The Soros attack on the patriotic government of Hungary is escalating: Now The Guardian, the Washington Post, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP) and other Soros-linked media are charging the Orbán government with “waging war on the media in Hungary” and “spying on independent journalists” using Israeli spy software.
What the “Guardian” doesn’t reveal: The attack is wholly based on “research” by Soros-funded NGO Forbidden Stories that has been throughly debunked by the company concerned. The “Guardian” and OSF-tied hack Carole Cadwalladr were also Ground Zero for baseless claims that Cambridge Analytica somehow manipulated the 2016 election, a conspiracy theory that was wholly discredited by the British Information Commissioner‘s report.
In Germany, the new campaign was launched by the same Soros-tied “journalists” who used a manipulated video to bring down the Austrian government in 2019, as Gateway Pundit reported. The claims were also used to go after other conservative governments such as Narendra Modi’s in India and suggest unsubstantiated ties to the murder of Muslim Brotherhood activist Jamal Kashoggi.
At the very bottom of their extensive dossier on the story, left-wing German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung acknowledged the true source of the so-called “reporting”: “Who finances Forbidden Stories research? The non-profit initiative is financed by various sources, including the Luminate Foundation funded by Ebay founder Pierre Omidyar … and the Open Society Foundations (OSF) founded by US investor George Soros.”
In a statement to Gateway Pundit, Hungarian government spokesman Zoltan Kovacs said:
“Hungary is a democratic state governed by the rule of law, and as such, when it comes to any individual it has always acted and continues to act in accordance with the law in force. In Hungary, state bodies authorized to use covert instruments are regularly monitored by governmental and non-governmental institutions. What would be the answer of the governments of the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Germany or France to the same questions? Will we ever find out who – or which secret services – have an interest in pillorying Hungary?”
NSO Group, the Israeli firm that makes the Pegasus spy software at the center of the Forbidden Stories report, called the report “full of wrong assumptions and uncorroborated theories that raise serious doubts about the reliability and interests of the sources. It seems like the “unidentified sources” have supplied information that has no factual basis and are far from reality.”
After checking their claims, NSO “firmly deny the false allegations” and are “considering a defamation lawsuit”, the company stated. NSO Group has “good reason to believe the claims that are made by the unnamed sources to Forbidden Stories, are based on a misleading interpretation of data from accessible and overt basic information, such as HLR Lookup services, which have no bearing on the list of the customers targets of Pegasus or any other NSO products. Such services are openly available to anyone, anywhere, and anytime, and are commonly used by governmental agencies for numerous purposes, as well as by private companies worldwide.”
“It is no surprise that this story has a splashy headline”, an NSO spokesman told the Gateway Pundit. “When reading the story, readers quickly learn that there is no link between the 50,000 numbers to NSO Group or Pegasus. In fact, even the Washington Post’s editor stated that “the purpose of the list could not be conclusively determined” and the list does not identify who puts the numbers on it or why. The report itself stated that “it is unknown how many of the phones were targeted or surveilled”. Then the readers learn that the actual story is built around 37 of the 50,000 phone numbers, and even for those 37 – the reporters fail to prove a definitive link between the numbers and NSO. This list is an equivalent of opening the WhitePages, choosing randomly 50,000 numbers, and drawing headlines from it.”
“The story has been flimsy from the beginning”, the spokesman said. “When editors contacted NSO Group last week after spending months researching rumors and innuendos, the claim was even more sensational, not to mention imaginary. They originally claimed that the 50,000 numbers were found on an NSO server. After realizing that it’s impossible, since Pegasus has never been licensed that many numbers, and because NSO servers do not have such kind of data, the editors quickly turned their story into a massive ‘what if’, only not to ruin a good headline. Now the new claim is that these 50,000 numbers exist on an unfamiliar list with no ties whatsoever to NSO. Yet, somehow, the editors decided to run with this story, even after it became clear that their unidentified sources had misled them, most likely intentionally.”
NSO technology “was not associated in any way with the heinous murder of Jamal Khashoggi”, as the reporting had claimed. “We can confirm that our technology was not used to listen, monitor, track, or collect information regarding him or his family members mentioned in the inquiry. We previously investigated this claim, which again, is being made without validation.”
NSO emphasized that it sells technologies “solely to law enforcement and intelligence agencies of vetted governments for the sole purpose of saving lives through preventing crime and terror acts.”
“We also stand by our previous statements that our products, sold to vetted foreign governments, cannot be used to conduct cybersurveillance within the United States, and no foreign customer has ever been granted technology that would enable them to access phones with U.S. numbers. It is technologically impossible and reaffirms the fact that these sources’ claims have no merit,” NSO said.
“NSO Group’s technologies have helped prevent terror attacks, gun violence, car explosions and suicide bombings. The technologies are also being used every day to break up pedophilia, sex, and drug-trafficking rings, locate missing and kidnapped children, locate survivors trapped under collapsed buildings, and protect airspace against disruptive penetration by dangerous drones. Simply put, NSO Group is on a life-saving mission, and the company will faithfully execute this mission undeterred, despite any and all continued attempts to discredit it on false grounds.”
