Why Did PM Pashinyan Purchase an Israeli Pegasus Spyware?

 

In September-November 2021, multiple media outlets in Armenia published articles informing the public at large about a badly miscalculated decision made by PM Pashinoglu (an Armenian born with the soul of a Turk, that is why we call him Pashinoglu) to purchase from Israel a spyware (Pegasus), designed to eavesdrop on unsuspecting Armenian smart phone users who are not involved in any criminal activity, nor by any stretch of imagination represent a threat to the national security of Armenia.

“Yerevan Today” published an article titled “Eavesdropping is carried out by the Pegasus spy program in Armenia, Pashinyan had purchased a $ 7 million Pegasus system" , to highlight the fact that“It is officially confirmed that Armenia has acquired a Pegasus spy program, which carries out illegal wiretapping...at least two people in Armenia received a warning letter from Apple that Pegasus spyware was installed on their phones.”

“Hrabarag” released a similar warning to Armenians to emphasize the fact that “Nikol Pashinyan has spent $7 million to buy Pegasus spyware to track opposition figures as well as editors of independent media outlets.” Hrabarag also indicated that the selection of targets is directly supervised by PM Pashinoglu, costing Armenian Tax Payers $10,000 (+) per target. 

It is very surprising that Armenia’s opposition parties, the “Yerevan Press Club”, media executives, and Armenian NGOs funded by Soros and supposedly defending freedom of speech and opinion, maintained a very low profile instead of turning the scandal into a valuable opportunity to protect the constitutional rights of Armenians, and simultaneously scrutinize how Pashinoglu undermined the national security of Armenia by purchasing the Pegasus spyware from Israel.

But before we address the ramifications of acquiring the Pegasus spyware by a reckless and myopic Prime Minister, and how it will impact the national security of Armenia, we need to cover the criminal act committed by the hero of “The Velvet Revolution” or “The False Messiah From Ijevan”.

Article 42 (1) of The Constitution of The Republic of Armenia sates the following:

Everyone shall have the right to freely express his opinion. This right shall include freedom to hold own opinions, as well as to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas by any means of information without
interference by state or local self-government bodies and regardless of
state frontiers. 

Of course like all Western democracies, The Constitution of Armenia places certain limitations well clarified under Article 42 (3):

The freedom of expression of opinion may be restricted only by law with
the aim of protecting state security, the public order, health and morals, or honor and reputation of others, and other fundamental rights and
freedoms.

Any person with a rudimentary understanding of the law will immediately tell you that “honor and reputation of others” should have been kept out of the constitution. Once you integrate it under the restrictions that The State can impose on individuals with the blessings of The Constitution, it will become a tool of political “witch hunt” destined to silence criticism directed at leaders like Pashinoglu, who has a big narcissistic ego, and expects the population at large to parrot his own grandiose positive views of his own self.

In all Western democracies, if you believe your reputation has been injured by a person abusing freedom of speech, there are libel and defamation laws that protect a plaintiff within a setting called “Civil Court.” No Western government is known to have used libel and defamation as an excuse to spy on opposition lawmakers, journalists, or civil liberties activists. The most common excuse encountered during the “Cold War” to spy on citizens of a democracy was the label of “Communist Sympathizer” not the honour or reputation of a President or Prime Minister undermined by a criticism traced to individual X,Y, or Z.

Pashinoglu decided to use State resources to spy on opposition figures and journalists who do not entertain very flattering views about his treacherous policies. He chose an inimical path that will drag the country into an abyss best depicted by the following words of US President Harry S. Truman:“Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear."

There are adequate legal grounds, under Armenia’s laws, to launch a criminal prosecution against Pashinoglu for abuse of power. Of course he has his own stooges and puppets running Armenia’s judicial system, and no prosecutor will be willing to geopardize his/her career to nail Pashinoglu.

Now let us move to the thorough analysis of the technical aspects of the Pegasus spyware, and understand how it can undeniably inflict serious and irreversible harm on the national security of Armenia. 

 

  

 

Pegasus is the “brain child” of the Israeli cyberarms company known as The NSO Group. Early versions of the software reached secretly the international scene in 2011, but the first revelations about its existence emerged with the Edward Snowden Affair, followed by failed attempts by The NSO Group in 2016 to download and self-destruct the spyware in the cell phones of Human Rights Defenders (HRD) in many authoritarian regimes. By 2021 more scandals, court documents (filed by Apple, iMessage, Gmail, Viber, Facebook, WhatsApp, Telegram, and Skype...), investigative reports released by Citizen Lab, Paris-based NGO Forbidden Stories, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and Pegasus Project indicated that the spyware managed to target more than 50,000 smart phone users (Iphone and Android) world wide.

