New Delhi: During a hearing on the Pegasus spyware case on Tuesday, the Supreme Court remarked that there is no issue with a country owning spyware for national security reasons; the real issue is how it is used and who it targets. However, the court emphasized that it would examine claims of the spyware being used against private citizens.
The bench, consisting of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh, was reviewing a set of writ petitions filed in 2021 that called for an independent investigation into the alleged surveillance of journalists, activists, and politicians using the Israeli spyware Pegasus. The court underscored that national security must not be compromised, India Today reported.
"What is wrong if the country is using the spyware against the terrorists? To have spyware is not wrong, against whom you are using is the question. You can't compromise with the security of nation. Private civil individual who has right to privacy will be protected under the Constitution,” Justice Kant said, while responding to senior advocate Dinesh Dwivedi, appearing for one of the petitioners, who said the question was whether the government had the spyware and used it, PTI reported.
When Solicitor General Tushar Mehta mentioned that terrorists cannot claim privacy rights, Justice Kant added that any civil individual who has the right to privacy will be protected under the Constitution.
Senior Advocate Kapil Sibal, representing a petitioner, cited a US District Court decision that found Israel-based spyware firm NSO Group used Pegasus malware to breach WhatsApp, noting that India was one of the affected countries.
In response, Justice Surya Kant stated that the Supreme Court issued a thorough decision and formed a committee chaired by Justice Raveendran to investigate the claims.
The court also stated that the expert committee's findings on the suspected misuse of the spyware could not be made public since doing so would turn the topic into a point of street-level debate.
An international media consortium reported over 300 verified Indian cell phone numbers were on the list of potential targets for surveillance using the Pegasus spyware
The list of potential targets apparently includes journalists, opposition leaders, government officials, activists, and even Supreme Court judges, raising major worries about privacy, press freedom, and the government's potential abuse of surveillance technologies.
A three-member SC expert committee, led by former Justice RV Raveendran, investigated the incident and issued its findings in July 2022.
The committee discovered no evidence of Pegasus spyware on any of the 29 mobile phones tested, but it did discover other malware on five. Notably, the study revealed that the Indian government did not cooperate with the probe.