WhatsApp provided 'technical update'; no info on security breach: BJP IT Cell chief Amit Malviya

Speaking to ETV Bharat, ruling Bharatiya Janta Party's IT Cell head Amit Malviya said that the government had only recieved a "technical update" from WhatsApp which did not have any information on phones being compromised.

Delhi:With Indian activists and politicians pointing fingers at the government after WhatsApp revealed that it had informed government authorities in writing that 121 Indian individuals were compromised by the NSO's Pegasus ‘spyware’, ruling Bharatiya Janta Party's IT Cell head Amit Malviya said that the government had only received a "technical update" from the popular messaging platform which did not have any information on phones being compromised.

Speaking to ETV Bharat, Malviya said, "WhatsApp has been claiming that it had informed the government and its agencies in the month of May regarding the breach of security, but that particular update was a technical update which did not have any information on phones being compromised."

He added, "The government has been seeking information from WhatsApp on the breach of privacy on their platform and who all were snooped upon through Pegasus. Over the course of the past few months, representatives from WhatsApp have met government officials on several occasions but they never mentioned anything related to this breach."

On questions being raised over the government's intention by Opposition parties, including Congress, Malviya said, "The less we talk about Congress the better, it is the same government which snooped upon its own finance minister as well as the Army chief."

"In a recent reply to an RTI, the Ministry of Home Affairs has clarified that none of the government agencies have made use of Pegasus spyware software, " the IT expert added.

WhatsApp was recently used to spy on journalists and human rights activists in India earlier this year. The surveillance was carried out using a spyware tool called Pegasus, which has been developed by an Israeli firm, the NSO Group.

The matter came to light after WhatsApp sued the NSO Group in a federal court in San Francisco on Tuesday, accusing it of using WhatsApp servers in the United States and elsewhere “to send malware to approximately 1,400 mobile phones and devices (‘Target Devices’)… for the purpose of conducting surveillance of specific WhatsApp users (‘Target Users’)”.

The surveillance was carried out “between in and around April 2019 and May 2019” on users in 20 countries across four continents, WhatsApp said in its complaint.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, is the world’s most popular messaging app, with more than 1.5 billion users worldwide. About a quarter of those users — more than 400 million, or 40 crore — are in India, WhatsApp’s biggest market.

The NSO Group is a Tel Aviv-based cyber-security company that specialises in “surveillance technology” and claims to help governments and law enforcement agencies across the world fight crime and terrorism.

Even as the government has pulled up the US social media firm for not disclosing to Indian authorities the details of the spyware attack launched on Indian citizens, in a statement issued late Friday, WhatsApp appeared to counter the Indian government, saying it had in May “quickly resolved a security issue and notified Indian and international government authorities.”