Text/Alandati Roy Translation/Aseem
In the future we are moving towards, the ruler will be a country that people know very well, and people will know less and less about the country. This asymmetry leads only in one direction: malignancy and the end of democracy. We will have to move back to a world where we are not controlled and dominated by our intimate enemies– mobile phones. We must try to rebuild lives, protests and social movements outside the suffocating realm of digital surveillance. We must drive out the regimes and institutions that have deployed surveillance on us. We must do everything we can to leverage their grip on the levers of power, to make up for the damage they have done, and to take back everything they have stolen.
Recently, Israel's "Pegasus" surveillance broke out a shocking scandal in India, Alandati Roy published this article in the Guardian, from the Indian context, talking about the threat of "Pegasus" surveillance to human social democracy. The Paper, Marketplace of Ideas, translated and published with Roy's permission, serves Chinese readers. Thanks to Professor Liu Jianzhi of Global Universities for contributing to the authorization of this article.
Alandati Roy is an Indian writer, activist, and left-wing intellectual who is the author of The God of The Micro and the State of Bliss.
In India, the "Summer of Death" seems to be rapidly evolving into a "Summer of Surveillance.".
After causing the deaths of about 4 million Indians, a second wave of COVID-19 is receding. The official death toll published by the government is only one-tenth of the real figure — 400,000. In Narendra Modi's dystopia, although the smog over the crematorium has not yet cleared and the earth has sunk into a mass grave, huge signs appear on the streets that read "Thank you, Mr. Modi" (an advance expression of gratitude for the "free vaccine", although it is still largely unavailable and 95% of the population has not been vaccinated). In the Eyes of the Modi government, any attempt to count the true number of deaths is a conspiracy against India – just as millions of dead outside the official counts are actors who, for despicable purposes tarnishing India's international reputation, maliciously lie down in aerial photographs of collective graves that have not been dug deep, or float into rivers disguised as corpses, or cremate themselves on the streets of cities.
Today, the Indian government and its mouthpieces have made the same allegations against an international coalition of investigative journalists from 17 news organizations who have teamed up with Forbidden Stories and International organizations to dig up news about global mass surveillance. Some governments have reportedly purchased Pegasus spyware developed by the Israeli surveillance company NSO Group, and India is prominently listed on the list of these countries. The NSO said it only sells its technology products to governments that pass human rights record reviews and commit to using the software only for national security purposes, namely tracking terrorists and criminals.
Other countries that appear to have passed the NSO's human rights test include Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Mexico. So who exactly agreed on the definitions of "terrorist" and "criminal"? Is this determined only by NSO and its customers?
In addition to the hefty cost of spyware (hundreds of thousands of dollars to monitor each cell phone), NSO charges a system maintenance fee of 17 percent of the project's total cost each year. A foreign company that provides services, maintains a surveillance network, and monitors the citizens of another country on behalf of the government of that country is bound to be treasonous.
The investigative journalism team examined a leaked list of 50,000 phone numbers. The survey revealed that more than 1,000 of those numbers were selected by an Indian customer of NSO. Whether these numbers have been successfully compromised, or whether they have been threatened with intrusion, can only be confirmed after the mobile phone has been submitted for forensic identification. In India, traces of the Pegasus software have been found on several already identified mobile phones. The leaked list included opposition politicians, dissident journalists, activists, lawyers, intellectuals, businessmen, an offending Official of India's Election Commission, a senior intelligence official who violated the rules, Cabinet ministers and their families, foreign diplomats, and even Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan.
A spokesman for the Indian government denounced the list, saying it was forged. Anyone who pays close attention to Indian politics knows that even well-informed and experienced fiction writers cannot make up such a credible list of suspects identified by the ruling party or opponents of its political plans. The list is full of subtleties and leads to crisscrossing stories. Some unexpected names appeared in it, but many of the names that were expected to appear were not on the list.
We learned that a missed call was enough to install pegasus on the target phone. Imagine missing calls, a "missile" loaded with "explosives" of invisible spyware, coming at a mobile phone. It's a distinctive ICBM that's enough to destroy democracy, atomize society, and be free from red tape — no authorization, weapons agreement, oversight board, or any other form of regulation. Technology is naturally value-neutral. It's not anyone's fault.
The NSO's friendly cooperation with India may have begun in Israel in 2017, when the Indian media called Modi and Netanyahu a "brotherly love" — they rolled up their trouser tubes and went boating together next to Dole Beach. They leave more than footprints on the beach, because it is from then on that Indian phone numbers began to appear on the list.
On July 21, 2021, a woman was viewing a website where Israel made Pegasus spyware.
That same year, India's National Security Council budget grew 10-fold, much of it allocated to cybersecurity. In August 2019, shortly after Modi won re-election, India's unusually draconian anti-terrorism law, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), under which thousands of people are imprisoned and not released on bail, expanded from organizations to individuals. After all, organizations don't have smartphones — that's an important detail, even if only theoretically possible. Moreover, this necessarily expands the scope of the mandate and, in turn, the market.
During the discussion in Parliament on the amendment, Interior Minister Amit Shah said: "Sir, guns do not bring terrorism, the root of terrorism lies in the spread of terrorist propaganda ... If all these people are identified as terrorists, I don't think every member of parliament should have any objection to that. ”
The Pegasus scandal has now caused an uproar at parliament's monsoon session. The opposition has demanded that the interior minister step down. Resting on to its majority, Modi's ruling party, Ashwini Vaishnaw, defended the government in parliament, which was recently sworn in as minister of railways, communications and information technology. Perhaps to his shame, his numbers are also on the leaked list.
