David Pratt's Four Corners: Stories from France, Australia, Tunisia and Peru

TO begin with let’s put this in context. If the French president is vulnerable to mobile phone spyware, then are any of us safe? The obvious answer is no and frankly on a wider scale neither is democracy itself.

That’s not to say that Emmanuel ­Macron’s phone has yet been confirmed as compromised. That much the French ­government were at pain to stress on ­Friday pending a full investigation into how the president’s number, along with those of some government colleagues, were included on the list of 50,000 phone numbers offered by Israeli ­cyber ­intelligence firm NSO Group to its ­customers

“He’s got several phone numbers. This does not mean he has been spied on. It’s just additional security,” insisted an ­Elysee spokesman playing down fears while reports simultaneously emerged that Macron had changed his phone and number while ordering an overhaul of ­security protocols.

Macron of course is just one of a ­number of world leaders along with other global government officials, journalists and human rights activists highlighted in an investigation by Project Pegasus, a consortium of 17 media organisations, led by the Paris-based non-profit journalism group Forbidden Stories and Amnesty ­International.

According to the consortium’s findings, sophisticated “Pegasus” spyware, made and licensed by the NSO Group, had been used in attempted and successful hacks of mobile phones belonging to influential and powerful individuals in countries as far flung as India and Morocco.

Like other such tools Pegasus turns phones into real-time spying devices, where emails, encrypted messenger ­messages and calendar entries can be read, and the microphone and camera can be switched on unnoticed.

In the words of Amnesty ­International’s Secretary General Agnes Callamard, the investigators latest findings will, “send a chill down the spine of world leaders”, with as many as 14 said to have been hacked using Pegasus spyware.

“NSO Group can no longer hide behind the claim that its spyware is only used to fight crime, it appears that Pegasus is also the spyware of choice for those wanting to snoop on foreign governments,” added Callamard.

Many cyber experts agree, among them David Kaye, former US special ­rapporteur on freedom of expression and Marietje Schaake, president of the CyberPeace ­Institute and a former member of the ­European Parliament.

“For years, the global spyware ­industry has operated in the shadows, exposed only by human rights organisations and journalists. The industry claims it’s in the business of fighting crime and terrorism. But its members often sell to governments that equate ‘criminal’ and ‘terror’, with lcritic and ‘dissident’,” observed both ­experts in The Washington Post last week as the Pegasus scandal unfolded.

LIKE the arms trade, distinguishing ­between what constitutes legal business and illegal in the spyware industry can be a murky area, with companies often selling their products to government clients without regard to their track record on human rights, and without proper or transparent due diligence.

For its part NSO Group has denied all wrongdoing.

In a statement entitled “Enough is Enough”, NSO’s head of compliance, Haim Gelfand, said that “the numbers in the list are not related to NSO group”, and that “I can tell you with certainty that President Macron was not a target”.

But the investigative consortium which includes many reputable reporting and rights organisations stands by its claims and data, raising questions as to what can be done to counter such breaches and what we as individuals can learn from the Pegasus scandal.

Well, perhaps the first thing to realise is that anyone who provides spy software to authoritarian governments could in many instances be complicit in human rights violations up to and including ­murder. What’s needed too, insist experts is for governments to implement a ­moratorium on the sale and transfer of spyware ­technology until an effective global ­export regime can be put in place.

There is a need too for transparent, rule-of-law based requirements for any use of spyware with governments failing to do so put on a global no-transfer list. It needs also to be easier to sue those ­abusing standards within the surveillance industry.

Pegasus is a reminder that even with encryption, if we want something to be ­really private then we should simply ­never keep it on a mobile phone.

AUSTRALIA - Frantic shuttle diplomacy and the Great Barrier Reef

IT has been described as a battle between political lobbying and science. It was the first time ever that the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) had called for a World Heritage site to be placed on the “in danger” list.  

That “site” they were referring to is the Great Barrier Reef, and it was the view of an expert panel that the world’s most extensive coral reef system should be added to the list because of the impact of climate change. 

What happened next took many by surprise even if it’s common knowledge that Australia has been battling for years to keep the reef off the list, which can lead to the eventual loss of World Heritage status. 

Desperate to avoid a politically embarrassing classification for a tourist attraction that draws about five million people each year and supports nearly 70,000 jobs, Australia’s Minister for the Environment Sussan Ley got on a plane, or to be more precise, quite a few planes. 

France, Spain, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Oman and the Maldives were among her destinations in an effort to drum up support for Australia before a decision was reached by the World Heritage as whether to change the reef’s status.  

That decision – of sorts – came on Friday when a panel agreed to defer a vote until 2022 much to the disappointment of leading environmentalists.  

For the Australian government it buys it more time in resolving a contentious issue that some within the Canberra government believe is driven by politics and the hand of China amid a souring of relations between the two countries.  

Chinese officials are influential on three committees, a Chinese politician is chairman of the World Heritage Committee, and the fact the meeting of the UN panel on Friday took place in China is, insist some Australian government officials, evidence of Beijing’s hand in geopolitical mischief even if the decision went – to some extent – Canberra’s way on Friday. 

