Polish Senate Says Use of Government Spyware is Illegal in the Country

A special commission within Poland’s Senate concluded that the government’s use of spyware, like the one made by NSO Group, is illegal. From a report: The commission announced on Thursday the conclusion of its 18-month-long investigation into allegations that the Polish government used NSO’s spyware, known as Pegasus, to spy on an opposition politician and other politicians around the time of the country’s 2019 elections. “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.”

In other words, NSO’s spyware is not designed in a way that respects Polish law, collects too much information, and cannot guarantee that that information is secured properly, according to the report. The commission also concluded that the Polish government used Pegasus to retaliate against opposition figures, and that these surveillance operations negatively influenced the 2019 elections in the country. The commission compared these abuses with Russian government hackers activities in the 2016 elections in the United States.