Democracy continues to be under surveillance…- Article by AKEL MEP Giorgos Georgiou

 

 

19 March 2024

The issue of surveillance/wiretapping has taken on an all-EU dimension. It has to do with democracy and the preservation of our privacy. That is precisely why we express our warm thanks to journalists, Cypriots too, whistle-blowers defending public interest and NGO’s, because they were the ones who revealed PEGASUS and PREDATOR and began this huge effort to clean up and promote transparency.

I had the honour of being the European Parliament’s Vice-Chairman of the Investigative Committee on PEGASUS monitoring the spyware/software issue. This is a position of enormous importance, but of corresponding difficulty as well since, as part of the European Commission’s 15-month investigation, Cyprus was also put under the microscope.

During our term of office in this Committee, we requested, and managed to secure, in cooperation with the Left Group, the sending of a fact-finding mission to Athens and Cyprus, while at the same time we informed the Bureau, in view of the revelations and confessions that companies producing and exporting this type of software operate in Cyprus as well, and that this case must also be placed at the centre of the Committee’s deliberations.

At the same time AKEL did the same in the House of Representatives as well.

Despite opposition from the right-wing EPP, the Committee in the end did come to Cyprus, went to Greece, but also to Israel too, as well as to other EU member states, requesting that answers be given to these questions.

During the visits the Committee was depreciated and received little or no substantive responses from national authorities. Furthermore, Anastasiades attacked the Committee’s Mission with the inimitable phrase “Nothing is wrong, you’re seeing ghosts…”

The same, if not more intense scorn was demonstrated, especially by the Right, towards the relevant Rapporteur when she drafted and presented the Reports of findings and recommendations respectively.

In both of these reports, particularly the Report outlining recommendations that we voted for in the plenary, it is finally established, in the most formal way, what we as AKEL have always been saying. Namely, that the Anastasiades Government has violated the procedures provided for by EU law with regard to the handling of the PEGASUS issue.

In both reports Cyprus is left exposed. And, unfortunately, it continues to be, with the current government having had many things to do….

These reports, in a severe tone, highlight that there is evidence of erroneous practices in the implementation of the EU dual-use regulation in Cyprus, reference is also made to the black spy van and to the need to make the relevant findings public, whilst the Cyprus-Greece link to the Intellexa spyware firm and PREDATOR is well-documented.

Cyprus is referred to as an export hub for spy software, the existence and presence of the notorious NSO on the island is identified, the mapping of the various Israeli companies registered in Cyprus is requested and the thorough assessment of all export licenses issued for spy software and their abolition where necessary is called for.

Finally, a full investigation (with the assistance of EUROPOL) of all allegations of the export of spy software and their illegal use, in particular against journalists, lawyers, Cypriot citizens and civil society organisations is requested…

Through our work we provided the Committee with everything: facts, the sinful companies, names and addresses, the guilty states, we also submitted recommendations…

Nobody seems to have been moved.

Recently, during the February plenary session, we denounced, once again, the unwillingness of the European Council and European Commission to transform all the recommendations of the PEGASUS Committee, and of other international actors, into specific legislation to protect citizens’ rights… As well as for them to stop ignoring the erroneous behaviour of EU member states in the hope that they will not do it again…

At the same time, we have already requested, at the beginning of the new parliamentary term of the European Parliament, the setting up of a second Committee of Inquiry to keep the issue open and to exert further pressure on EU institutions to comply.

We will continue to demand transparency and change.

As we always do.

On 19 April 2022, the European Commission said it will not investigate member states that spied on politicians, journalists and citizens with PEGASUS, putting the responsibility on national authorities who, it claims, have competence for national security matters….

And this is where the contradictions, the mockery and the double standards begin.

Let them at long last decide what they really want…

We – unlike the Right-wing – know both what we want and are struggling to achieve it.