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Polish parliamentary committee to present report on Pegasus spyware

09.10.2026 12:20
A Polish parliamentary committee investigating the use of Pegasus spyware will present its report on Monday, its chair, Magdalena Sroka, has said.
Magdalena Sroka, who chairs the parliamentary inquiry into Pegasus spyware, pictured in the Sejm, lower house of Polands parliament, in Warsaw on Tuesday.
Magdalena Sroka, who chairs the parliamentary inquiry into Pegasus spyware, pictured in the Sejm, lower house of Poland's parliament, in Warsaw on Tuesday.Photo: PAP/Piotr Nowak

The committee, set up in January 2024, has examined whether surveillance operations using the Israeli-made software between November 2015 and November 2023, when the Law and Justice (PiS) party was in power, were lawful.

It has also been tasked with establishing who was responsible for purchasing Pegasus and similar tools.

Sroka said the report ran to about 700 pages and included both a public and a classified section.

The public part will be presented at a meeting at midday local time, followed by a closed session to discuss the classified material.

Committee members will then be able to propose amendments before the report is adopted.

The document will subsequently be presented to MPs in the Sejm, Poland's lower house of parliament, once Speaker Włodzimierz Czarzasty sets a date.

Sroka said the committee had found that Pegasus was used without the accreditation she said was required, which she described as a state guarantee.

She also noted that data collected using the software was accessible to its Israeli developer, NSO Group.

Sroka added that one of the system's four modules was held by the company, arguing that this meant neither the officers using Pegasus nor the people targeted by it were adequately protected.

She also said part of the system's cost had been covered by the Justice Fund, although she argued it should have been purchased using the Operational Fund.

The committee considers this unlawful and says it could have compromised the system.

According to information published previously, including by Poland's Supreme Audit Office (NIK), Pegasus was purchased for the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau (CBA) in autumn 2017 for PLN 25 million (EUR 5.7 million), most of which came from the Justice Fund.

The report also examines several individual cases of people placed under surveillance.

Sroka said there had been no grounds for targeting them with the software and that none had been charged with any offence.

She accused the previous government of using Pegasus to spy on political opponents.

The committee has so far referred cases to prosecutors involving former Justice Minister and Prosecutor General Zbigniew Ziobro, former Deputy Justice Minister Michał Woś, and former heads of the CBA, the Internal Security Agency (ABW) and the Military Counterintelligence Service (SKW).

Sroka said the new complaints would name additional people, including "politicians, but not only."

According to the committee chair, former security services coordinator Mariusz Kamiński should be held responsible.

Pegasus was developed by NSO Group to combat terrorism and organised crime.

It can be used to intercept calls on an infected phone and access emails, photos and videos, as well as activate the device's camera and microphone.

The affair broke in December 2021, when Citizen Lab and the Associated Press reported that Krzysztof Brejza, then an opposition senator and now a Civic Platform member of the European Parliament, had been hacked with Pegasus 33 times in 2019, while he was running the party's election campaign.

Officials at first denied buying the software, but in January 2022 PiS leader Jarosław Kaczyński acknowledged that Poland had purchased it, saying it was used to fight crime and corruption.

(ał)

Source: PAP, IAR