The story of the spyware program - "Pegasus" goes back a few years, morphs into another program called "Phantom" which was marketed in the USA to local law enforcement departments.

When I started researching the story after hearing it on The Dan Bongino Show podcast, I did not expect such a deep rabbit hole!

It is so deep I will be only covering a small portion in this post. I will do my best to highlight many of the alarming topics, information & parties effected.

Why is Pegasus showing up everywhere - now?

Just recently the Guardian & The WaPo released very concerning information that a possible 50,000+ journalists, diplomats, high ranking government officials from around the world may have had their cell phones infected with this spyware, which does not need you to click anything to infect the phone! Their articles focused on blaming Israel & NSO [Israeli company who developed the spyware].

To be very clear at this point... Israel & the company NSO are not the entities that have been caught doing the spying! Yes, they did develop the software. Yes, they did market & sell this software to many governments & agencies including the United States of America. They are not the entity that abused the spyware [at this point] in the discovery.

As to not make this post too long let me highlight the information:

Governments that are reported to posses Pegasus.
• USA [including local law enforcement under the name Phantom]
• India
• Mexico
• Saudi Arabia
• Kazakhstan
• Israel [of course, they developed it]
• Azerbaijan
• Bahrain
• Hungary
• Morocco
• Rwanda
• UAE [United Arab Emirates]
• Togo
~There is estimated to be a lot more. These are just a few I found to actually be reported on in the article/documents I found~

Potential Targets so far
• 180 journalists in 20 countries
• A leaked list of 50,000 names (not all confirmed to be infected)

Who was involved in the investigation?
• More than 80 journalists from 17 media organizations in 10 countries
• Forbidden Stories, Paris based non-profit media coordinated the efforts
• Amnesty International offered technical support

~After reading through their reports, along with the Guardian's I am a little hesitant to jump to any conclusions. Many of the reporting has a slanted focus on calling out Israel, almost implying Israel was doing the spying. After digging into multiple outlets, even translating Indian & Arabian sources you discover the deeper truth...

this is multiple governments/agencies abusing this spyware to spy on even their own citizens! I believe that is where the real story lies.

Keep an eye out for the next installment of this deep rabbit hole where I will dig deeper into the Phantom spin off that was marketed to US law enforcement... Is the LAPD, NYPD & other law enforcement using this spyware on local citizens?...

Sources:

• Amnesty International - https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2021/07/the-pegasus-project/
• Cnet - https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/pegasus-spyware-what-to-know-about-nso-groups-phone-surveillance-software/
• NordVPN - https://nordvpn.com/blog/pegasus-project-surveillance-report/
• Vice [Motherboard] - https://www.vice.com/en/article/8899nz/nso-group-pitched-phone-hacking-tech-american-police

(I chose a few out of the many I researched. These are more concise & easy to read)