‘Manipulative technology is a danger for national security’: TMC MP seeks parliamentary panel meet on ‘Tek Fog&…

 

New Delhi: Trinamool Congress leader Derek O’Brien, who had last week sought a discussion on ‘Tek Fog’ app in the forthcoming meeting of parliamentary committee of Home has now sought a meeting of the panel stating that ‘use of such manipulative technology is a danger to national security and democratic rights of free speech and unfettered media’. Congress leader Anand Sharma heads the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home.

 

In his fresh letter, Derek O’Brien, also a member of the panel, said he was bringing the new developments on the matter of the use of a violative software application called ‘Tek Fog’ to attention. He also referred to the Pegasus row and pointed out that the ‘hacking technique was formerly used by the Pegasus spyware before the NSO Group developed an even more sophisticated zero-click hijacking method’.

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Citing a report on news portal ‘The Wire’, the TMC MP said that the Tek Fog app gives ‘cyber troops the ability to hijack WhatsApp accounts of private citizens by sending them spyware disguised as a media file’. ‘It then remotely accesses inactive accounts in their contact lists and uses the inactive number to send targeted messages to all their contacts. All of the hijacked number’s contacts are synced to a database on cloud, ripe for picking as future targets of disinformation and harassment’, he added.

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In his letter, he said that the app has another feature to modify existing news articles and links to them, creating fake news articles styled like true ones. ‘Use of such manipulative technology is a danger to national security and democratic rights of free speech and unfettered media, and a threat to individual citizens’ privacy and safety. I, therefore, request you to call a meeting of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Home Affairs at the earliest, to discuss these developments’, the TMC MP said.