Two more Poles identified as victims of hacking with spyware

Sign up for the daily Inside Washington email for exclusive US coverage and analysis sent to your inbox Get our free Inside Washington email Get our free Inside Washington email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Two more Poles have been identified as victims of phone hacking with the notoriously powerful spyware from Israel’s NSO Group: an agrarian political leader at odds with Poland's right-wing government and the co-author of a book about the head of Poland's secret services. The newest discovery by Citizen Lab cybersleuths broadens the list of those allegedly targeted by state surveillance under Poland’s nationalist government with a tool marketed for use exclusively against criminals and terrorists. The revelations in Poland led ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski to acknowledge publicly for the first time earlier this month that Pegasus was bought by the Polish state. As the government sought to counter perceptions that the state was engaged in mass surveillance, a ruling party lawmaker knowledgeable about state security services, Marek Suski, said last Friday that the number surveilled by the state did not exceed “several hundred people a year.” The news drew headlines, however, shocking Poles who considered the number anything but trivial.