In an interview with PAP, Żaryn said that “all claims that the security services are using such methods in their operational work for political ends, are false.”
“In Poland, surveillance may be conducted if approved by the Prosecutor General and following a decision by the court,” the official added.
“These procedures are being adhered to and Polish services are acting in accordance with the law,” Żaryn stressed.
His words came in the wake of a report by the American Associated Press news agency earlier on Thursday that in 2019, Krzysztof Brejza, a senior politician with the opposition Civic Platform (PO) party, was hacked with Pegasus spyware from the Israeli firm, NSO Group.
According to University of Toronto’s non-profit organisation Citizen Lab, senator Brejza’s phone was digitally broken into 33 times between April and October 2019, AP reported.
Citizen Lab’s researchers earlier said that the former Deputy Prime Minister, Roman Giertych, and the prosecutor, Ewa Wrzosek, had also been put on surveillance with NSO software. The researchers were unable to identify who was behind the hacks.
Meanwhile, Poland’s Prosecutor General and Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro on Wednesday said that Poland, just as any other country, was allowed to use phone-surveillance software.
“Obviously, only in accordance with the law, if there are grounds for it, on the basis of legal procedures,” he emphasised.
Ziobro added he had “no knowledge of any illegal activities being conducted in Poland in this regard.”
“However, what I do know is that the Polish state is not powerless against people who, as evidence suggests, may have committed criminal offences,” the prosecutor general said.
(pm)
Source: PAP