DEMOCRACIES DO NOT SPY

De­hu­man­is­ing op­po­nents to the point of turn­ing them into en­e­mies is the best way to end up de­priv­ing them of their most basic rights. It starts by sin­gling them out, then at­tack­ing and de­mon­is­ing them, and fi­nally bring­ing about a sit­u­a­tion in which these peo­ple – now en­e­mies – have no rights and can be tar­gets of any ar­bi­trary acts.

This is not new and a dy­namic that has been seen in other places – al­though in Spain too – and at other times in his­tory, when well-de­fined groups - blacks, gip­sies, Jews, Com­mu­nists – can be sub­jected to any­thing be­cause they have no rights or are not even seen as real peo­ple.

This process of de­hu­man­is­ing op­po­nents, now en­e­mies, has led to an op­er­a­tion of mass spy­ing against im­por­tant fig­ures of the Cata­lan na­tional mi­nor­ity through the use of the Pe­ga­sus sys­tem, which is noth­ing more than a so­phis­ti­cated and per­verse 21st cen­tury weapon of war that through the mo­bile phone of those af­fected al­lows un­lim­ited ac­cess to pri­vate in­for­ma­tion and every­thing that hap­pens near the said tele­phone.

I won’t go into de­tails about how Pe­ga­sus works, need­less to say that by al­low­ing un­lim­ited ac­cess to our pri­vacy, we are stripped, dis­armed and pre­vented from keep­ing the most sa­cred part of our ex­is­tence pri­vate: the in­ti­macy of our com­mu­ni­ca­tions. We have been treated as out­casts de­void of any human at­tribute that al­lows us to enjoy the same rights as those who per­se­cute us and who con­sider them­selves pos­ses­sors of the truth.

The red lines crossed since the start of the mass spy­ing op­er­a­tion against the Cata­lan na­tional mi­nor­ity and those around them are a symp­tom of the in­ten­sity of a dis­ease that af­fects Spain, which they not only do not want to talk about, but which they deny: the lack of de­mo­c­ra­tic cul­ture, which is the basis on which the ha­tred of na­tional mi­nori­ties has been built and now ex­pressed against Cata­lans.

In no coun­try with a min­i­mal de­mo­c­ra­tic base would such a mass spy­ing op­er­a­tion like this, and which is just the tip of the ice­berg of every­thing they have done and every­thing that will come out, go un­pun­ished, no mat­ter how hard in­ves­ti­gat­ing who is re­spon­si­ble would be.

In no coun­try with a min­i­mal de­mo­c­ra­tic base would such a mass spy­ing op­er­a­tion like this, and which is just the tip of the ice­berg of every­thing they have done and every­thing that will come out, find any sup­port once i dis­cov­ered, nor would there be com­men­ta­tors, nor pan­el­lists, nor politi­cians try­ing to jus­tify it with such child­ish ar­gu­ments as na­tional se­cu­rity, the in­dis­sol­u­ble unity of the na­tion, or even an al­leged Russ­ian threat.

In no coun­try with a min­i­mal de­mo­c­ra­tic base would such a mass spy­ing op­er­a­tion like this, and which is just the tip of the ice­berg of every­thing they have done and every­thing that will come out, lead a par­lia­ment to refuse to cre­ate a com­mis­sion of in­quiry to, at the least, try to work out the po­lit­i­cal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties that emerge from such a crim­i­nal act.

In no coun­try with a min­i­mal de­mo­c­ra­tic base would such a mass spy­ing op­er­a­tion like this, and which is just the tip of the ice­berg of every­thing they have done and every­thing that will come out, lead to draw­ing dis­tinc­tions be­tween al­leged legal and il­le­gal spy­ing when by de­f­i­n­i­tion all spy­ing is il­le­gal and, when done within the same state and against the cit­i­zens of that state, is also im­moral.

As here we have a clear dis­tor­tion of how democ­ra­cies op­er­ate – and I refer to democ­ra­cies that need no qual­i­fy­ing ad­jec­tive – it seems nec­es­sary to re­peat time and again that democ­ra­cies do not spy on their cit­i­zens, democ­ra­cies do not dis­crim­i­nate against na­tional mi­nori­ties, democ­ra­cies do not spend pub­lic re­sources on com­mit­ting crimes and, when some­thing goes wrong, democ­ra­cies act quickly, rig­or­ously and with­out avoid­ing the final con­se­quences, what­ever they may be.

What has emerged so far about the use of Pe­ga­sus against the Cata­lan na­tional mi­nor­ity, and which is only the be­gin­ning of what will even­tu­ally emerge, is more than enough to iden­tify the ex­is­tence of a sys­temic or wide­spread prob­lem in Spain in re­la­tion to at least one spe­cific na­tional group. It is a prob­lem that does not have an easy so­lu­tion, but, above all, a prob­lem to which gen­uine de­moc­rats must not and can­not turn a blind eye.

