Iran Press/ Europe: The latest spyware scandal has broken in Greece, where media claimed two individuals infected the mobile phones of Pasok party leader Nikos Androulakis and other opposition figures allegedly on behalf of the ruling party.
Governments are using snooping software like the now-infamous Pegasus from Israeli firm NSO Group to keep tabs on residents, the European Parliament report released on Tuesday said.
"No meaningful European oversight is in place; not to curb the illegal use of powerful spyware against individuals, nor to monitor the trade in these digital goods," Dutch MEP and report author Sophie in ‘t Veld said.
Veld accused conservative Poland and Hungary — the perennial bad boys of the liberal EU — of using such software as an "integral element" as part of a state apparatus "designed to control and even oppress citizens."
The report also named and shamed Bulgaria and Cyprus as centers for exporting the technology, Ireland for providing a favorable tax regime for large sellers, and Luxembourg as the favored banking center for players in the industry. The Czech capital Prague is the venue for the spyware industry's annual convention, the ISS World "Wiretappers Ball".
The MEP was critical of the European Commission, the EU's unelected executive which has the sole power to draft legislation for MEPs to approve, for focussing on "threats" from outside the bloc — a thinly-veiled reference to the bloc's military aid to Ukraine for its conflict with Russia.
"Where the threat to democracy is not some faraway stranger, but the governments of EU member states, the Commission suddenly considered that the defense of European democracy is no longer a European matter, but a matter for the member states," she said.
On Monday, the Greek government announced that it would move to ban snooping software following newspaper claims that the mobile phones of several politicians, including opposition social-democratic Pasok leader Nikos Androulakis, had been infected with the Predator spyware program by agents acting on behalf of the conservative New Democracy government of Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis.
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