July 19, 2021: Activists, journalists and politicians have been spied on for using cell phone malware developed by a private Israeli firm, raising concerns about widespread privacy and human rights abuses.

The use of the software, called Pegasus and developed by Israel’s NSO group, was reported by the Washington Post, the Guardian, Le Monde and other newsletters that assisted in investigating the data leak. The Leak identified a list of up to 50,000 phone numbers that are believed to have been identified by Israeli group NSO as persons of interest since 2016.

The list includes journalists from France, Press Street Journal, CNN, The New York Times, Al Jazeera, France 24, Radio Free Europe, Media Part, El Pace, and other media organizations around the world. The Associated Press, Le Monde, Bloomberg, The Economist, Reuters and Voice of America, the Guardian said.

Two of the numbers on the list were women close to Saudi-born journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was assassinated in 2018 by a Saudi hit squad.

The list also includes a number of independent Mexican journalists who were later assassinated at a Carwash. His phone was never found and it was not clear if he had been hacked. The Washington Post reports that the numbers on the list include heads of state and prime ministers, members of the Arab royal family, diplomats and politicians, as well as workers and businessmen.

The list does not specify which client entered the numbers to be spied on. But the reports say many are clustered in 10 countries: Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Hungary, India, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Morocco, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

A report by Guardian said the the leak suggests a “widespread and persistent abuse” by Israeli firm Pegasus. The Paris-based media non-profit organization, Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, initially had access to the leak, after which they shared it with media organizations.

The NSO, a leader in the growing and largely unorganized private spyware industry, had earlier promised the police that its software would be misused.

The Citizen Lab reported in December that dozens of journalists from Qatar’s Al Jazeera network had their mobile devices intercepted by state-of-the-art electronic surveillance.

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