have a "well-established protocol" for the interception, which includes sanction and supervision from highly ranked officials in central and state governments, for clearly stated reasons in the "national interest".

In a later series of tweets, Prasad continued saying, "Those trying to make political capital out of it need to be gently reminded about the bugging incident in the office of the then eminent Finance Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, during UPA regime. Also a gentle reminder of the spying over the then Army Chief Gen. V K Singh."

The Minister concluded by saying, ''These are instances of breach of privacy of highly reputed individuals, for personal whims and fancies of a family.''

WhatsApp has already filed a case against the Israeli firm - NSO Group - at a US Federal Court alleging the malicious cyberattacks with the spyware 'Pegasus', claiming the firm installed spyware on users' phones and targeted human rights defenders, journalists, political dissidents, diplomats and government officials.

WhatsApp accused the NSO Group of sending malware to roughly 1,400 mobile phones for ''surveillance.''

The Israeli firm, which makes software for surveillance, has rejected these allegations.

In its complaint, WhatsApp claimed that the NSO Group "developed their malware in order to access messages and other communications after they were decrypted on target devices".

WhatsApp also alleged that the NSO Group created various WhatsApp accounts and caused the malicious code to be transmitted over the WhatsApp servers in April and May.

"We believe this attack targeted at least 100 members of civil society, which is an unmistakable pattern of abuse," WhatsApp said in a statement.

The affected users are from several countries, including Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico, according to the lawsuit.

WhatsApp said that it is seeking a permanent injunction banning NSO from using its service.

The firm, which was acquired by Facebook in 2014, said it was the first time an encrypted messaging provider had taken legal action of this kind.

It may be recalled that the facebook-owned messaging services promotes itself as a "secure" communications app because messages are end-to-end encrypted.

This means they should only be displayed in a legible form on the sender or recipient's device.

(With Zee Media Newsroom inputs)