The announcement this Monday that Pedro’s cell phones Sanchez and Margaret Oak trees were spied on in May and June 2021 with the Pegasus program has added more doubts about the messy ‘Catalangate’ scandal. Is it the same company, organization or government that has tapped the phones of each other? How can it be that the central Executive has not detected until 11 months later that the president’s apparatus was infected? An international journalistic investigation in July 2021 revealed the names of 14 heads of government and state, including the president of France, Emmanuel Macronwho were among 50,000 people around the world spied on by that program, owned by the Israeli company NSO. However, Sánchez has now become the first head of government to admit that his terminal has been hacked by this ‘software’.
United We Can ask for resignations due to the security breach discovered
The Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolanosassured in a press conference called urgently that the Executive has denounced before the National Court that Sánchez’s telephone suffered two intromissions in may (the first time he was taken from 2.6 gigabytes of data, the second, 130 megabytes) and that of the Defense Minister, one in June (9 megabytes of information was stolen). The news was received with disbelief both in the independence parties and in the PP. United We Can, the main partner of the coalition Executive, requested that responsibilities be purged in the face of such a security failure.
Responsibility for failure
Some 2.6 gigabytes of data were stolen from the chief executive and 9 megabytes from the defense minister
Bolaños revealed that the National Cryptologic Center (CCN), dependent on the National Intelligence Center (CNI), has discovered these facts “in the last days”, in a process of check which is still going on, since it is not even known yet what information was stolen. This Monday, several members of the Government were contacted to deliver the device to cybersecurity experts. The in-depth analysis requires almost a whole day. Given the request for responsibilities for not having detected this serious failure before, sources from the Robles environment, on whom the CNI depends, pointed out that the protection of the Executive’s mobile phones is not the sole responsibility of the Cryptologist. There’s also a Department of Security and other Department of Homeland Security framed within the organizational chart of the Presidency of the Government, these sources recalled.
Asked Bolaños if the government believes that the espionage comes from another country, the minister limited himself to responding that they are “external” intrusions, “unrelated to state agencies and do not have judicial authorization.” The former head of Internal Affairs of the National Police Corps Marcelino Martín-Blas included in a complaint before a court that the police sewers in 2014, with Mariano Rajoy as president, acquired a system to steal information from an Israeli businessman who later sold Pegasus to USA. In addition, Defense sources insinuated last week that the Mossos they could also have acquired this ‘software’, although the former Minister Miquel Samper He assured that neither “was on the table & rdquor; because the budget was exorbitant.
Bolaños did not want to give any clues about the possible reasons for espionage on Sánchez and Robles, nor did he specify whether the Executive has any information that leads him to relate these thefts of information to the pardons of the ‘procés’, on June 22, 2021. “This is not the time or the place to make conjectures or interpretations & rdquor ;, he claimed. Neither sources from the Executive nor from the CNI wanted to outline any relationship between the jabs at the Government and those allegedly carried out on some sixty Catalan and Basque pro-independence leaders.
Information on previous punctures
It so happens that the announcement of the punctures by Sánchez and Robles comes after similar events suffered not only by pro-independence politicians, but also by members of the Executive. In August 2020 it became known that several ministers (although only that of the Minister of Justice, Juan Carlos Countrysidein charge of processing pardon requests) also suffered hacks and it was reported that the Department of National Security and the CNI were investigating it.
But on the dates of the espionage to the chief executive, there were also other burning folders, such as the investiture of Pere Aragonese Y Morocco. La Moncloa was having a delicate moment with the neighboring country after having welcomed Brahim in a hospital ghaligeneral secretary of the Polisario.
pending commissions
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The few explanations from Bolaños aroused more resentment in the pro-independence formations, which continue to demand explanations for the ‘Catalangate’. In the next few days, Robles will appear at the defense commission (Wednesday) and the director of the CNI, Paz Esteban, in reserved expenses, still no date. “It can be a smokescreen to try to dilute their responsibilities,” complained the president of the ERC, Oriol Junqueras. Along the same lines, the President of Parliament, Laura Borras, pointed to a “maneuver to go from executioners to victims”. Beyond their misgivings, leaders of ERC, JxCat and CUP agreed that the Government is to blame due to incompetence or complicity.
In the next few days, Robles, Minister of Defense, and Esteban, director of the CNI, will appear in commissions in Congress.
Similar doubts were expressed by the leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who stressed that it is a “no minor political coincidence” that the Executive has now made public some attacks from a year ago coinciding with the pressure exerted by the independentistas, who put the Government in a bind with the tight approval of its anti-war decree. The espionage scandal has added a script twist and Podemos does not understand that there are no resignations due to such a failure in the protection of the chief executive.