Catalonia has become the first European territory to enact a ban on spyware.
The restrictions on espionage surveillance software such as Pegasus in the Spanish region follow on the heels of the U.S. ban announced on March 27th.
The executive branch of the Catalan regional government decided to prohibit programs like Pegasus at its cabinet meeting on April 4th.
The issue is particularly sensitive in Spain and Catalonia since revelations by CitizenLab, a Canadian organisation that investigates human rights abuses with digital technologies, showed that Spain’s central government had likely used Pegasus and Candriu software to spy on 65 pro-independence figures between 2017 and 2020, including journalists and civic personalities. In 2017, the regional government organised a unilateral, unconstitutional referendum on the secession of the region from Spain.
The moratorium includes “the export, sale, transfer, and use of tools such as Pegasus until there is enough guarantee that they comply with human rights,” Catalan News reports.
Pegasus is the most well-known of various brands of spyware. These software programs can stealthily infect a mobile phone, extract information, and even control features such as the microphone so that the victim’s conversations can be recorded without him being aware. The tool, created by military experts, has been key in bringing drug lords and mafia leaders to justice but has also been used by governments to spy on its opposition, both civic and political. It is further entangled in geopolitics because it is considered a military-grade tool and is usually treated by countries as a weapon of war, meaning that the private developers of the software have to obtain government permission for each sale to customers outside the country’s borders.
The Catalan regional government has taken a leading role in the international movement to restrict the use of such software.
It presented the Geneva Declaration on Selective Surveillance in September 2022. The declaration calls for international regulations of spyware.
Meritxell Serret, Minister of Foreign Action and European Union, told Euractiv that the regional government is “complying with and implementing the commitments of the Geneva Declaration on Targeted Surveillance and Human Rights.”
Catalonia is following in the footsteps of the United States in restricting the use of Pegasus. The U.S. was the first country to officially ban the use of spyware. At the end of March, President Joe Biden signed an executive order prohibiting
operational use by the United States Government of commercial spyware that poses risks to national security or has been misused by foreign actors to enable human rights abuses around the world.
The EU Parliament is currently carrying out an inquiry into the use of spyware in the bloc. So far, it has concluded that even if they have not stated so publically, most EU member states possess spyware. Though the committee has only accused a select number of governments, including Spain, of misusing the software, it has called for a moratorium while tighter regulations are developed.
Spanish MEP Diana Riba told Euractiv that there is likely a majority in Parliament in favour of a moratorium, though not a ban, on the software, and the EU has already started the long process of establishing legal regulations on the spyware industry.
