By Antonio Sanguino, EL ESPECTADOR, October 29, 2024
https://www.elespectador.com/opinion/columnistas/antonio-sanguino/duque-el-mudo/
(Translated by Eunice Gibson, CSN Volunteer Translator)
Former President Iván Duque’s silence is deafening. And joining the chorus is the Attorney General he had in his pocket, Francisco Barbosa, his much-decorated Director of Police General Jorge Luis Vargas, Defense Minister Diego Molano, Interior Minister Daniel Palacio, and his officials at the Presidential Palace. We have to think this silence is because of the Pegasus software, illegally acquired in his administration, but we don’t know where it is. By using Pegasus, hands in the darkness are wiretapping half the world for purposes of committing crimes.
Everything about Pegasus is dark and destructive. That software, developed by the Israeli company NSO Group, is a powerful program for spying that allows access to our mobile devices, intercepts our communications, tracks our locations, extracts confidential information without permission, and all without our being able to notice what’s going on. Pegasus is so powerful that it has the ability to intercept encrypted applications like WhatsApp and Signal. This software has been the subject of climactic debates in countries whose governments and security agencies have acquired it with the pretext of combating terrorism and organized crime, but have ended up using it to spy on journalists, human rights activists, opposition leaders and parties, or judicial officers.
We now know that the controversies about the Israeli company NSO and Pegasus go far beyond governments and governmental security agencies. Technology giants like Meta Platforms, owners of WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram, and like Apple, Inc., have filed lawsuits against NSO in U.S. courts to protect their users from possible illegal digital spying operations using this sophisticated instrument.
It’s no accident that the Pegasus scheme in Colombia happened in the administration of Iván Duque, the direct heir of the illegal wiretapping administration of “democratic security”. “It’s in the blood,” must have been the thinking of Duque and his accomplices. Neither is it an accident that Pegasus was acquired right in the middle of the social explosion demonstrations in 2021, and it was probably used in illegal spying operations against leftist leaders and social and popular activists. It’s very probable that dark hands were playing a role in criminal manipulations in the campaigns in the 2022 elections. And even that Pegasus was prowling around in the activities of the Attorney General’s Office when Barbosa was in charge.
This episode could do greater damage than did the wiretapping by the DAS. We still don’t know exactly what the source was of the USD $11,000,000 that was paid for Pegasus. The procedures that were used to make the payment in cash, and the confirmation of two flights between Israel and the Police Hangar at El Dorado Airport in Bogotá; flights carrying high executives of NSO Group and the money in cash, are characteristic of a dubious operation. The mysteries about where and in what hands the software is to be found right now, the location from which it’s operating, and with what purpose, are absolutely terrifying.
One of the fundamentals of modern democracy is maintaining the monopoly of the use of force by the government. And one of the prerequisites of the Rule of Law is overcoming the cold war mentality and the spying by security agencies for the purpose of persecuting political opposition. Colombia has a bloody history in that area, one that it will have to overcome once and for all. Duque must break his silence, or the authorities must tell us what it is that he and his accomplices are hiding; they must quit wiretapping us with Pegasus and free us from this burden of the past.