In a mat­ter such as this, which af­fects the cen­tral core of fun­da­men­tal rights, there is no room for neu­tral­ity or keep­ing one’s dis­tance be­cause to take such a po­si­tion is ba­si­cally to side with the vi­o­la­tor of these basic and in­alien­able rights that every human en­joys, even Cata­lans. Keep­ing one’s dis­tance is to side with the per­pe­tra­tor of se­ri­ous crimes rather than to take the side of the vic­tims or, at the very least, of the law.

It is use­less to bandy around the word democ­racy or to qual­ify it in any way if at the same time a per­ver­sion of the mag­ni­tude of ’Cata­lan­gate’ is hap­pen­ing or being tol­er­ated. I in­sist: in a democ­racy these things do not hap­pen, and to say oth­er­wise is to show your true colours.

How­ever, based on every­thing we al­ready know, and while we wait for it all to come out, it is clear that if there is a real de­sire to put things right, if democ­racy is gen­uinely part of the DNA, what has been re­vealed should serve to begin a change of par­a­digm and the aban­don­ment of a par­tic­u­lar model that was im­planted dur­ing a tran­si­tion that has shown it­self to be lit­tle more than a con­tin­u­a­tion of Fran­co­ism.

To put it more clearly, if the gov­ern­ment of Pedro Sánchez is re­ally com­mit­ted to democ­racy – with­out qual­i­fy­ing it with ad­jec­tives – right now there is no bet­ter op­por­tu­nity to lead a process of change built on a rig­or­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tion of what has been re­vealed about ’Cata­lan­gate’ so far. Spain will have few op­por­tu­ni­ties to prop­erly deal with what has hap­pened, to in­ves­ti­gate, to seek jus­tice and, based on the re­sults, to build a true de­mo­c­ra­tic sys­tem in which na­tional mi­nori­ties can ex­press them­selves, de­cide their own fu­tures and, above all, not be­come vic­tims of a crim­i­nal dy­namic like the one that is now being un­cov­ered.

’Cata­lan­gate’ is so se­ri­ous that we must not for­get some­thing more es­sen­tial: by every means there has been an at­tempt to pre­vent the in­ter­na­tion­al­i­sa­tion of the po­lit­i­cal con­flict and, for this rea­son, we have been per­se­cuted and re­pressed in a mis­er­able and twisted way to the point that, thanks to the crim­i­nal acts of those who be­lieve that every­thing is jus­ti­fied if it is for the home­land, not only is Eu­rope’s gaze upon us but the ir­refutable data show every­one that Spain is in a po­si­tion that can only be com­pared to openly dic­ta­to­r­ial states after hav­ing vol­un­tar­ily joined the Bahrain club, with Saudi Ara­bia, the United Arab Emi­rates, Mo­rocco, and so many oth­ers that have also ben­e­fited from the Pe­ga­sus pro­gram to spy on and re­press their en­e­mies.

In any case, I in­sist, we must re­mem­ber that such crim­i­nal acts do not hap­pen in a democ­racy and that, if they were to occur, they would al­ways be in­ves­ti­gated, clar­i­fied and the cor­re­spond­ing po­lit­i­cal and crim­i­nal re­spon­si­bil­i­ties be ap­por­tioned. If I were part of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment, rather than see­ing ’Cata­lan­gate’ as a prob­lem, I would see it as an op­por­tu­nity, per­haps the last one, to com­plete an un­fin­ished tran­si­tion and put an end to the un­der­hand dy­namic that Spain has been im­mersed in since the death of Franco.

On March 18, Cit­i­zen Lab, a Cana­dian lab­o­ra­tory that spe­cialises in dig­i­tal se­cu­rity, pub­lished an in­ves­ti­ga­tion that the Pe­ga­sus spy­ware pro­gram had been used to put Cat­alo­nia’s in­de­pen­dence move­ment under sur­veil­lance since 2017. Some 65 mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dence move­ment were iden­ti­fied as tar­gets, in­clud­ing four Cata­lan pres­i­dents and two par­lia­ment speak­ers, as well as other elected of­fi­cials, ac­tivists, lawyers, com­puter de­vel­op­ers and their rel­a­tives.

Cata­lan­gate, as the af­fair be­came known, is per­haps the largest ever case of cer­ti­fied cyber-sur­veil­lance. It has come to dom­i­nate head­lines in Cat­alo­nia in re­cent weeks, and has led to a freeze in re­la­tions be­tween the Cata­lan and Span­ish gov­ern­ments. Cit­i­zen Lab did not ex­plic­itly name a per­pe­tra­tor of the cyber-at­tacks, but the ev­i­dence strongly points to the au­thor­i­ties.

The case has also been cov­ered by for­eign media out­lets, such as The New Yorker mag­a­zine, which pub­lished an ex­ten­sive re­port that in­cluded the case that was ti­tled “How democ­ra­cies spy on their cit­i­zens”. Below, lawyer Gon­zalo Boye, who rep­re­sents for­mer Cata­lan pres­i­dent Car­les Puigde­mont – one of the tar­gets of the spy­ing – ex­plores the same sub­ject as the US mag­a­zine and in­sists that spy­ing is not pos­si­ble in a true democ­racy.