Paris: The Paris Prosecutor’s Office is investigating the alleged use of spyware made by the Israeli-based NSO group to target journalists, human rights activists, and political dissidents.
The Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement on Tuesday that he opened an investigation into the raft of potential accusations, including violations of privacy, illegal data usage and illegally sold spyware.
As always under French law, the investigation did not name the suspected actor but aimed at determining who could eventually be sent to court.
It was asked by legal complaints by two journalists and the French investigation website Mediapart.
Investigation by the global media consortium published this week found more than 1,000 individuals in 50 countries allegedly chosen by NSO clients for potential supervision by its flagship spyware.
Among them are journalists and politicians in France.
Based on data leaking, the consortium identified the target of a list of more than 50,000 numbers of cellphones obtained by Paris-based journalism, non-profit forbidden stories and human rights groups Amnesty International and shared it with 16 news organizations.
The NSO Group denied that it had maintained “a potential target list, past or existing.” This is called a forbidden story report “full of the wrong assumptions and the theory that is not bound.”