Imagine a stranger could access all the data and sensors on your smartphone. Read every chat. Turn on the microphone. Track your location. Anytime, and without physical access to the device. What sounds like a dystopian nightmare has already become reality for journalists and activists in Europe. Spyware such as Pegasus, Predator, or the newer Graphite makes exactly this possible — developed and sold by an opaque network of arms companies, businessmen, and the Israeli military. Switzerland is also involved, and the business is thriving.
These tools are being used more and more frequently in Europe, often without a clear legal basis. Frequently against activists who advocate for the rights of refugees — people whose only “crime” is saving others from drowning. Governments keep insisting these are isolated cases or exceptions. But the list keeps growing: Greece, Hungary, now Italy.
And Switzerland? Pegasus has already been tested here too. Yet we know very little about where and how, because the government remains silent.
So far, such tools are (presumably) not being used against civil society in Switzerland. But political rhetoric is paving the way for the wider deployment of spyware — even without prior suspicion. People on the move continue to be criminalized, and those who help them are labeled smugglers or terrorists.
As David Yambio, human rights activist from Refugees in Libya, says:
«It always starts with less privileged people, like me as a refugee, because we are easier targets. But if it begins with me today, it will affect the citizens of Europe tomorrow»
Together with Reta Barfuss (University of Zurich) and Lorenz Nägeli (WAV), I have written a commentary on why the normalization of hyper-invasive surveillance technologies affects us all.
Please read and share!
Article: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/29768640251381896