Amnesty International’s Security Lab released a report titled We Start With the Verdict: Inside Morocco’s Surveillance Machine, documenting alleged use of the Pegasus mobile‑surveillance tool – developed by the Israeli company NSO Group – by Morocco’s General Directorate for Territorial Surveillance (DGST).
Amnesty’s investigation combines forensic and technical evidence with leaked surveillance and government records, internal material from surveillance vendors, journalistic investigations and testimony from people with knowledge of Moroccan intelligence operations. It also draws on testimony from a former DGST member, pseudonymised as “Safir”, who claims to be a former DGST employee, as well as technical evidence and testimonies from ten identified targeteted civil-society figures.
The report documents Pegasus use in Morocco from 2017 to 2021, and possibly later. Amnesty says forensic evidence identifies several infection techniques, ranging from one-click attacks requiring interaction from the victim to zero-click exploits capable of compromising a device without any action by its owner. It also documents network-injection attacks that relied on the Maroc Telecom network.
by Digital Watch Observatory – Amnesty International report alleges Moroccan DGST used Pegasus spyware to surveil journalists from 2017 to 2021
