Thread by @panyiszabolcs

🇪🇺Today, the European Parliament's #Pegasus inquiry committee will start its work.

9 months ago, #PegasusProject - a consortium of journalists led by @FbdnStories - uncovered systematic abuses with NSO Group's Pegasus spyware. One of these abusers was Orbán's Hungary.

🧵Thread

2/ Hungary was the first EU member state where we found that multiple journalists and media company owners were surveilled with the Israeli spyware. Orbán's gov't neither confirmed nor denied anything. Here's our in-depth @direkt36 article with @andraspe: direkt36.hu/en/leleplezodo…

3/ Later, we published more articles on surveilled journalists. One of them, Brigitta Csikász is a Hungarian investigative journalist mostly covering the justice system and crime. During her surveillance, for example, she wrote about misuse of EU funds.
direkt36.hu/en/honapokon-a…

4/ Photojournalist Dániel Németh has spent years investigating and documenting the luxury lifestyle of Hungary’s ruling elite, following them with his camera as they travelled around Europe. Meanwhile, the Hungarian state was tracking his movements too. direkt36.hu/en/a-ner-elit-…

5/ I was in a dual role while investigating Pegasus surveillances in Hungary. My @direkt36 colleague @AndrasSzab and myself were also victims of this spyware.

In this personal account, we describe what happened and how we learned about our surveillances:
direkt36.hu/en/egy-kemfilm…

6/ But it soon turned out that Hungary wasn't the only EU country spying on its own law-abiding citizens with #Pegasus, a military-grade spyware. Viktor Orbán's Polish ally, the PiS-led government deployed the spyware against its opposition:
theguardian.com/world/2022/feb…

7/ Just a day before the kick-off of the European Parliament's inquiry committee, @citizenlab's research revealed the mass Pegasus surveillance by Spanish authorities of Catalan leaders, including the targeting of MEPs actually sitting in this committee:
theguardian.com/world/2022/apr…

8/ Now we have three EU members states - Hungary, Poland, Spain - where credible evidence shows that their national authorities are spying on journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders, opposition politicians or activists. Of course, all of these countries deny any wrongdoing.

9/ It's not these EU countries where the most horrendous abuses happen. Around the time of his murder, Khashoggi's confidants were surveilled by Saudi Arabia. Journalist Cecilio Pineda Birto was gunned down in Mexico. So you just can't compare. Still, a red line has been crossed.

10/ NSO Group, the manufacturer of Pegasus, claims that their spyware was meant to investigate terrorists and the most serious criminals only. If EU countries treat journalists, dissenting citizens as such criminals & spy on us with Pegasus, one can imagine what could happen next

11/ The inquiry committee of the European Parliament will finally investigate whether #Pegasus surveillances infringed basic rights of the victims.

They will also look into whether Hungary, Poland or Spain meet EU standards or not when conducting such spyware surveillances.

12/ But it's not just about these three countries. In Hungary, for example, a Belgian student & journalists was also surveilled. According to @HCLU, EU rights on free movement & residence were also infringed, as Hungary's conduct can scare away other EU citizens from the country.

13/ And it's not just about the basic rights of the surveilled. Special rights, such as source protection (journalists), attorney-client privilege (lawyers) or parliamentary immunity (politicians) are also at stake sometimes when EU governments hack the phones of their critics.

14/ To give a few examples. In Hungary, the head of the country's bar association was also targeted with Pegasus, along with at least ten other lawyers - as well as at least four reporters who focus on investigative journalism and regularly communicate with confidential sources.