If we put aside the bluff and misleading bureaucracy in government statements, we will find that there is nothing that completely denies the purchase and use of Pegasus software. The NSO has not denied selling the software. The Israeli government has opened an investigation into allegations of espionage abuse, as has the French government. Sooner or later, in India, the flow of money will lead us to the undeniable smoking gun. But where will the ironclad evidence lead us?
Consider that 16 activists, lawyers, unionists, professors and intellectuals , many of whom are Dalits , were imprisoned for long periods in the Bhima Koregaon case. They were bizarrely accused of conspiracy to incite violence between Dalits and high-caste groups on January 1, 2019, when tens of thousands of Dalits gathered to commemorate the 200th anniversary of victory at the Battle of Bima Corregón (in which Dalit soldiers fought alongside the British and defeated the Brahmin tyranny of the Peshwa regime). On the leaked list, the telephone numbers of 8 of the 16 accused in the Bima Corregon case and their family members appeared. Because their phones were seized by the police and could not be sent for forensics, it was impossible to determine whether their phones had actually been compromised.
In recent years, some of us have become well aware of the sinister tactics used by the Modi government to trap its enemies – and this is not limited to mere surveillance activities. The Washington Post recently published the results of a report by Arsenal Consulting, a digital forensics company in Massachusetts, which examined computer copies of two defendants in the Bima Correggan case, Rona Wilson and Surendra Gadling. Investigators found that both men's computers had been hacked by unidentified hackers, and that incriminating documents were placed in hidden folders on their hard drives. As if to add drama, the documents even contain a ridiculous letter depicting a clichéd plot to assassinate Modi.
The significant impact of the Arsenal report has not led the Indian judiciary or mainstream media to act on justice. On the contrary, as they worked to cover up the truth and curb the possible impact of the report, one of the defendants in the Bima Corregon case, Father Stan Swamy, an 84-year-old Jesuit priest who for decades helped burayers in Jharkhand resist the plundering of their land and homes by big corporations , died in prison after contracting COVID-19. At the time of his arrest, he was suffering from Parkinson's and cancer.
So, how should we view Pegasus? It would be a grave mistake to cynically dismiss it as a repetition of an ancient game (rulers are always watching the ruled) under new technologies. This is not an ordinary surveillance behavior. Mobile phones are our most personal selves, and they have become an extension of our brains and bodies. Illegal surveillance via mobile phone is not new in India, and every Kashmiri is aware of the means. Most Indian activists know that too. However, if we cede the legal right to hack and take over mobile phones to governments and companies, it is equivalent to voluntary infringement.
The exposed Pegasus project shows that the potential threat of this spyware is more aggressive than any previous form of surveillance, even more aggressive than the algorithms of Google, Amazon, and Facebook, in which millions of people live and unleash their desires. It's not just a matter of having spies in your pockets, it's more like letting the love of your life — or worse, letting your own brain, including its untouchable corners — report you.
Spyware like Pegasus not only puts users with hacked phones at risk, but also puts their entire social circle of friends, family, and co-workers at political, social, and economic risk.
Snowden's remote video address at the 2019 Global Networking Summit.
Dissident edward Snowden, a former NSA analyst, may think about mass surveillance longer and deeper than anyone else in the world. In a recent interview with The Guardian, he warned: "If nothing is done to stop the sale of this technology, then it will target more than just 50,000." It will have 50 million goals, and this reality will arrive much sooner than any of us would have expected. "We need to pay attention to his words. He has been an insider and has witnessed the arrival of this surveillance reality.
Almost 7 years ago, in December 2014, I met Snowden in Moscow. It had been a year and a half since he had become a whistleblower because of his aversion to the government's indiscriminate mass surveillance of his citizens. He completed the Great Escape in May 2013 and slowly got used to the life of a fugitive. Daniel Ellsberg, John Cusack, and I, who leaked the Pentagon Papers, traveled to Moscow to meet Mr. Snowden. For three days, we hid in our hotel rooms talking about surveillance and espionage, and russia's cold winter days raged on window panes. How far will it develop? Where will it take us? What will we become?
When the news of the Pegasus incident came out, I flipped through the transcript of our chat recordings. It was hundreds of pages long and creepy to read. Snowden, who was just thirty years old at the time, made a terrible prediction: "Technology cannot go backwards, technology will not disappear... It will become cheaper, more efficient and more accessible. If left unchecked, we will unconsciously step into a state of full surveillance. At this time, there will be a super-state, which on the one hand has the unlimited ability to use force, and on the other hand, because of its omniscience, it can aim this force at the target - this is a very dangerous combination... That's the way forward. ”
In other words, in the future we are moving towards, the ruler will be a country that people know very well, and people will know less and less about the country. This asymmetry leads only in one direction: malignancy and the end of democracy.
Snowden was right, and the technology couldn't go backwards. But it cannot be allowed to operate as an unregulated legitimate industry, reaping profits and blossoming on the intercontinental highways of the free market. Legislation is needed against it and to drive it underground. Technology may exist, but industries don't.
So, what should we do? I would say, back to the old-fashioned political world. Only political action can deter or reduce this threat, because when technology is used legally or illegally, it will remain in the complex matrix of our time: nationalism, capitalism, imperialism, colonialism, racism, caste systems, sexism. This will remain our main battleground – no matter how the technology itself evolves.
We will have to move back to a world where we are not controlled and dominated by our intimate enemies– mobile phones. We must try to rebuild lives, protests and social movements outside the suffocating realm of digital surveillance. We must drive out the regimes and institutions that have deployed surveillance on us. We must do everything we can to leverage their grip on the levers of power, to make up for the damage they have done, and to take back everything they have stolen.
Editor-in-Charge: Wu Qin