Spanish spy chief Paz Esteban sacked over phone hacking scandal

The first woman to head Spain’s intelligence agency, National Intelligence Center (CNI), Paz Esteban, was sacked by the Spanish government on Tuesday as part of a widening scandal over the hacking of the mobile phones of the prime minister and Catalan separatist leaders.

 

On Thursday, Esteban was questioned by a parliamentary committee about the phone-hacking scandal that has dominated headlines for days. She confirmed that the CNI had spied on 18 Catalan separatists, including Pere Aragones, the head of Catalonia’s regional government, but only with court approval. According to the media reports, Esperanza Casteleiro, the deputy defense minister, will replace Esteban.

 

The scandal broke in April when Citizen Lab, a Canadian cybersecurity watchdog, revealed that Pegasus spyware had been used to tap the phones of over 60 people linked to the Catalan separatist movement. This has caused a rift between Sanchez’s minority government and the separatist Catalan party ERC.

 

The scandal erupted after the government revealed on May 2 that the phones of Sanchez and Robles were hacked in May and June 2021 by the same spyware developed by Israel’s NSO group. Sanchez is the first sitting president to be confirmed as a target of the controversial Pegasus spyware. Pegasus spyware infiltrates mobile phones to extract data or spy on their owners by activating a camera or microphone.

 

The Israeli-based NSO Group, which owns Pegasus, claims that the software is only sold to government agencies to track down criminals and terrorists with Israeli authorities’ permission. Global rights organizations have chastised the company for infringing on users’ privacy worldwide, and it is being sued by major tech companies like Apple and Microsoft. According to Amnesty International, the software had been used to hack up to 50,000 mobile phones worldwide, a London-based rights organization.