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Amnesty International on Thursday reported that a whistleblower inside Morocco’s intelligence service helped reveal a vast surveillance apparatus targeting journalists, activists and dissidents.
Commenting on the increasingly hostile environment for freedom of expression in the country, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General stated:
Amnesty International was able to directly confirm the presence of traces of Pegasus spyware through forensic analysis of numerous devices belonging to people whose numbers were on the list of targeted individuals uncovered in the Pegasus Project and with the assistance of the whistleblower’s testimony over many years.
The report and whistleblower testimony alleged that DGST deployed the Israeli-developed Pegasus zero-click spyware starting around 2017 to secretly track their targets’ location to monitor their daily routines, record calls, and surreptitiously harvest personal data from mobile phones.
In a previous report, Amnesty International pointed out that DGST agents coerced local phone shops to sell mobile devices that already came pre-infected with spyware, a direct contravention of Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which protects individuals from arbitrary or unlawful interference in their privacy and home life.
Additionally, the whistleblower testimony claimed targeted journalists and activists were secretly filmed and audio-recorded inside private locations like their homes, hotel rooms, cars, and offices. The DGST were also alleged to have tracked targets visiting various coffee shops infected by remote control spyware and deployed various tracking methods against individuals transiting through Morocco’s airports.
Human Rights Watch has previously condemned the DGST for orchestrating smear campaigns against dissidents, often by unlawfully obtaining surveillance footage of dissidents engaging in non-marital sex, which is criminalized under Article 490 of the Moroccan Penal Code, and then using it to carry out morality-based character assassination. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also condemned the state-sponsored campaign of intimidation, noting that the absence of adequate constitutional and legal safeguards only exacerbated the climate of fear among dissidents.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has shared similar sentiments, criticizing Moroccan authorities for manufacturing a defamation campaign against former human rights minister Mohamed Ziane, who was later given a three-year sentence over charges including “contempt of public officials and justice.” In meting out the sentence, the court had relied on a video statement where he had openly condemned the royal palace and senior government officials.
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Commenting on the increasingly hostile environment for freedom of expression in the country, Agnès Callamard, Amnesty International’s Secretary General stated:
The report identified the Direction Générale de la Surveillance du Territoire (DGST), as the entity responsible for the deployment of Pegasus spyware in Morocco and confirmed in July 2021 that Moroccan authorities used Pegasus zero-click attacks against Moroccan journalists, activists and human rights defenders.
Amnesty International was able to directly confirm the presence of traces of Pegasus spyware through forensic analysis of numerous devices belonging to people whose numbers were on the list of targeted individuals uncovered in the Pegasus Project and with the assistance of the whistleblower’s testimony over many years.
The report and whistleblower testimony alleged that DGST deployed the Israeli-developed Pegasus zero-click spyware starting around 2017 to secretly track their targets’ location to monitor their daily routines, record calls, and surreptitiously harvest personal data from mobile phones.
In a previous report, Amnesty International pointed out that DGST agents coerced local phone shops to sell mobile devices that already came pre-infected with spyware, a direct contravention of Article 17 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) which protects individuals from arbitrary or unlawful interference in their privacy and home life.
Additionally, the whistleblower testimony claimed targeted journalists and activists were secretly filmed and audio-recorded inside private locations like their homes, hotel rooms, cars, and offices. The DGST were also alleged to have tracked targets visiting various coffee shops infected by remote control spyware and deployed various tracking methods against individuals transiting through Morocco’s airports.
Human Rights Watch has previously condemned the DGST for orchestrating smear campaigns against dissidents, often by unlawfully obtaining surveillance footage of dissidents engaging in non-marital sex, which is criminalized under Article 490 of the Moroccan Penal Code, and then using it to carry out morality-based character assassination. The Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor has also condemned the state-sponsored campaign of intimidation, noting that the absence of adequate constitutional and legal safeguards only exacerbated the climate of fear among dissidents.
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has shared similar sentiments, criticizing Moroccan authorities for manufacturing a defamation campaign against former human rights minister Mohamed Ziane, who was later given a three-year sentence over charges including “contempt of public officials and justice.” In meting out the sentence, the court had relied on a video statement where he had openly condemned the royal palace and senior government officials.
The post Whistleblower reveals Morocco intelligence service targeted journalists and activists, Amnesty International says appeared first on JURIST - News.
Continue reading...
Note: We don't have any responsibilities about this news. Its been posted here by Feed Reader and we had no controls and checking on it. And because News posted here will be deleted automatically after 21 days, threads are closed so that no one spend time to post and discuss here. You can always check the source and discuss in their site.