Headed by Shashi Tharoor, committee meet got off to a stormy start; the matter was put to vote
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Information Technology (IT), headed by Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor, met on Wednesday and got off to a stormy start, with members being at odds over whether to take up the WhatsApp-Pegasus snooping issue.
Eventually, the matter was put to vote and the panel decided in favour of discussing the issue that involves snooping on 121 Indians. The meeting, which lasted over two and a half hours, took a political turn, with members taking sides, while the ruling alliance members were largely opposed to taking up the WhatsApp Spying issue. The voting on whether WhatsApp-Pegasus should be discussed ended in a tie. It was Tharoor’s vote in favour that ended the debate.
In May, WhatsApp became aware of NSO Group, an Israeli company, having used a coding glitch in the messaging app that let its customers spy on some people. The software developed by NSO Group for spying is called Pegasus. As many as 1,400 people were targeted by the spyware worldwide and 121 in India — most of them being activists and journalists.
On October 29, WhatsApp decided to sue NSO Group for misusing the messaging platform’s code to compromise user privacy. The issue has since taken a political turn, with the government asking WhatsApp to explain the breach of Indians’ privacy. The government has also come under some heat for not answering whether any of its agencies bought the Pegasus software….
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