Pegasus and cybersecurity

These days, you will hear unconfirmed information by the Government that Catalan nationalist activists intercept their communications using the Israeli intelligence software Pegasus. Likewise, the government itself confirmed this week that the said program will be used on the smartphone of Head of Government Pedro Sánchez and other European leaders. According to information from The Guardian, with the authorship of the Moroccan government itself.

While we are already accustomed to listening to so-called experts at social gatherings whose (possibly expert) opinions range from the COVID pandemic to the Cumbre Vieja volcano, the war in Ukraine or any other topic, we are advised to choose their sources of information. report meticulously on a topic with public figures (you may not know everything like some of your peers) and it can help us get our own opinion.

In terms of intelligence, there are four block-based intelligence cycles: information acquisition, elaboration, dissemination, and manipulation. In obtaining information, intelligence agencies, armies, or increasingly, companies’ own intelligence units are using techniques to obtain information. It can be HUMINT (information from human sources), OSINT (information from open sources), SIGINT (information from technical sources), and GEOGINT (information from the use and analysis of images and geographic information).

Then, once the information is obtained, it is processed, evaluated, analyzed and integrated with other comparable information. Exactly the software mentioned, Pegasus is a spyware used to monitor the activity of a smartphone. It’s not the first or last tapping of a phone conversation. Recall what the SITEL software gave him during the time of the now deceased Rubalcava, the former Minister of the Interior. With the advancement of technology now even more so as the smartphone has become a jewel in cyber intelligence due to the level of information it provides: We have data about a person’s physical condition, vital signs, when and when to get up. You go to sleep We know what communications you are maintaining, we can anticipate ideas, tastes or thoughts through instant messaging software with natural language processing techniques. Likewise, it gives us a very curious piece of information, such as a person’s geographic location, with fairly accurate data. Similarly, the rest of the information provided by the user in social networks. I don’t want to be a tech apostate or alarm you, this is what comes with a smartphone.

Therefore, it is not surprising that intelligence agencies work on R&D+i in order to obtain information through these valuable devices and tools. crunch devices. This shows once again that our political leaders are not aware of the serious problem we are experiencing with regard to cyber security, that we train specialists who start working in the private sector because they are paid three times more, and that the problem is taken from somewhere else. we will continue the same or worse depending on the point of view.

The statements of Defense Minister Margarita Robles on this subject show that there is a smart life left in the Spanish Government. The government has a moral and legal obligation to use the necessary digital tools to obtain information against those who want to destroy the Rule of Law.

Of course, and apart from diplomatic matters, there are political decisions that are questionable, such as if we know that Morocco is directly spying on the phones of the president and ministers, then we are making a radical change of position in front of the former Spanish colony. Saharan or Catalan nationalists can justify whether the CNI is spying on them when the CNI itself directly points out that the Catalan independence movement is supported by Russian intelligence in the distribution of disinformation and false news. Add to all this the rush of government partners and demands for their resignation, deputizing the political arm of Basque terrorism, and the Catalan separatists entering the official secrets commission. The cottage of the Marx brothers.