Articles
Pegasus Politics
Dt: 21/7/21
Pegasus Politics
Dr T H Chowdary*
The Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha could not transact any business on 19th and 20th July 2021. because the opposition parties disrupted the sessions by the well-known practice of sloganeering, shouting and rushing into the well of the presiding officer. Speaker in the Lok Sabha and Chairman in the Rajya Sabha. The issue was whether government has used the Israel developed Pegasus malware to break into the telephones of targeted persons in the opposition whether in Parliament or State Assembly or activists of different hues, engaged in disruptive activities against the interest of the nation and the Indian state. The fundamental issue to be considered is what is the use of technology if it cannot serve the interest of persons, parties, businesses, activists and hostile states…. Information is the greatest resource in the armoury of any person engaged in any contest whether in peace or at war. Technology, especially Information and Communication Technologies (ICTS) are now extensively being developed and used in almost every type of human activity – education, war, business, politics, activism, intelligence gatherings, spying, crime control as well as committing crime . Similarly the IT tool Pegasus is a powerful weapon to gather information . Information is the basis for any effective activity.
2. Politics is for gaining and retaining power in a multi - party democracy as well as in dictatorships. The party in power or the opposition which wants to pulled down the incumbent, necessarily uses information for the purpose. Pulling down government is a practice almost perfected by the Indian National Congress especially when it was headed by Indira Gandhi. In the late 1950s as President of the Congress Party she organized mass rallies to pull down the first ever communist government in the country in the State of Kerala, Sri Com EMS Namboodripal as Chief Minister. The methods she adopted were traditional - huge peoples’ rallies,
denunciations, strikes, bandhs etc. She pulled down the Janata government in 1979 by splitting the Janata Dal. She extended Congress support from outside to Charan Singh to become the Prime Minister. Within a few months she felled out the Charan Singh government by withdrawing support Rajiv Gandhi helped Chandra Sekhar to split and pull down the government headed by V.P. Singh in 1992. After a few months Rajiv Gandhi withdrew his party’s support to Chandra Sekhar on the flimsy ground that Chandra Sekhar deployed spies on him. When the Congress staged a come back to power in the elections in 1980 the Janata Dal Chief Minister Bhajanlal in Haryana overnight converted his party wholesale into Congress party to escape dismissal and inquiries. Therefore in India it has been very common for politicians to engineer splits and pull down governments and grab power. They have to use money and every device that Chanakya advocated in his Artha Sastra in order to detect the enemies’ conspiracies and overcome them.
3. Seeking , attaining and retaining power is a legitimate activity in democracy but over a period in our country it has become an activity without ethics and scruples. Every type of device is used to gather information and use it to achieve one’s ends. Retaining power is becoming more and more difficult. New systems like herding supporters into five-star hotels in a city of favourable administration is one of the devices . Which legislator is hobnobbing with whom is to be gathered and for that information with whom he is talking and who is fishing for whom is to be known and it is here that breaking into the telephone conversation and recording them has become essential. Information about the dissidents or conspirators illegal, immoral and fraudulent actions can be obtained without any physical involvement but through the deployment of IT tools like injecting malware into their smart telephones.
4. IT tools are being developed in order to wage wars and destroy the enemies . Weaponization of software and militerisation of space is an activity in which China, America, Israel, Korea and Iran are extensively engaged. Israel, a tiny nation of less than 10 mln people, with some congenitally inimical population within the state and surrounded by a score of nations states sworn to destroy it, is surviving by its use of superior weapon, software. For eg: it thwarts the development of nuclear weapons and missiles by disabling the Uranium processing centrifuges remotely by injecting malware into their control systems. It has been able to target individual scientists by use of its software for surveillance and killing them.
5. India too is perforce having to weaponize software in order to exfiltrate information not only from smart phones but even from the IT networks and the websites and IT devices of whichever individual or party it wants to target. Almost every party which wants to gain power will be engaged in this game. Therefore the oppositions ruckus in the current session of Parliament regarding Pegasus is a farce. We can expect much more extensive development and use of software in the weeks and months to come especially by artful political hawkers and brokers like Prashant Kishore . (846 words)
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