{"id":15656,"date":"2021-07-19T17:25:43","date_gmt":"2021-07-19T11:55:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/34.22.110.190\/english\/?p=15656"},"modified":"2021-07-20T14:31:20","modified_gmt":"2021-07-20T09:01:20","slug":"prashant-kishors-phone-hacked-by-pegasus-abhishek-banerjee-on-potential-snoop-target-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/prashant-kishors-phone-hacked-by-pegasus-abhishek-banerjee-on-potential-snoop-target-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Prashant Kishor\u2019s phone hacked by Pegasus, Abhishek Banerjee on potential snoop target: report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Under the backdrop of an unprecedented fight in West Bengal Assembly elections between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in April-May 2021, it has now surfaced that Trinamool\u2019s election strategist Prashant Kishor has been a target of Israeli spyware \u201cPegasus\u201d involving alleged surveillance of phones, according to a report. Also, the party\u2019s new national general secretary, Trinamool MP Abhishek Banerjee has been \u201cselected as a potential target for surveillance\u201d, according to the report.<\/p>\n

According to a report by The Wire<\/em><\/strong><\/a>, \u201cIn the midst of the heated West Bengal assembly election, the phone of poll strategist Prashant Kishor was broken into using NSO Group\u2019s Pegasus spyware, according to digital forensics conducted by Amnesty International\u2019s Security Lab and shared with\u00a0The Wire<\/em>.\u201d It also reported that \u201cthe mobile number of Abhishek Banerjee\u2026 who is nephew of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee and a key party strategist, was also selected as a potential target for surveillance by a government client of NSO Group, an investigation\u00a0of leaked data\u00a0by\u00a0The Wire<\/em>\u00a0and its media partners\u00a0on the Pegasus Project has shown. Also on the list is Banerjee\u2019s personal secretary.\u201d<\/p>\n

There are reports of over 300 verified Indian mobile telephone numbers, including over 40 journalists, three major opposition figures, one constitutional authority, two serving ministers in the Narendra Modi government, current and former heads and officials of security organisations and scores of businesspersons being targetted, The Wire<\/em> has reported.<\/p>\n

According to The Wire<\/em> report, \u201cTheir phones, and the phone of a close aide to Kishor, were not immediately available for forensic investigation, making it impossible to say definitively whether an attempt to hack them was made\u2026Since NSO insists that only \u201cvetted governments\u201d\u00a0can purchase Pegasus,\u00a0the targeting of Kishor \u2013 who was working as an advisor to West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee \u2013\u00a0is the first iron-clad piece of evidence that\u00a0this deadly spyware\u00a0is being used in India\u00a0by an as yet unidentified agency\u00a0to gather political information from rivals of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kishor was quoted by The Wire<\/em> saying that if it is true that such methods were used, it is clear that it doesn\u2019t have an impact on the electorate. Mamata Banerjee and her party won a landslide victory in the state for the third consecutive term. However, Kishor also said that this also indicates attempts to take undue advantage through illegal snooping.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Under the backdrop of an unprecedented fight in West Bengal Assembly elections between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party in April-May 2021, it has now surfaced that Trinamool\u2019s election strategist Prashant Kishor has been a target of Israeli spyware \u201cPegasus\u201d involving alleged surveillance of phones, according to a report. Also, the party\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1236,"featured_media":15657,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[135,387,57,582,49,35,583,46],"tmauthors":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-15656","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nation","8":"tag-abhishek-banerjee","9":"tag-assembly-elections-2021","10":"tag-bjp","11":"tag-cover-story","12":"tag-mamata-banerjee","13":"tag-prashant-kishor","14":"tag-top-story","15":"tag-trinamool-congress"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1236"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15656"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15656\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15656"},{"taxonomy":"tmauthors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thebengalstory.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tmauthors?post=15656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}