The Government of the Nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban had so far refused to confirm that he had used Pegasus.
Le Monde with AFP
Its use against journalists and press patterns did not doubt. Lajos Kosa, a member of the party Fidesz, in power in Hungary, admitted, Thursday, November 4, that the Israeli spy software Pegasus had been bought by the Hungarian Ministry of the Interior.
Hungary was the only country in the European Union on the list published in July by a consortium of investigative journalists as a potential user of this espionage software, with hundreds of targets, including journalists, of which journalists. lawyers and other public figures.
Pegasus infected smartphones are transformed into espionage devices, allowing the user to read the messages of his target, to look at his photos, follow his location and even start his camera without his knowledge . The Government of the Nationalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban had so far refused to confirm that he had used Pegasus.
But Lajos Kosa replied “yes” to the question of a Hungarian journalist who asked him if the Ministry of the Interior had bought this controversial software. “I do not see anything wrong,” Kosa said, who presides a parliamentary committee on the Defense, at the Commission hearing.
Employee “in a legal framework”
“In most cases, large technological firms set up a much tighter surveillance than the Hungarian state does,” he added. He added that the Ministry of the Interior, using this software, had violated the rights of any Hungarian citizen.
For his part, the Minister of the Interior, Sandor Pinter, assured the Parliamentary Committee that the security services had employed him in a legal framework, with the permission of a judge or the Minister of Justice .
A member of the committee part of the opposition, Agnes Vadai, told the press that Mr. Pinter had refused to confirm or deny that journalists or politicians had been monitored with this spyware.
The United States has just placed NSO Group, which has developed Pegasus, on their blacklist of companies threatening national security.