HT Explains: What we know about the evidence underpinning the Pegasus Project

HT explains Beginning July 18, a consortium of 17 news organisations reported on a mass mobile device surveillance operation by, possibly, multiple state actors. The expose involves a scale that is unprecedented, and involves targets not just typical sought by countries with slack democratic values – for instance journalists and human rights defenders – but also those more likely shielded from usual surveillance targeting — heads of state, judges and industrialists.

At the heart of the disclosures is what the consortium says is a list of 50,000 phone numbers. The data was first obtained by a French nonprofit called Forbidden Stories, which collaborated with the consortium that includes Washington Post, The Guardian and India’s The Wire.