Washington – WhatsApp has won its lawsuit against the Israeli company NSO Group, which created the Pegasus spyware. In a ruling by a U.S. court, the judge sided with WhatsApp, stating that the NSO Group violated U.S. hacking laws and WhatsApp’s terms of service. With this victory, WhatsApp’s claim that 1,400 individuals had their phones hacked has been validated. Over 300 of those affected were from India.
WhatsApp, a Meta-owned messaging app, had reported that the phones of these individuals were hacked using Pegasus spyware in May 2019. The amount NSO Group will be fined will be decided next year. However, this ruling could reignite the debate over phone tapping in India.
In 2021, claims surfaced that Pegasus was used to hack more than 300 Indian mobile numbers, including those of two current ministers from the Modi government, three opposition leaders, several journalists, and business figures. However, the Indian government denied these allegations. NSO Group maintains that it only deals with governments and government agencies.
Now, following the U.S. court’s decision, there is potential for old cases related to phone tapping in India to resurface. In 2021, India’s IT Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw had stated that India’s surveillance laws ensure unauthorized monitoring does not occur, dismissing the phone tapping claims as false.