Spyware Targets MEP Investigating Pegasus Abuses
The proposed reform addresses the violation of parliamentary privilege while leaving the structural capacity for state-capitalist surveillance intact. This is not an oversight; it is the function of reform. When the European Parliament investigates the use of Pegasus spyware by the NSO Group against its own member, Stelios Kouloglou, the institution does not seek to dismantle the machinery of control. It seeks to regulate it. It wishes to ensure that the whip is only used on those who have been properly sanctioned, rather than on those who are asking inconvenient questions.
We must look at this not as a scandal of privacy, but as a scandal of class power. The accumulation logic of the modern state does not merely tolerate surveillance; it requires it. The state, in alliance with private technical contractors like NSO, has turned the private sphere into a public archive. The Member of the European Parliament is not merely a politician; he is a node in the network of capital, and when he attempts to trace the flow of power, he discovers that he is being watched by the very hands that write the laws.
Kouloglou’s investigation was not disrupted by a rogue agent or a temporary glitch. It was disrupted by the normal operation of a system that has decided the right to know is subordinate to the right to rule. The spyware is not an anomaly; it is the tool by which the elite maintain their position in the face of democratic pressure. To suggest that the solution is better oversight is to suggest that the wolf needs a better fence. The wolf does not want a fence; the wolf wants to eat.
The reform trap here is seductive because it sounds reasonable. We are told that we must strengthen data protection laws, that we must hold the NSO Group accountable. But accountability within the system is a joke. The NSO Group operates in the grey zone between state security and private profit, a zone that is becoming increasingly bright and increasingly dangerous. To regulate this zone is to legitimize it. It is to say that the violation of privacy is acceptable, provided it is done with proper paperwork.
Consider the image of Kouloglou sitting in his office, unaware that his every word, his every draft, his every thought is being captured by a piece of code written in Israel and sold to governments across the continent. He is not a victim of bad luck; he is a victim of the structure. The structure demands that the worker, whether he is in the factory or in the parliament, remain transparent to the state while the state remains opaque to the worker. This is the fundamental asymmetry of power.
The left’s response to such events is often weak, caught between condemnation and complicity. We condemn the violation of rights, but we accept the premises of the state that violates them. We argue for “more democracy” within a system that is structurally designed to limit it. This is a reform trap. It stabilizes the system by giving the appearance of change without changing the underlying relations of power.
True socialism requires more than the removal of spyware. It requires the removal of the need for spyware. It requires a society where the accumulation of capital does not depend on the suppression of dissent. It requires a democracy that is not a formality, but a living, breathing reality. Until we achieve that, the spyware will remain, not as an exception, but as the rule.
The comedy of this situation lies in the belief that the state can police itself. We imagine that the parliament can police the NSO Group. But the parliament is made up of the same class that benefits from the NSO Group’s work. They are not different organisms; they are different parts of the same body. To expect one part to cut off the other is to misunderstand anatomy.
The stakes are not merely about privacy. They are about the possibility of thought. If every thought is recorded, if every association is monitored, if every question is tracked, then the mind itself becomes a prison. The reform that promises to protect the parliament is actually a reform that protects the power of the parliament to ignore the people.
We must stop asking for better fences. We must ask for the destruction of the zoo. The spyware is the cage. The reform is the key that opens the cage for the zookeeper, while keeping the animals inside. We are the animals. And we are tired of the performance.