Poland paid for an Israeli spy program to monitor its own population but was not given the keys to control the program. The spy company retained control, the data left the country, and Tusk calls it a crime against the state. Seven people are now under suspicion.
The former PiS government purchased the Pegasus spyware in 2017, but did not have control over it. This is the conclusion of an investigation that has now been partially declassified. Prime Minister Donald Tusk calls it a crime against the state.
Full Access – Everything May Have Been Leaked to Israel
Pegasus, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, provides access to text messages, emails, chats, calls, contacts, photos, files, and GPS location. The microphone and camera can be activated. The program was used by the Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA), the Security Service (ABW), and the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW) against hundreds of targets, including opposition leaders, independent prosecutors, and the lawyer Roman Giertych.
PiS claimed that the operation was carried out to combat crime and with court authorization. The Polish Parliament’s investigative commission found that the courts were never informed of the program’s full capabilities, and that the CBA lacked the required security clearance.
”Crimes Against the State”
According to previously classified reports from the ABW, the CBA lacked passwords for administrator accounts. The server module that infected the phones was under NSO’s exclusive control, and the data was transmitted out of Poland via NSO-controlled networks with servers located abroad. NSO had the technical capability to access the phones remotely while surveillance was in progress, without interrupting it.
– They paid for a system that, in effect, transmitted every conceivable piece of information about Polish citizens, Polish opposition leaders, and Polish independent prosecutors to the Israeli side, says Donald Tusk.
– This is no longer just a scandal. We’re talking about a crime against the state.
Seven people are under suspicion: former heads of the CBA, ABW, and SKW for allowing the use of surveillance without accreditation, a former deputy CBA director for the illegal disclosure of material from the Giertych surveillance operation, and three CBA employees for conducting unwarranted surveillance and misleading prosecutors and judges. The scandal has led Israel to seize classified documents linked to Pegasus.
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