On Wednesday, one of the founders was implemented by the founder of the Mediterranean Sea, which is a non -profit organization in Italy, who has a mission to rescue immigrants from Africa to Europe. He stated that it was one of the recent targets of spyware campaigns.
In a press release, MediterRanea told the founder Luca Casarini that it was targeted last week that it had targeted Spyware created by Israel's monitoring technology startup, Paragon Solutions. On Friday, Whatsapp stated that it used paragon spyware for about 90 people to confuse spy activities.
At that time, a meta -owned company stated that there were journalists and members of the civil society without any name. Since then, some targets, including Casarini, have begun to move forward.
The first person was Francesco Cancellato, the director of the Italian news website, the director of the Italian news website that announced an organizational crime and corruption. Last year, this publication sang a fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, advocated the Nazi slogan, and showed some members of the Italian government's wings that have spoken by racism. Reported the documentary.
After Sweden -based activists Fusam El Gomati, after Cancerato. Ergomati was critical of how Libya and Italy cooperated to stop crossing the Mediterranean. And now, Casarini is the latest person notified from WhatsApp.
All three targets have one common point. Their work or organization's work was critical of the current Italian government led by the far -right Prime Minister Georgia meloni.
“The help of rescue activities in the sea and those who have been imprisoned in Libyan camps or repatriated to the desert is a focus on Italian secret service, especially in Libya and Tunisia, especially AISE.” “Some questions arise. Did the Italian government allow such a strategy? Does the Italian secret service use paragon software?”
Do you have any details about Paragon and this Spyware campaign? You can send Lorenzo Franceschi-BICCHIERAI with a +1 917 257 1382 signal from a work other than work, via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb. You can also contact TechCrunch via Securedrop.
So far, the Italian government has not answered the question, and the government has not commented on Cancerat or Casalini case.
The Italian government demands the request of comments and questions about whether Italy has purchased Paragon's spyware through the official news agency and the address of the meloni's news agency, Fabrizio Alfano. I do not respond.
Israel's news site YNETNEWS reported on Monday that Italy was a Paragon customer.
John Fleming, chairman of the U.S. subsidiary of the U.S. subsidiary, did not respond to comments on Casarini's case and did not respond to comments on Wednesday.
According to TechCrunch on Tuesday, PARAGON, which was acquired by the US private Equity fund AE Industrial in December, said, “mainly sells products to the selection groups of the United States and its allies.
“”[Paragon] We request that all users agree to the conditions that explicitly prohibit illegal targeting of journalists and other civil society. There is a zero tolerance policy for such targeting, and we will end the relationship with customers who violate our terms of use, “says Fleming.
Fleming has not yet responded to questions about the paragon, such as whether the Italian government is a customer, whether the paragon is investigating the Whatsapp's claim, and whether or not it is investigating the target claims that have appeared so far. 。
MediterRanea said Citizen Lab, a digital right group at the University of Toronto, has been investigating Spyware for over 10 years, but has been investigating on Casarini.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher of CITIZEN LAB, has confirmed with TechCrunch that he is actively investigating Paragon.
SCOTT-RAILTON warns that these cases are another reminder that the MERC soldier spyware industry, which has companies such as the NSO Group and Paragon, has been promoting abuse for many years in democratic countries. I did.
“If you are selling surveillance tools, it is the question of when the technology is abused, and that is not the case,” said Scott Lilton.
“If you are selling secret monitoring to democracy, you need to be very skeptical to your customer and you may be abusive in every corner. Otherwise. For me, this is the question of when the monitoring tools are being abused when selling the MERC soldier. Yes, it's just a problem, not abuse.