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Special Lecture by Michael Safi on 'The Pegasus Project'
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Anoushka
5:30
Hello and welcome to the special lecture on 'The Pegasus Project' by Michael Safi, an international correspondent at The Guardian.
5:35
Safi starts the discussion by expressing his indebtedness to the Indian journalism for helping him do his job better, even years after leaving India.
5:38
Talking about the project, he mentions that among the many names that struck him on the list of targets of Pegasus, were - Prashant Kishore and the All India Youth Congress (AIYC).
5:42
Safi says: "We’re talking about a company that hacks phones, they’re doing it for a living." "Pegasus sold to fight crime, but in reality used differently," he adds.
5:43
Safi answers on how one goes about conducting an investigation that involves media houses across the world: "You have to assume that your phone is compromised."
5:44
“Whichever Indian government entity hacked Siddharth’s phone the first time could have done it again," Safi adds while talking about the editor of India's The Wire which was a part of The Pegasus Project.
5:45
He says: "A phone can be turned into a surveillance device, easily."
5:46
He asks us to imagine if somebody was inside our phone, and think about what they have access to -- basically everything.
5:48
Safi talking about what he learned through this project says: "the extent to which we have introduced a vulnerability in our lives leads to the conclusion that we have compromised ourselves."
5:50
“We had to build an entirely independent system of communication, that could not be breached," says Safi. He chuckles and adds: “I have never lied to so many priests ever before."
5:53
Talking about the process of talking to potentially targeted individuals, Safi urges everyone to think about a scenario in which somebody calls such civilians up, and says he wants to meet them in a cafe. He does not talk - just slides a sheet of paper that mentions that they are being spied on - and one would think to oneself, “What crazy world I have stepped into!”.
5:55
Safi adds: “It was crazy to persuade people to take part in this project." It was about building silos to only give information that was required and just telling people that their phone was hacked and not talk about the whole list.
5:57
He chuckles again and mentions that they had to even hide that from their partners. "The question of how your day went is hard to answer," he adds.
5:58
"My partner and I, would have to put our phones away to even ask each other how our day was, it became part of life," Safi adds.
Do you think Pegasus is a danger to our democracy?
Yes, absolutely (100% | 19 votes)
 
No (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 19
"When we told Rahul Gandhi your phone has been compromised, he said “tell me something I don’t know".
5:59
For him it was no surprise, says Safi. "Rahul Gandhi had been approached by somebody and he had been told that his number and name were on that list."
6:01
"We started making maps to figure out who around Mr. Gandhi could be spied upon," adds Safi. “The question of why was more complicated."
6:02
The tech people at amnesty came with a report that Kishore's phone was hacked as recently as that morning. He was directing Mamata Banerjee’s Bengal campaign, says Safi.
6:04
Speaking about the reaction to these revelations, he says: "India had the biggest reaction out of all countries". He credits this to India being a robust democracy.
6:06
"Our biggest concern was that this story would come out and it wouldn't have an impact...but truth has a power and good factual reporting isn't about shouting, and that makes journalism".
6:08
6:09
The team working on the story had concerns over the reception the Indian government would have. To avoid that, Safi says: "We told the government only 48 hours before publishing the story."
6:26
Answering a question asked by an audience member on receiving backlash by the governments for such reporting, he opines: "We live in a world now where it's all about competing narratives...we as journalists need to have faith and to unearth the truth and make sure that our work is rooted with evidence."
6:29
The response to the project in India does give Safi hope, and he says: "The Indian democracy has picked up on what was happening and that is precisely what we wanted."
6:30
"Do not trust your phone, it is not your friend, and can be used against you any moment," is the mantra Michael Safi stresses upon.
6:34
Replying to a question on how the team chose to pursue people who were presumed to be hacked, he explains that they narrowed down the list.
6:36
Their criteria was that of "furthering public interest", and hence they chose to contact those whose phones being targeted, which had the biggest implications for democracy.
6:39
After these revelations, Safi says, NSO has become a "tainted" organisation. This is particularly in reference to its links to the journalist Jamal Khashoggi's murder, apparently at the behest of Saudi Arabia's King, Muhammad Bin Salman.
6:41
"The failure of the NSO group is that the information came to an ordinary journalist like me in Beirut."
6:43
6:45
Safi also points out that apart from the security and privacy concerns, Pegasus is also a very expensive software, and if used by governments then it is straight from the taxpayers' share to the government.
6:50
He adds that it is difficult to gauge the impact of stories like this, especially in a country as big and diverse as India. However, he believes that: "Even if it looks like no one is listening, in the end, the truth will break out through narratives."
6:51
"The most powerful narratives spun by tyrants break down, and as journalists all we have to do is give people information."
6:57
Do you think surveillance laws in India needs to be reformed to counter illegal surveillance?
Yes, absolutely (0% | 0 votes)
 
No (0% | 0 votes)
 
Total Votes: 0
These words bring us to the end of this special lecture. Thank you for joining us and stay tuned for similar events at #ACJLive.
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