Hungary’s Szabolcs Panyi on how Pegasus surveillance has hindered his reporting
Cenzolovka 14.12.2021 | Attila Mong
It took five months for Hungary to acknowledge publicly that it had bought the Pegasus spyware allegedly used to hack the phones of hundreds around the world. In November, Lajos Kósa, a top official from Hungary’s ruling Fidesz party, acknowledged the purchase in a media interview after a parliamentary meeting; Minister of the Interior Sándor Pintér confirmed it in front of a visiting delegation from the European Parliament it later in the month.
The confirmation was the government’s first real engagement with allegations involving global surveillance of journalists and activists, including many Hungarians, described by an international consortium of journalists for the Pegasus Project in July, according to Szabolcs Panyi, the investigative reporter who broke the story for Hungarian news outlet Direkt 36. Kósa’s statement came the day after the United States Department of Commerce imposed trade limits on