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Category: Repression

Kolkata Prof Got an Alert From Yahoo Over ‘Govt-Backed’ Email Snooping Attempt

Kolkata Prof Got an Alert From Yahoo Over ‘Govt-Backed’ Email Snooping Attempt

The Wire / by Sukanya Shantha and Anuj Srivas

Just around the time when news of Israeli spyware Pegasus being used to target activists and human rights lawyers was breaking in India, Partho Sarothi Ray, a 42-year-old Kolkata-based molecular biologist, was dealing with another peculiar problem.
His Yahoo email account had received an alarming message from the technology company: “We believe your Yahoo account may have been the target of government-backed actors, which means that they could gain access to the information in your account.”
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Rights are relative in New India: some have them, some cannot

Rights are relative in New India: some have them, some cannot

The Telegraph / by The Editorial Board

No country that claims to uphold human rights deprives prisoners of the right to self-improvement or the peaceful habit of reading. Yet Shalini Gera, an activist who went to visit the lawyer, Sudha Bharadwaj, imprisoned in Pune’s Yerwada jail since October 2018 for alleged links with the Communist Party of India (Maoist) in the – rather enigmatic – Elgaar Parishad-Bhima Koregaon case, had her birthday gift of two books returned.
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Pendyala tag allows daughters to meet Varavara Rao in jail

Pendyala tag allows daughters to meet Varavara Rao in jail

The Times of India / by Srinath Vudali

Hyderabad: Three daughters of Pendyala Varavara Rao, key accused in the Elgar Parishad case, are happy they didn’t drop their surname after marriage.
As luck would have it, the decision to retain the “Pendyala” name has helped them meet Varavara Rao, who is lodged in Yerawada jail in Pune for the past one year.
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Complete list of journalists, politicians and activists targeted by WhatsApp spyware [Statement by Targeted Persons]

Complete list of journalists, politicians and activists targeted by WhatsApp spyware [Statement by Targeted Persons]

The Free Press Journal / by FPJ Web Desk

Facebook-owned WhatsApp on October 31 said Indian journalists, lawyers, human rights activists and politicians were among those globally spied upon by unnamed entities using an Israeli spyware Pegasus.
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OPEN LETTER TO THE GOVERNMENT OF INDIA FROM PEGASUS TARGETED PERSONS

8/11/2019

Countercurrents.org / Press Release by Pegasus Targeted Persons

We, the undersigned, have all received messages from WhatsApp Inc. over the last fortnight, informing us that our mobile devices were the target by a highly sophisticated cyberattack.
Read full statement

Prashant Bhushan to move SC for probe in WhatsApp row

Prashant Bhushan to move SC for probe in WhatsApp row

The Asian Age / by The Asian Age

New Delhi: The activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan will move the Supreme Court for investigation into the hacking of the WhatsApp accounts of the human right activists, lawyers and journalists seeking to know whose phones were tapped and at whose instance.
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First, They Came For the Lawyers…

First, They Came For the Lawyers…

The Wire / by Jhuma Sen

The Israeli spyware snooping scandal in the latest example of how India is no exception when it comes to common patterns of persecution and intimidation of lawyers working on human rights issues.
The relationship between civil liberties lawyers, more commonly identified by its universal moniker ‘human rights lawyers’ and repressive regimes globally demonstrate some common patterns of persecution and intimidation.
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Whatsapp Spyware Attack: Bhima-Koregaon activists being spied on by the Centre?

Whatsapp Spyware Attack: Bhima-Koregaon activists being spied on by the Centre?

Sabrangindia / by Sabrangindia

The Whatsapp Snoopgate issue that spread like wildfire, not only had the general public under its attack, but lawyers defending the human rights activists arrested under the controversial Bhima Koregaon case have also confirmed that their phones were being targeted by Pegasus, a the surveillance software developed by Israeli company NSO group that came to be in question, The Huffington Post report.
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