A special Poland senate commission has prohibited the use of spyware by the government, including that produced by NSO Group.
After an 18-month inquiry into claims that the Polish government spied on an opposition lawmaker and other politicians ahead of the country’s 2019 elections, the commission announced its findings on Thursday.
“Pegasus cannot be used under Polish law,” the report read, according to a machine translation.
“This is because the Polish legal system does not allow the use of programs in which acquired operational data is transferred through transmission channels uncontrolled by the relevant services, as this creates the risk of violating its integrity and does not ensure its confidentiality, as required by law.”
The commission also came to the conclusion that these surveillance operations had a negative impact on Poland’s 2019 elections and that the Polish government had utilised Pegasus to retaliate against opposition individuals.
The commission made a comparison between these violations and the actions of Russian government hackers during the American elections in 2016.
Numerous researches detailing the misuse of NSO’s hacking tools in nations including the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, and many more have been released since 2016 by Citizen Lab and Amnesty International.
But in recent years, researchers have also discovered instances of abuse in nations that are members of the European Union, including Poland, Hungary, and Spain.
