The cell phones of French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets

Phones of Macron and some French ministers targeted in Pegasus affair, according to French media

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2021-07-20 18:30:05

The cell phones of French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 members of the French government may have been among potential targets in 2019 of surveillance by spyware made by the Israel-based NSO Group, according to a newspaper report Tuesday.

The Paris prosecutor’s office announced it is investigating the suspected widespread use of the Pegasus spyware to target journalists, human rights activists and politicians in multiple countries.

Daily French newspaper Le Monde reported that the phone numbers for Macron and the then-government members were identified among thousands allegedly selected by NSO clients for potential surveillance. In this case, the client was an unidentified Moroccan security service, according to Le Monde.

Le Monde was part of a global media consortium that identified the targets from a list of more than 50,000 cellphone numbers obtained by the Paris-based journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and the human rights group Amnesty International and shared with 16 news organizations.

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