BARCELONA, SPAIN (AP) – Hacking revelations involving the cell phones of politicians have put Spain’s typically circumspect intelligence agency in an uncomfortable spotlight.
In one case, Spain’s National Intelligence Centre is accused of gross negligence for allowing unknown sources to tap the phone in Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s pocket with the Pegasus spyware. Although Spain has refused to point a finger at Morocco, the dates the phones of Sánchez and Defence Minister Margarita Robles were hacked last year match up with a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
The intelligence agency, known by its Spanish acronym CNI, also is accused of using the Pegasus programme to hack the phones of over 60 Catalan separatists. Amid the back-to-back scandals involving alleged espionage, plans for a public ceremony to observe CNI’s 20th anniversary were postponed.
Agency director Paz Esteban López appeared yesterday before a select parliamentary committee behind closed doors, where she was able to break the secrecy code that prohibits members of the government from revealing the workings of her agency.
Esteban, the first woman to serve as CNI’s director, spoke to just 11 members of Parliament, all of whom have to sworn not to reveal what they are told. Spain’s Parliament voted to let members of Catalan and Basque separatist parties sit on the special committee.
The highly anticipated meeting at Spain’s Parliament building in Madrid took place inside an austere meeting room at one end of a hallway flanked by portraits of Spain’s parliament
speakers.
The Catalan separatists, who want to carve out a new state for northeast Spain around Barcelona, grilled Esteban about CNI’s alleged use of the spyware. They directly accused the CNI of being behind the hacks that came to light two weeks ago when the digital rights group Citizen Lab based in Canada published a report citing the use of Pegasus to hack into the phones of dozens of pro-independence supporters in Spain’s northeastern Catalonia region, including politicians, lawyers and activists.
