Polish leader admits country bought powerful Israeli spyware

By VANESSA GERA
Associated Press

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — The leader of Poland’s ruling conservative party has acknowledged that the country bought advanced spyware from the Israeli surveillance software maker NSO Group. But Law and Justice leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski denied the Pegasus software was being used to target his political opponents. Kaczynski said the secret services in many countries are using Pegasus to combat crime and corruption. He said “it would be bad if the Polish services did not have this type of tool.” Kaczynski made his comments in an interview to be published in the Monday edition of a weekly news magazine. A cyber watchdog group at the University of Toronto has reported that three Polish government critics were hacked with Pegasus.