NEWS: Rajya Sabha MP moves Supreme Court for SIT probe into Pegasus snooping

By Legal Wires 3 Minutes Read

Rajya Sabha MP from Kerala John Britt has moved to Supreme Court seeking a probe by Special Investigation Team into the Pegasus snooping scandal.

In his plea to SC, he has submitted that snooping, phone tapping, wiretapping, etc. the monitoring of the conversations on phones and the internet by the third party, which is a serious invasion into an individual’s privacy.

The plea basically relied on the statement made by the Union Minister for Electronics and Information Technology, Ashwini Vaishnav stating that there had been no unauthorized interception.

“If the Government stick on to the statement of the Hon’ble Minister for Electronics and IT-in the Parliament on 28th November 2019 that there had not been “ no unauthorized interception”, the current interception can only be considered as an authorized interception.”

The petition mentioned about the published list of various phone numbers of various activists and politicians across the globe targeted using the pegasus.

“These numbers in the leaked list are allegedly the “target list” of phones hacked /to be hacked by the Pegasus spyware product sold by Israel’s NSO Group. The target list said to contain 136 numbers of prominent politicians, judges, journalists, businessmen, rights activists and even heads of state in the world including that of India.”

Wherein petitioner relied upon the published list of various phone numbers of various activists/politicians from across the world targeted using the Pegasus.

“This is in clear derogation of Article-21 of the Indian Constitution unambiguously stating that no person shall be deprived of his life for personal liberty except according to the procedure established by law,” the plea said.

Therefore he contended that government needs to investigate the allegations and present the reasons for the interception of the phones and the internet.