Opinion SC panel must factor in questions raised by latest Pegasus revelations, the people have a right — and need — to know

The report in The New York Times last week that the Indian government bought Israeli spyware Pegasus in 2017 as part of a $2-billion defence deal revives questions that were raised earlier but never addressed. Last year, an investigation by a global consortium of media groups revealed that Pegasus was used by governments, including in India, for targeting individuals for alleged surveillance. The government stonewalled questions and claimed that the probe was an exercise in “maligning India’s well-established institutions”. A few weeks after the Pegasus story broke, the Defence Ministry informed the Rajya Sabha that it “did not have any transaction with the NSO group,” the Israel-based developer of the spyware. A month later, however, after the matter reached the Supreme Court, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta was more ambivalent. He told the three-judge bench that lawful interception is permitted to prevent terrorist incidents and “whether it’s done through which software etc can’t be a matter of public debate.” The court did the right thing by calling out the use of national security as a free pass and constituted an inquiry panel under former judge R V Raveendran. Now, this expert committee must extend the scope of its investigation to include the questions raised in the NYT report.

Union Minister of Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw has maintained that only “lawful interception of electronic communication” is carried out for “national safety”. There is no contesting the government’s mandate to meet security-related imperatives. Surveillance is a part of the security toolbox but, in a democracy, there need to be checks and balances. In the present case, the government’s equivocation doesn’t wash. The issue at hand is not about keeping a watch on the activities of terrorists through established procedures. It is, instead, this: Since those allegedly targeted by Pegasus include Opposition leaders, civil society activists, a former election commissioner, and journalists (including three editors of this newspaper, two current and one former), were any red lines breached to violate these individuals’ right to privacy? Targeting the Opposition’s phones corrodes democracy and so, as SC pointed out, “any restriction must pass constitutional scrutiny”.

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The NYT investigation has revealed that the FBI bought Pegasus but discarded its plans to use the spyware last year. Union minister General V K Singh has dismissed the US daily’s probe as one conducted by “supari media”. Singh’s name-calling deserves to be ignored. But, as the SC rightly underlined, “The public is entitled to know whether the spyware was used by the government by any other method other than those permissible under the law”. At stake is the credibility of institutions and it’s up to the Justice Raveendran panel to take the new revelations forward.

This editorial first appeared in the print edition on February 1, 2022 under the title ‘Court & Pegasus’.