Explained: Israeli Police’s reported use of Pegasus to spy on Benjamin Netanyahu’s son, govt officials

The report also alleges the spyware was installed on phones of some of the witnesses and people interrogated as a part of the ongoing investigation against Netanyahu.

The spyware had also hacked into the phones of journalists and Walla’s editor-in-chief Aviram Elad to check if they were being put under pressure by anyone.

Netanyahu prays with his sons Avner Netanyahu, right, and Yair Netanyahu at the Western Wall, the holiest site where Jews can pray in Jerusalem’s Old City, Jan. 22, 2013. (AP Photo/Uriel Sinai, File)

Why is the use of Pegasus by Israeli police on its own citizens a big issue?

As per the terms of use of NSO Group’s Pegasus, the software can not be used to spy on phone numbers that are registered either in the US or Israel.

Following the report by Calcalist, the country’s public security minister Omer Bar-Lev said that a government commission would be formed to look into and investigate the matter thoroughly.

Incumbent Prime Minister Neftali Bennet has also said that his government would investigate the matter and look into the issue of how the spyware was used against Israeli citizens.

Which other countries have been targeted as per other Pegasus reports?

Earlier this year in January, the New York Times reported that India had bought Pegasus from Israel as a part of its $2-billion package for weapons including a missile system.

Flagging Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s landmark visit to Israel in July 2017 – the first by an Indian Prime Minister to that country – the NYT report said that visit came even as “India had maintained a policy” of what it called “commitment to the Palestinian cause,” and “relations with Israel were frosty.”

Apart from India, the report also mentioned how the Federal Bureau of Investigation, too, had bought and tested the spyware “for years with plans to use it for domestic surveillance until the agency finally decided last year not to deploy the tools.”

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