A growing number of experts in the field of computer science are making their voice heard to dismiss Pegasus pseudoscientific allegations, put forward by The Citizen Lab, with solid scientific counter-argumentation. David Zenaty, Jonathan Scott, Tor Ekeland, Michael Hassard, Uraz Yavanoglu…the list is long.
This time, it is the turn of University Professor Jose Javier Olivas, from the Department of Political Science and Administration at the National Distance Education University in Madrid (UNED), who gave his academic input on the report by The Citizen Lab called “CatalanGate”.
Jose Javier Olivas was invited by Spanish Euro-deputy Jordi Canas (Renew Europe) to give his testimony before the European Parliament and present the conclusions of his report: “Critical review of Citizen Lab’s CatalanGate”.
The academic pointed out that the CatalanGate investigation runs counter the guidelines set by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) and the UN Berkeley Protocol.
He also underlined that the results of the said study are not reproducible and were not peer reviewed in a transparent, independent way.
The University Professor drew attention to a major flaw undermining the research methodology as the authors failed to provide the exact number of examined phones.
A scientific research cannot be credible if it was undertaken to incriminate a specific party, he said, explaining that Apple committed to pay 10 million dollars to The Citizen Lab, Amnesty International and any other NGOs able to provide enough proofs to bring NSO Company to justice.
This blatant conflict of interest makes junk science by The Citizen Lab null and void.