Adoption of the PEGASUS Committee’s Report of Findings and Recommendations: Democracy under surveillance…

 

Statement by AKEL MEP Giorgos Georgiou at the Press Conference on the surveillance/wiretapping case

17 July 2023, AKEL C.C. Press Office, Nicosia

In July 2021 a consortium of investigative journalists revealed that the Israeli company NSO sold the military spy software PEGASUS to governments around the world, including European ones, for the illegal surveillance of politicians, journalists and other public figures. There was an admission made that former Presidents of democracies, European Commissioners, top EU officials, politicians, journalists and activists were being monitored.

We extend our grateful thanks to you, the journalist family, because through your actions you have brought PEGASUS to the fore and that is where this huge effort of clearing up and transparency began, as well as the shielding of the rule of law and protection of our fundamental rights.

In response to the scandal, the European Parliament set up on 10 March 2022 a Committee of Inquiry (PEGA) to investigate the illegal abuses of spyware in Europe.

After more than a year of hard and persistent work, fact-finding missions to EU member states, hearings and dozens of meetings, we managed, on 8 May 2023, with the adoption of the Report of Findings and the Report of Recommendations, to complete the work of the PEGASUS Investigation Committee. The Committee’s work has faced many obstacles and inhibiting factors, the greatest being the reluctance of national governments to respond to what everyone knew…Namely, that we were being watched. With some governments, perhaps, continuing to do so…

One fact is beyond any dispute.

Most, if not all, EU member state governments have purchased surveillance and interception software, primarily for law enforcement and security purposes. However, through press reports, revelations by victims and public interest witnesses, and the work of the Committee, there is ample evidence with regards the misuse of such software in many member states for purely political purposes, targeting critics and political opponents or in connection with corruption…Indeed some member states, including

Cyprus, have played an important role as export hubs for espionage software…

As Vice-Chairman of the relevant PEGA Committee, I requested (August 2022) that a fact-finding mission to Athens be organised immediately, while I informed the Bureau, in view of the revelations and confessions that companies producing and exporting such software operate in Cyprus, that this case should also be placed at the centre of the Committee’s work.

We came to Cyprus, we went to Greece, Israel, but also to other member states and we asked for answers to these issues. We also asked why democracy should be monitored…We treated with disdain and received little or no substantive answers from national authorities…

The former President of the Republic, Mr. Anastasiades, bid farewell to the PEGASUS Committee with the inimitable: “there is nothing illegal, it’s all a figure of your imagination…” In the end, they were not figures of our imagination.

Apart from the general findings regarding the lack of a broader EU institutional framework for monitoring software and the need for reforms for its use on the basis of proportionality, necessity and legality, in both Reports Cyprus is exposed.

It is recorded that there is evidence of erroneous administration in the implementation of the EU dual-use regulation in Cyprus, reference is made to the black spy van and the need to make the relevant finding public, the Cyprus-Greece link with Intellexa and Predator software is documented. Cyprus is mentioned as an export hub for spy software and the existence and presence of the notorious NSO on the island is identified.

In the Report of Recommendations, which was approved by the Plenary of the European Parliament on 15 June 2023, recommendations are made towards Cyprus in a severe tone:

• All export licenses issued for spyware interception software should be thoroughly assessed and revoked where necessary,
• The various Israeli companies or companies owned and managed by Israeli citizens registered in Cyprus and involved in such activities should be should mapped,
• All allegations of illegal use and export of spy software, in particular to journalists, lawyers, Cypriot citizens and civil society organisations must be fully investigated, with the assistance of EUROPOL.
• The Report of the special investigator on the ‘Spyware Van’ case, as requested by the Committee during its official mission to Cyprus should be made public.

The Committee’s message through the adoption of its Reports is clear and is addressed to all, member states and institutions alike:

We urgently need action to regulate a surveillance industry that is out of control. We denounce the abuses of spyware aimed at intimidating the opposition, silencing critical media and manipulating elections. Reforms are needed, given that the EU’s governance structures cannot effectively deal with such digital surveillance attacks. Stricter controls are needed at EU level to ensure that the use of spy software so that serious crimes are investigated is the exception, not the rule.

The work that has been done is very important. And we will build on it. But it is not enough.

We are facing a global technological disaster. A new digital war…

The international community must take action to curb the global software surveillance industry. Initially through a moratorium on their sale and transfer until a global regime with transparent demands based on the rule of law is established.

The bitter truth is that the surveillance and wiretapping will, unfortunately, continue for the simple reason that we live and operate in an EU institutional framework and environment that, on the pretext of the need to counter terrorist phenomena and “radicalization”, promotes policies and legislation that undermine or endanger the privacy of citizens’ lives…

Our response to all of them, however, is quite clear.

They will find us opposing them. I am sure you will too.

Democracy, the rule of law, fundamental freedoms are not up for negotiation.