Thai activists said Tuesday that they have decided to file a lawsuit against the government over the use of Pegasus spying software to monitor the communications of dissidents, the first case of its kind in the Asian country.
The NGO iLaw has indicated that the use of this software, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, was used to intercept the cell phone communications of some thirty activists and lawyers between 2020 and 2021.
Now, with this lawsuit, the activists hope that the measure will help to raise awareness of this type of threat and protect citizens against excessive surveillance.
«It’s a difficult case, we don’t have enough evidence about who bought the software and who developed it,» said Yingcheep Atchanont of iLaw, whose phone was infected ten times by the virus. «We don’t trust the judicial system either, but that’s all we have,» he added.
In this sense, he asserted that «if we get a verdict that our rights have been violated, it would be significant,» as reported by ‘The Bangkok Post’.
The US company Apple sent in November 2021 an alert to Yingcheep and ten other people warning that they could be victims of «attacks perpetrated by people backed by the government».
«It was truly shocking for me to think that the government could monitor my cell phone. It’s a huge violation of my privacy, more so than if the police are watching my house,» he lamented before noting that even if this software stops being used, «they will use other technology.»
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
