Pegasus spyware

Bukele escalates crackdown on independent media after documentary exposes his alleged gang deals

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Article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. Photo: El Faro

The government’s latest offensive came after the release of a documentary co-produced by PBS that allegedly exposes the deals Bukele is said to have struck with El Salvador’s most powerful gangs.

Last week, the online newspaper El Faro reported that the government of right-wing Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele froze the bank account and a property belonging to two partners of Trípode S.A., the company that founded and supports El Faro. According to the Ministry of Finance, the measure functions as collateral for alleged debts related to tax evasion.

However, the media outlet’s partners and journalists assert that this is yet another attempt to intimidate the press that has been critical of the Bukele administration and that, at its core, seeks to silence those who expose the right-wing government’s alleged acts of corruption.

The online newspaper El Faro has reported on numerous occasions that the government of right-wing President Nayib Bukele has launched several attacks against its journalists. It all began in 2020, when the president himself announced at a press conference that an investigation into the media outlet for money laundering would be launched.

Following that, the government conducted four audits to examine the source of the media outlet’s funding. Once it could not be proven that the funds were of illicit origin, the government pivoted to investigating the outlet for alleged tax evasion.

Carlos Dada, director of El Faro, told El País: “None of those audits has reached a final ruling; all are currently being litigated. We do not evade taxes. The taxes have been paid, and we have proven it.”

The allegations of deals between Bukele and the gangs

El Faro began facing increased pressure after it revealed alleged pacts between powerful Salvadoran gangs and various governments, including Bukele’s.

In May 2025, several leaders of the Barrio 18 gang claimed that their organization had engaged in negotiations with Bukele before he became president – that is, while he was mayor of San Salvador.

The recent attempt to financially strangle El Faro coincides with the release of a documentary titled “The Deal,” produced in collaboration with the US network PBS, which reconstructs the alleged agreements between the Bukele administration and the MS-13 and Barrio 18 gangs. This documentary has garnered hundreds of thousands of views in less than a month.

“Clearly, this is another step in the escalation we’ve been facing since 2020. Not only through legal channels, but also through economic strangulation, political attacks, false accusations, espionage, and the interception of our communications,” Dada told El País.

In 2023, after several years of investigations, threats of criminal trials, and audits that have proven nothing, the administrative structure was forced to relocate to Costa Rica. In 2022, the newspaper also reported that 22 of its staff members had been subjected to nearly 226 attempts to hack into their electronic devices using the Pegasus spyware.

“We conclude that at least 35 individuals from the media organizations El Faro, GatoEncerrado, La Prensa Gráfica, Revista Digital Disruptiva, Diario El Mundo, El Diario de Hoy, and two independent journalists were hacked using Pegasus. We also identified hacking against civil society organizations in El Salvador, including Fundación DTJ, Cristosal, and another NGO,” Citizen Lab states in a report on the spying on journalists and activists in El Salvador

According to a recent report by the Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES), nearly 50 journalists and reporters have been forced into exile in 2025 for fear of being imprisoned by the Bukele administration, including the entire main editorial staff of El Faro. In addition, there have been more than 400 attacks against journalists by a government that appears to have no moral qualms about confronting the press with the force of the state.

In this regard, El Faro states in an article: “The government continues to criminalize journalists and media outlets that defy its propaganda. It is using the state apparatus, which is under the control of the Bukele family, to persecute critical voices.” A year after the forced exile of our staff from El Salvador, we have continued to practice journalism and investigate the government, through the publication of monthly magazines, weekly podcasts, international collaborations, and more gatherings of journalists, such as the Central American Journalism Forum.”

Finally, the newspaper stated: “We will continue to practice journalism with the commitment and rigor that has characterized us since 1998. But also with the certainty that, as long as we don’t stop, they won’t stop either.”

Article by Pablo Meriguet republished from peoples dispatch under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 (CC BY-SA) license.

Continue ReadingBukele escalates crackdown on independent media after documentary exposes his alleged gang deals

Amnesty Details ‘Shocking’ Allegations of India Targeting Reporters With Pegasus Spyware

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Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

A woman uses an iPhone in front of the building of the NSO Group, developer of the spyware Pegasus, on August 28, 2016, in Herzliya, Israel. (Photo: Jack Guez/AFP via Getty Images)

“Increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs,” said one advocate.

Amnesty International on Thursday demanded transparency from the Indian government regarding its contracts with surveillance companies, including the Israeli firm NSO Group, after the rights organization joined The Washington Post in publishing what it called “shocking new details” about the use of spyware to target journalists in India.

Amnesty’s Security Lab revealed that a round of “state-sponsored attacker” notifications that were sent to Apple customers in October by the tech company went to more than 20 Indian journalists including Siddharth Varadarajan, founding editor of The Wire, and Anand Mangnale, South Asia editor at the Organized Crime and Corruption Report Project (OCCRP).

The Security Lab ran a forensic analysis of the two reporters’ devices and found evidence that the NSO Group’s highly invasive Pegasus spyware, which is capable of eavesdropping on phone calls and harvesting data, had been installed on phones owned by Varadarajan and Mangnale.

In Mangnale’s case, the journalist appeared to have received a “zero-click exploit” via iMessage on August 23, allowing the individual or group who sent it to covertly install Pegasus spyware on his phone without requiring Mangnale to take any action, such as clicking a link.

At the time of the attempted attack, said Amnesty, Mangnale was working on a story about alleged stock manipulation by a major Indian multinational firm with ties to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The journalist told Agence France Presse that his phone was targeted “within hours” of his sending interview questions to the company.

The timing of the attack—and the fact that NSO Group has said it only licenses Pegasus to governments and security agencies—was “a hell of a coincidence,” Mangnale said.

“Targeting journalists solely for doing their work amounts to an unlawful attack on their privacy and violates their right to freedom of expression,” said Donncha Ó Cearbhaill, head of Amnesty’s Security Lab. “All states, including India, have an obligation to protect human rights by protecting people from unlawful surveillance.”

The Indian government was previously accused of targeting journalists, opposition politicians, and activists with Pegasus in 2021, when leaked documents showed the spyware had attacked more than 1,000 phone numbers.

India has fallen 21 spots to 161 out of 180 countries in Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Freedom Index since Modi took office in 2014. In addition to the alleged use of spyware by the government, journalists have been arrested and detained while covering anti-government protests, and reporters have been targeted by coordinated social media campaigns inciting hatred and violence.

Varadarajan was the subject of an earlier report by Amnesty, which documented how he had previously been targeted by Pegasus spyware in 2018.

This past October the same email address used in the Pegasus attack on Mangnale was identified on Varadarajan’s phone, confirming he was targeted again.

Varadarajan toldThe Washington Post that at the time of the most recent covert spyware installation, he had been leading public opposition to the detention of a news publisher in New Delhi.

“Our latest findings show that increasingly, journalists in India face the threat of unlawful surveillance simply for doing their jobs, alongside other tools of repression including imprisonment under draconian laws, smear campaigns, harassment, and intimidation,” said Ó Cearbhaill.

The group called for the Indian Supreme Court to immediately release the findings of a technical committee report on Pegasus, which was completed in 2022 but has still not been made public.

“Despite repeated revelations,” said Ó Cearbhaill, “there has been a shameful lack of accountability about the use of Pegasus spyware in India which only intensifies the sense of impunity over these human rights violations.”

Original article by JULIA CONLEY republished from Common Dreams under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). 

Continue ReadingAmnesty Details ‘Shocking’ Allegations of India Targeting Reporters With Pegasus Spyware