Status: 07.01.2022 6:46 p.m.
PiS boss Kaczynski, the actually powerful man in Poland, has admitted that the country’s secret services use the Israeli espionage software Pegasus. He rejected reports that opposition members were spied on with it.
The head of the Polish ruling party PiS, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, has admitted the acquisition of Israeli espionage software of the type Pegasus by Poland. Poland bought the product from the Israeli company NSO, Kaczynski told the weekly newspaper “Sieci”. Pegasus offers technical advantages and enables the monitoring of encrypted text messages in the fight against crime. “It would be bad if the Polish intelligence services did not have this type of tool,” he said.
At the same time, Kaczynski rejected reports that his government had used Pegasus for spying on the opposition. “But I can only emphasize that the opposition’s stories that Pegasus was used for political goals are utter nonsense.”
Apparently hacked several PiS opponents
The Pegasus software is able to read out all data from cell phones that have been attacked with it. In addition, Pegasus can switch on the device’s camera and microphone unnoticed.
According to reports from Polish media, the software was used in at least three cases to monitor people who are inconvenient for Poland’s national-conservative PiS government. The reports are based on findings from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which investigates the misuse of the controversial espionage software around the world.
The prosecutor Ewa Wrzosek, who criticized the judicial reforms, the prominent oppositional lawyer Roman Giertych and Senator Krzysztof Brejza were affected. In 2019 he led the election campaign of the opposition alliance Citizens’ Coalition, which emerged from the liberal-conservative Civic Platform party.
Information apparently used in the election campaign
Brejza’s mobile phone was reportedly hacked several dozen times during the election campaign leading up to the parliamentary elections in October 2019. Brejza led the opposition’s parliamentary election campaign in 2019. Text messages stolen from his phone were tampered with and broadcast by government-controlled television networks as part of a campaign at the height of the election campaign, which Kaczynski’s right-wing ruling party narrowly won.
“This is the deepest and most serious crisis in democracy since 1989,” said the head of the Civic Platform, Donald Tusk. Brejza and other representatives of the party expressed suspicion that the general election might have turned out differently without the Pegasus attack. PiS boss Kaczynski contradicted this. “They lost because they lost,” he said, looking at the opposition.