Luca Casarini, an Italian founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, has claimed that WhatsApp has informed him that his mobile phone was targeted by military-grade spyware made by the Israel-based company Paragon Solutions, The Guardian reported. His organisation has been a vocal critic of Italy’s alleged complicity in abuses suffered by migrants in Libya.
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Casarini and his organisation have reportedly saved the lives of around 2,900 people crossing the Mediterranean to Italy. He is being termed the most high-profile person to come forward and speak about it since WhatsApp shared that 90 journalists and other members of civil society probably had their phones compromised by a government client using Paragon’s spyware last week.
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The three journalists allegedly targeted are Casarini, the journalist Francesco Cancellato, and the Sweden-based Libyan activist Husam El Gomati. All of them have one thing in common: they all have been critics of the Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.
Paragon, like other spyware, sells its content to government agencies aspiring to use it to track criminals. The company has declined to comment on the claim by WhatsApp that its spyware was used to target journalists and activists residing in two dozen countries.
“It has become clear; Italy has a Paragon problem. Given the cases that have already quickly come forward, it’s time to ask: who was the customer? And how far do these cases go?,” John Scott Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, which tracks digital surveillance of civil society, told The Guardian.
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(With inputs from agencies)