Based on the analysis of the Foundation for Transparent Journalism, the whole story seems more like a coordinated campaign than a real sensation. But the journalist of pestisracok.hu also researched what evidence the Hungarian and international press can bring up in the case.

Time bombs, coordinated attack

Among the most read news of the past few days is the alleged wiretapping scandal, in addition to the case of Katalin Cseh. The Transparent Journalism Foundation analyzed in detail the media processes of the news about Israeli spyware, the interpretation of the story, its distribution over time and between surfaces, and came to the conclusion that the whole thing gives the impression of a consciously constructed, coordinated media campaign rather than a real media sensation.

We highlight some important findings:

Direkt36 from Hungary Telex , which cooperates with Direkt36, unplanned and published article about it just one hour after the news appeared in the foreign press Especially since the mentioned article is an extremely long, 42,000-character, well-edited analysis interspersed with graphics.

The various mediums, which are considered not pro-government, covered exactly the same subtopics

It is worth observing the presentation of the case in individual press products. Telex, which was the first to report on the news, put it this way: "A crude Israeli spy weapon was exposed, critics of the Orbán government and Hungarian journalists were also targeted with it." In contrast to his cautious wording, 444.hu took the news as follows: " The government is listening to ". The unproven claim that the Hungarian government was behind the alleged wiretapping was reported as a fact

Another interesting and exemplary phenomenon is that on the morning of the outbreak of the Pegasus case, at 8:00 a.m., presumably timed, "How can they hack my phone and what can I do about it?"  appeared entitled, also a rather long, tech-lifestyle, good advice type article.

The government-critic ezalenyeg.hu has switched to full campaign mode: practically at the national level of individual constituencies, they announce the same news with different titles. Although the claim that the government had anything to do with the wiretapping has not been proven, the opposition portal is already involving potential local government politicians in the case. Not to mention that these articles suggest that government politicians can wiretap any citizen.

social media trends can clearly see that materials related to the Pegasus case do very well on these platforms. It is interesting that the so-called fact-checkers make sure that the claims are proven, but in relation to the surveillance case, they completely ignore the fact that all claims and assumptions are based on a database that is completely unknown and inaccessible to the public.

While the news related to the Hunter Biden case was deleted from the platforms as a disinformation campaign by the Russian secret service, now unproven information based on a non-public database is allowed to spread. All this despite the fact that both NSO, as the company involved, and all the governments involved, including the Hungarian government, categorically deny what happened. Why don't Facebook and Twitter label the above articles as unconfirmed information?

And then about the "evidence"

The pestisracok.hu also researched what kind of evidence the Hungarian and international press can bring up in the case.

Evidence of wiretapping was found by Amnesty International (Soros) on the phones of some of the wiretapping individuals. How do we know this happened? Because Amnesty International says so! No independent organization has been given access to Amnesty's documentation!

Amnesty examined the phones of 15 (!) journalists and, according to its claim, found traces of the spyware on them. This is 0.03 percent of all phone numbers! Still, it is considered a fact that all 50,000 numbers on the list were intercepted.

According to FS, 50,000 phone numbers in more than 50 countries were monitored. According to the Guardian, more than 50,000 phone numbers are thought to be of interest to clients of NSO (the Israeli manufacturer of the spyware). /…/ The fact that a phone number is listed does not indicate that the device is infected with Pegasus or that an attempt has been made to jailbreak it. However, the consortium believes the data may point to targets for NSO's government clients, identified in advance of possible wiretapping attempts.

We sense the cunning, don't we? " He thinks", "it is possible", "they may indicate" ... This is then presented as a solid fact.

Much of Amnesty's report deals with NSO's offensive infrastructure, which has servers in Germany, the UK, Switzerland, France, Austria, Japan, the US, the Netherlands, Canada and Finland, among others. The current media campaign has not singled out these countries. Instead, the target countries are Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Hungary, India and the United Arab Emirates, for which the consortium " found" that their governments use Pegasus.

The intent to destroy the entire business of NSO is striking. Amnesty has published its own complete cybersecurity toolkit to filter out Pegasus on mobile phones. Since when is this the task of a civil rights organization? Of course, if a civil organization has an active, high-level prevention service, a lot can happen!

Is there any evidence that the 50,000 list really contains the data of those who were intercepted? Even the Guardian doesn't claim this, yet they pretend it does. If the list were really authentic, it could only be on the NSO server, but they claim that the customers of the spyware have the information about the targets, not them. This is also logical.

If they are telling the truth, then the list had to be collected from the organs of eavesdropping agencies of 50 countries, which only a very serious secret service can do. If they are lying - which I obviously can't rule out - then only a secret service could have broken into their server, because even Amnesty is shrouded in silence about the origin of the list. According to the Guardian, they “ have access to the leaked list ”. Oh sure.

From now on, I will leave the field of journalism and indulge in assumptions - writes the journalist of the plague raccoons. It is a matter of machination on a world political level. Even Soros is not strong enough for this, his network was at most asked to cooperate.  The whole thing seems to be a disinformation operation with a secret service background, with American origins. The most important target is obviously not Hungary, but India, Saudi Arabia and Israel, and the company itself, NSO. The collection of data against them took place already in 2018 and 2019, but while Trump was in power, they did not receive a green signal .

Source and full articles can be found here: Mandiner , Pestisrácok

Front page image: The internet portal ezalenyeg.hu reports the same news with different titles at the national individual constituency level. Source: Mandarin