The Pegasus-Watergate Comparison: Does It Make Sense?
Twitter has been home to many surprisingly accurate comments on the establishment and surrounding events. As The Pegasus Project reports come out, it has drawn yet another epic comparison, the Pegasus-Watergate comparison.
Watergate is trending on Twitter, and if you search for it, you’ll see Pegasus spyware stories. Twitterati is comparing Pegasus with Watergate, a similar surveillance scandal that came out in the U.S. Here’s how it is a relevant observation.
Pegasus Is Watergate Revamped
To understand the comparison, let’s talk about what is Watergate? In 1972, a break-in happened at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex, Washington D.C.
The break-in was funded by the then Presiden, Richard Nixon’s campaign money. Once this fact came out, the Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward, and Carl Bernstein started looking deeper into the matter.
Their investigation ended with President Nixon resigning from the office, and revelations of voice-activated taping systems in the Oval office. This was the first time government spying/surveillance of high-level entities came to light.
Pegasus has a lot in common with Watergate, which makes us wonder how far surveillance has come. From the Oval office to the opposition party leader’s phones, that’s the progress that NSO Group has enabled.
Pegasus spyware is sold by NSO Group to the governments of various countries. Currently, more than 40 countries have access to spyware and many of them are known for human rights violations.
While some are marking it as the watergate moment of India, we can call it a global Watergate revamp. Any country using Pegasus to spy upon dissenters or the opposition is creating a mega-Watergate on its own. Since some will defend this in the name of national security, the names of Pegasus targets say otherwise.
However, it took under half a decade to complete the Watergate investigation. Let’s see how long before Pegasus, the modern-day Watergate-enabler is brought to justice. One must also ask whether the modern-day Nixons will ever be held accountable? Will the 45 countries using Pegasus ever acknowledge its use?