Three Presidents were on the list of the 50,000 victims/users: French president Macron, President Baram Salih of Iraq, and South Africa's Cyril Ramaphosa. More than 600 high ranking government officials (US State Department included) and politicians from 34 countries were also on the list of the victims.

In slightly more than a decade, the spyware/Pegasus evolved from a primitive program requiring the victim’s gullibility to click on a mallicious link, to a highly sophisticated spying tool that can launch “zero-click” attacks. Meaning, the smart phone user does not have to do anything. Once a victim cell number is known, the phone can be turned into a pocket spy infected by the program without any action undertaken by the user. 

Since 2016, NSO Group executives reiterated to the world at large the same broken record again and again: “We sell the spyware to law enforcement and intelligence agencies after a strict screening of the purchasing party...the company does not operate the hacking tools it sells – government, law enforcement and intelligence agencies do.” 

 

 

 

Court documents and investigative reports mentioned earlier do not agree with the false statements (lies) made by the NSO Group executives. The spyware is not a simple Excel spreadsheet program that you download from a site with a single click of your mouse. It requires an extensive preparation and an elaborate support infrastructure before the spyware becomes operational. 

As per the product brochure of Pegasus, “NSO is responsible to deploy and configure the Pegasus hardware and software at the customer premises.” The entire setup requires WEB Servers, Communications Module, Cellular Communication Module, Permission Module, Data Storage, Servers Security, System Hardware installation, Operator Consoles and finally the Pegasus app.

The following sequence of events is followed by the NSO Group every time a new contract is signed with a new client, after obtaining the consent of several Israeli ministries/agencies, especially IMOD-Israel Ministry of Defence. You cannot set up the Pegasus equipment/servers in a tiny little room located in the basement of the NSS Headquarters in Yerevan. The servers alone require a space of 25 square metres with a stable temperature of 18 Celsius, plus an extra operator space of 100 square metres to position consoles and make seating arrangements for agents assigned to the task of eavesdropping on unsuspecting Armenian smart phone users. Once the space issue is resolved, the purchaser must acquire a “Network Connectivity” with at least two Asynchronous Transfer Mode (ATM) lines from two different Internet Service Providers (ISPs). The Pegasus user would then need to secure eight static external internet protocol addresses.

For maximum efficiency, the Pegasus system must be connected to a stable cellular network, thus requiring direct access to multiple cellular towers within a few hundred meters radius of the physical location. 

All the basic conditions mentioned above cannot materialize in a few days. The long process under ideal conditions takes 12 to 15 weeks of intense work to move from a conceptual blue print to an operational mode, with the direct involvement of Israeli experts/technicians from the NSO Group or Mossad agents masquerading as NSO experts. NSO experts must work in tandem with Armenian experts to influence the choice of equipment, and ensure European or Israeli equipment and software with “Back Doors” are adopted and not Chinese hardware that can make it more difficult for Israel to penetrate the entire cellular network of Armenia.

NSO technicians must ensure that there is a highly efficient integration between the hardware, software, and local cellular and internet networks. Once that stage is successfully completed, NSO/Mossad agents must train Armenian operators for several weeks, depending on the level of technical skills displayed by Armenian agents.

One cardinal rule NSO Group always follows is to create an extremely efficient monitoring system that will guarantee that the purchasing party (Pashinoglu) will never be able to use the Pegasus system to harm Israeli agents operating on Armenian soil, and by extension the Azerbaijani active and “sleeper” agents who made significant inroads within the State bureaucracy of Armenia and the top brass of The Armenian Armed Forces.

In other words, under the guise of monitoring Armenia’s Pegasus system to prevent any harm that may affect Israeli interests in Armenia or the Caucasus, NSO Group/Mossad will have an exceptional golden opportunity to gain access to the best kept secrets of The Armenian NSS and The Armenian Army. 

I don’t believe that PM Pashinoglu, at any point in time, used cold logic to understand how the Pegasus system will seriously undermine the national security of Armenia in the process of giving him an opportunity to spy on his political foes, understand their plans, and machinations to upset the “Normalization” process with Turkey and the peace treaty he may eventually sign with Azerbaijan.

The allegation, made by a former Azerbaijani intelligence officer in exile, that Pashinoglu was recruited and paid generously as an Azeri agent, long before he planned “The Velvet Revolution”, gains credibility with his badly miscalculated decision to acquire from Israel The Pegasus system.

If the citizens of Armenia don’t want to lose the remaining bits and pieces of the limited freedom of speech they currently exercise, they should consider seriously the following statement of the 4th president of the United States, James Madison, who punctuated the importance of freedom of speech during his stay in the White House by pointing out that “There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

To the Armenian born with the soul of a Turk, Pashinoglu, we need to reiterate one more time that “If reedom of speech means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.” (George Orwell)

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