Leading environmental activists also saw cynical politics at play but as much on behalf of the Australian government as anyone else. 

“This is a victory for one of the most cynical lobbying efforts in recent history,” said David Ritter, chief executive officer of Greenpeace Australia. 

“This is not an achievement – it is a day of infamy for the Australian government,” added Ritter in a view echoed by many environmentalists around the world.  

While the politicians wrangle it would seem that the overwhelming scientific evidence meanwhile points to one of the world’s natural wonders being in real danger.  

While a Royal Society study last year found that half the reef’s corals had died in the past 25 years, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature described it as being in a “critical state” because of climate change. 

With a decision on the World Heritage site status deferred for another year that damage will doubtless continue unless action is taken. 

And as we now all know, time is of the essence in the battle for our world and its wonders. 

TUNISIA - The Arab world competes for influence as virus rates soar

I HAVE a fondness for Tunisia and well remember my time there in the wake of the Arab Spring uprising in 2010 that spread to other neighbouring countries challenging despots and their authoritarian regimes from Egypt to Libya and Syria. 

But right now, the Tunisian people are being tested to the extreme as a surge in Covid cases and the deteriorating health situation pushes the limits of a political system riven by disputes between the president and prime minister. 

Nearly 18,000 people have died of Covid in Tunisia, out of a population of 12 million – a death rate of 1.4 per 100,000, the second-worst globally after Namibia. Less than 8% of the population is fully vaccinated. 

As public anger rises over how the government has been handling the crisis a power struggle between President Kais Saied (above) and Prime Minister Hichem Mechichi has intensified.  

These past days Saied announced that the military health department would take over management of the Covid health crisis, a day after Mechichi fired Health Minister Faouzi Mehdi who is close to the president. 

The stand-off between the leaders, in addition to bitter disagreements between rival political factions, has diminished trust in the political system.  

Meanwhile, just as elsewhere in other parts of the world, vaccine diplomacy is taking on a regional dimension as some Middle Eastern nations start to manufacture vaccines for themselves.  

As a result, Tunisia now finds itself at the epicentre of a proxy battle for influence as regional leaders step in with vaccine supplies in a bid to win goodwill and influence. 

Over the past days, the UAE, where about 82% of the population is vaccinated, Turkey (36%), Algeria (3%) and Saudi Arabia (30%) have donated, or announced plans to donate, a total of about 1.75 million doses of vaccines they already had to Tunisia.  

For Saudi Arabia, the crisis in Tunisia offers an opportunity “to reassert its role”, one senior analysts at the International Crisis Group was quoted last week week as saying.  

Most observers say it’s too early yet to tell what kind of long-term impact the vaccine donations will have on public opinion in Tunisia or relations with those countries that have donated vaccine supplies. 

That said, it’s hard to imagine political or other strings not being attached and favours called in at some time in the future – hopefully not to the detriment of Tunisia’s hard-won fight for greater democracy.  

PERU - President seeks to create pluralistic government

‘NO more poor people in a rich country,” was his presidential election campaign slogan. It seems to have paid off for Pedro Castillo (above), pictured, a rural primary school teacher who emerged from obscurity won a bitter election battle and will this week be sworn in as Peru’s next leader. 

Castillo whose critics have labelled him a “Marxist” seems to have resonated with Peru’s poor, particularly in remote villages in the Andes and the Amazon basin while incensing his right-wing opponent Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the country’s former authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori.  

“I’m totally sure that the Peruvians will not allow Pedro Castillo and Vladimir Cerron to turn Peru into Cuba or Venezeuela,” said Fujimori after grudgingly conceding defeat and referring to the leader of Castillo’s Peru Libre (Free Peru) party. 

Latin American historians say that Castillo, the son of peasant farmers, is the first person from outside the elite to become president despite the economic gains of the past 20 years. It’s a detail that speaks volumes about the way Peru has been governed and one Castillo is more than conscious of. 

Speaking last week, Steven Levitsky, a political scientist at Harvard University and expert on Latin American politics pointed out that Castillo “has almost the entire establishment of Lima against him”.  

He described Castillo’s arrival to the presidency as “very weak,” and in some ways in a “very similar” position to Salvador Allende when he came to power in Chile in 1970 and to Joao Goulart, who became president of Brazil in 1962.  

If this is an accurate assessment, then it’s a troubling one not least given that both Allende and Goulart were deposed by US/CIA backed military coups.  

Not one for dwelling on such things and with his opponents playing up fears that he will lead the country toward expropriations and communism, Castillo however has wasted no time in declaring that he’s looking to form a pluralistic government. 

“I ask for calm and serenity from the Peruvian people. That’s not just the government’s responsibility but also that of all Peruvians,” said Castillo.  

The odds are stacked again him and is a president with scant political experience. But from what I’ve read and heard about him he is a man with the interests of his fellow Peruvians very much at heart. I wish him well and hope that he’s given an unfettered opportunity to prove his worth.