When Szabolcs Panyi learned, in the spring of 2021, that the Pegasus spy software had been installed on his smartphone, the Hungarian investigative journalist knew it wasn’t just a case of eavesdropping. The software does more than simply intercept phone calls: It can access all of a smartphone’s data, and can even switch on the microphone and camera without being noticed.
“I felt as if they had broken into my apartment and office, bugged everything, put hidden cameras everywhere, and were even following me into the shower,” he said.
Panyi is an editor at the Budapest-based investigative online media outlet Direkt36. He is one of several dozen people who have been monitored — illegally — by the Hungarian state using the Pegasus spyware. Its intended targets are serious criminals or terrorists, and these people were neither. They were monitored because their research or political activities meant they were an inconvenience, or a threat, to the government of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.
In July 2021, a consortium of international media organisations including The Wire reported on the usage of Pegasus in countries across the world. The network
— source dw.com | Keno Verseck | 30/Jan/2022