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According to the 2017 SSSCIP of Ukraine Procurement plan for Lviv region, more than 22 million UAH of public money will be spent on surveillance over the citizens.
Notably, the sum of 21.25 million UAH is to be spent on maintenance of the well-known Pegasus software jointly developed by specialists working for the NSA and Mossad and serviced by the Israeli company NSO Group.
Pegasus allows to get access to any information stored and received by a victim's phone, as well as to employ a gadget's sound and video recording equipment, the whole process staying unnoticed for a user.
This software is being tacitly employed by some countries' secret services and it's especially popular with law enforcement agencies in the states with domestic political tensions. They keep a watchful eye over political opponents.
The authorities of Mexico for example are intensely applying Pegasus for intimidation and subsequent punishment of public activists, journalists, members of various groups that oppose torture, assassinations and corruption. Hundreds of people critical of the Mexico government are annually detained with the help of the NSO Group software. Those people often become victims of criminal groups or just disappear into nowhere.
Pegasus software installed on smartphones enabled the Mexican authorities to find out that about 80 students from a teacher training college on three buses were coming to Iguala so as to join protest actions on 26 September 2014. Police intercepted the buses on the way to the city by opening fire. Four students were shot dead on the spot, 43 more were arrested while the rest were lucky to escape. The day after this accident the relatives of the detained students turned to the police to get some information on where the detainees were held. The police said they had no clue about any detentions. Later the authorities declared that all 43 missing people had been killed by members of the Guerreros Unidos group. It's worth noting that attorney Mario Patron, who along with the Human Rights Center filed claims against the authorities after the students had disappeared, became the owner of the surveillance software on his cellphone as well.
Are those multimillion sums to meet the needs of the Ukrainian technical intelligence make any sense or not? This question, alongside with some ethical and legal aspects, remains unclear so far. It's impossible to forecast now the real effect to the national economy of those costs or whether they are going to be ever compensated by western partners of Ukraine. We can only hope for those highly expensive measures, that appear to relate not only to Lviv region actually, to become a really effective tool to provide security, not blackmailing or repressions.
Notably, the sum of 21.25 million UAH is to be spent on maintenance of the well-known Pegasus software jointly developed by specialists working for the NSA and Mossad and serviced by the Israeli company NSO Group.
Pegasus allows to get access to any information stored and received by a victim's phone, as well as to employ a gadget's sound and video recording equipment, the whole process staying unnoticed for a user.
This software is being tacitly employed by some countries' secret services and it's especially popular with law enforcement agencies in the states with domestic political tensions. They keep a watchful eye over political opponents.
The authorities of Mexico for example are intensely applying Pegasus for intimidation and subsequent punishment of public activists, journalists, members of various groups that oppose torture, assassinations and corruption. Hundreds of people critical of the Mexico government are annually detained with the help of the NSO Group software. Those people often become victims of criminal groups or just disappear into nowhere.
Pegasus software installed on smartphones enabled the Mexican authorities to find out that about 80 students from a teacher training college on three buses were coming to Iguala so as to join protest actions on 26 September 2014. Police intercepted the buses on the way to the city by opening fire. Four students were shot dead on the spot, 43 more were arrested while the rest were lucky to escape. The day after this accident the relatives of the detained students turned to the police to get some information on where the detainees were held. The police said they had no clue about any detentions. Later the authorities declared that all 43 missing people had been killed by members of the Guerreros Unidos group. It's worth noting that attorney Mario Patron, who along with the Human Rights Center filed claims against the authorities after the students had disappeared, became the owner of the surveillance software on his cellphone as well.
Are those multimillion sums to meet the needs of the Ukrainian technical intelligence make any sense or not? This question, alongside with some ethical and legal aspects, remains unclear so far. It's impossible to forecast now the real effect to the national economy of those costs or whether they are going to be ever compensated by western partners of Ukraine. We can only hope for those highly expensive measures, that appear to relate not only to Lviv region actually, to become a really effective tool to provide security, not blackmailing or repressions.