As revelations of alleged electronic snooping on journalists and opposition figures in India continue to create an uproar, whistle-blower Edward Snowden has called for a ban on the sale of commercial malware.
Snowden, a former employee of the US National Security Agency (NSA), had made headlines in 2013 when he revealed the scale of US espionage operations globally. The revelations, shared to global media groups, had forced Snowden to flee to Russia to avoid prosecution by the US government.
On Monday, The Guardian published an interview with Snowden on his thoughts about the global scandal that revolved around the use of the Pegasus software, developed by the NSO Group, an Israeli company.
The Guardian is one of the media outlets publicising details of the alleged use of Pegasus in numerous countries, including India.
Explaining why the use of commercial spyware was attractive, Snowden told The Guardian that in 'traditional police operations', authorities had to plant physical bugs or wire-taps to monitor a suspect, which involved the need for obtaining a judicial warrant. Commercial spyware had made "it cost-efficient for targeted surveillance against vastly more people", Snowden observed. Snowden argued, "If they can do the same thing from a distance, with little cost and no risk, they begin to do it all the time, against everyone who’s even marginally of interest."
Highlighting the danger of not stopping sale of commercial spyware, Edward Snowden told The Guardian, "If you don’t do anything to stop the sale of this technology, it’s not just going to be 50,000 targets. It’s going to be 50 million targets, and it’s going to happen much more quickly than any of us expect.”
Snowden equated companies developing spyware to "infectioneers" who deliberately develop new strains of diseases. Snowden said the spyware industry was “like an industry where the only thing they did was create custom variants of COVID to dodge vaccines... Their only products are infection vectors. They’re not security products. They’re not providing any kind of protection, any kind of prophylactic. They don’t make vaccines—the only thing they sell is the virus.”
Snowden emphasised spyware such as Pegasus was so powerful that ordinary people could do little to stop it, arguing, “What can people do to protect themselves from nuclear weapons?"
Calling for a ban in trade of spyware, Snowden called on ordinary people to “work collectively” against it.
