The owner of Pegasus has the key to Pandora’s box

Thousands of citizens around the world, including civic, community, human rights leaders, judges and magistrates, politicians and journalists, have welcomed the news that the United States Department of Commerce has blacklisted companies Israel’s NSO Group, maker of the Pegasus spy program.

This was the program used in the government of Ricardo Martinelli to spy not on 150, but on hundreds more citizens. This information remains partially hidden, since many of us know for what, when and for what purpose it has been used, as well as we suspect in whose hands it is. Ah, but not all the illegal espionage is in the recovered discs, the basis of the puncture judgment.

Let’s think about the following: for five years, the National Security Council was spying on hundreds of Panamanian citizens

It used various spy programs, but the most successful was Pegasus, capable of turning a cell phone into a source of copious information, including the target victim’s chats and photographs. It could also activate the device’s GPS, camera, and microphone. All this, behind the victim’s back.

In the years of the dictatorship, Noriega was the recipient of hundreds of follow-up reports of opponents; phone call transcripts. There were boxes and boxes of information that he knew how to use very well, because although his power came from weapons, the information helped him to stay in power without reaching a level of violence that could attract international attention.

Missing information

So where are the thousands of hours of audio recording of the victims? Where are the tens of thousands of photographs stolen from the victims’ phones? Where are the thousands of chats and documents transmitted over the internet, extracted from the private communications of the victims? Where are the digitized follow-up reports? Where are the hundreds of hours of cell phone video that they recorded without the victims’ authorization? What’s there is not everything.

What has turned up in the wiretapping trial is only a small fraction of what was spied on in the Martinelli government. Let’s not expect all that stuff to show up in boxes. Today, such an arsenal of information is easy to have on hand. A laptop or computer with good memory is enough. Or a pen drive or a portable hard drive, as easy to hide as a key. The key to Pandora’s box. And I have no doubt that it will be used. The VarelaLeaks prove it.

Information is the most deadly and powerful weapon known. With this control, without arms, people, politicians, leaders, journalists, judges … even governments. Well said that one who promised to have much more power when he left the Presidency and the same one that the former United States ambassador described as a consummate stalker and blackmailer.

The Israeli government and the NSO Group say they are dismayed by the US decision. But they are not having provided the unscrupulous with one of their most powerful weapons, used against thousands of innocent victims throughout the world and that gave power over them to the mentally sick, sociopaths, and the most disgusting beings that walk the earth. – Rolando Rodríguez B. La Prensa