Ruling party figures say Poland has Pegasus spyware
reuters.com
reuters.com
How is it not a Watergate? They used Pegasus on the leader of the most important election campaign in the last 7 years in Poland.
How can you place blame on the electorate? People don't have a say in right-wing theocratic ultranationalist authoritarian regimes.
Except, you know, if the "right-wing theocratic ultranationalist authoritarian regime" is democratically elected over and over.
In Poland, president, both chambers of the parliament, constitutional court and state prosecutor are all Trumps.
There was irrefutable proof that Nixon ordered the break into DNC headquarters and then covered it up. We have proof Brejza was hacked. To become Watergate, we need proof the government ordered it.
That's just a normal day for us in Poland. People who vote for Law and Justice do not care the law (which has been already changed to serve their interests) nor the justice (which is also nearly fully controlled by them at this point). As long as it pisses off the other side, it's OK with them. Oh, and the Catholic Church is helping them, because they also get a cut.
With the acquiescence of the Pope, or is he turning a blind eye to this?
I don't think that the Vatican necessarily has that much power over the Polish Episcopate. It seems like they operate as an association of non-profits all across the world and every single organization operates independently, within a rough framework.
I live in one of the largest cities, haven't ever really been a church-goer. Going through all the sacraments was just a traditional thing you'd do. A decade ago, I don't remember hearing anything political in my local church. Sure, I heard some pretty obnoxious homophobic stuff, saw "exorcisms", but it was always somewhat neutral. However over the past few years, I've heard a lot of stories about rabid priests demonizing "the other side" (be it the other parties, "the LGBT plague" etc.), saying that the only way towards salvation is voting for PiS. Maybe it was a very vocal minority that was amplified by the media (look, priest X is doing this stuff! how terrible!). Eventually it seemed like that behaviour was normalized and the attitude of the people towards the Church became even more radicalized.
Right now, the percentage of people who claim they're religious is plummeting. People who disagree with PiS (and the behaviour of the Church) are pulling their kids from "Religion" / Catechesis lessons, mostly in large cities. In my community, the schools have to group up multiple classes to even have groups of 10. How do you fight it? Well, you give a ton of funding to "patriotic causes", which are primarily promoting Catholicism, militarism / far-right, nationalistic narratives (the government is contributing to this now: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fB2XRK_Xb6g).
The trade-off seems to be replacing your average church-goes / people who only go to the church for baptisms / First Communion / marriages, with Polish "patriots" - nationalists full of hatred towards anyone who's not white, religious and preferably voting for the Populist-Nationalists or Conservative-Liberals (who banded up with actual neonazis???). Arguably, I think that financially it could be a net positive for the Episcopate - they're getting public funding (for now) and possibly acquiring new, radicalized, loyal followers.
Disclaimer: It probably _is_ a very loud minority. Unfortunately it's also the minority that appears to control the Church leadership. I feel sorry for the legitimately honest and good people I met through the Church, who are now getting grouped up with xenophobes.
Right now is probably the toughest moment for them. We have a really nice Omicron wave and their tax reform that went into effect on Jan 1st (primarily shifting money from local government, where opposition controls the largest cities, to healthcare) has failed extremely spectacularly. They ignored the whole process and the laws are overcomplicated (yet broken) crap, increasing the tax burden on most people. Oops!
Every bureaucracy's primary allegiance is to itself, not its constituents.
And most importantly, does this include the Polish Catholics *employed by the Vatican-led Church"?
Lay people aren't relevant to this.
Didn't Trump complain his campaign was spied on too. Deep state will do what it will in every country. Politician change, but lifelong bureaucrats remain. Sometimes its not clear who really runs the show even. You can't assumed based on who is the figurehead on TV.
EDIT: typos.
Why a game console, of all things? Well, back in the early 1990s here in Poland, a local Nintendo NES/Famicom clone called Pegasus [1] was a thing among the kids. A hit, indeed.
Here’s [2] the deputy Minister of Justice dismissing the accusations in this regard, a few days ago.
Except the photo posted by him doesn’t even depict Pegasus the console. It’s another Famicom clone, whose chassis is a rip-off of the design of the PS One (2000).
[1]: https://culture.pl/en/article/pegasus-other-famiclones-how-p...
On Thursday, Amnesty International independently verified Citizen Lab's finding that Sen. Krzysztof Brejza was hacked multiple times in 2019 when he was running the opposition’s parliamentary election campaign.
Text messages stolen from Brejza’s phone were doctored and aired by state-controlled TV in Poland as part of a smear campaign in the heat of the race, which the populist ruling party went on to narrowly win."
How come this is not prosecuted criminally?
They ignore the law on daily basis without blinking an eye, spend money like there's no tomorrow (often throwing tens of millions into mud), pass hastily written laws after midnight, and are extremely arrogant with everything they do. They don't talk with free press anymore, or if they do, they repeat scheduled sentences sent in the morning by sms from the leadership. They don't answer the questions; they talk monologue. There was no such arrogance in power in Poland ever, even under communist rule.
The only things they don't control are: senate (48-52), and presidents of big cities + regions; but they steadily amend the laws and funding to make the regions weaker and centralize the power further.
They have almost absolute power at this point, and the only way someone will get prosecuted until they stay in power is someone who tries to threaten their status quo; however since their parliamentary majority is minimal, they're hiding under the carpet everything they can to avoid losing the 51%.
They can also threaten to drop susidizies and to kick them out.
I'm actually hugely wary of EU interfering in state affairs, because the EU is not some 'magical good guy' - they're just usually 'somewhat gooder'.
In particular, Poland refuted the ECJ as having ultimate authority over local courts, the EU threw a huge fuss - but Poland has substantial backing for that: there is nothing in the treaties which indicate ECJ has said authority. At the very same time, the issue is not resolved even in Germany, and the German high courts are thinking of pressing a case. Since Germany is the 'centre of the EU' - and - there are gaping holes in the true legal authority of the ECJ for certain things, it's not a war that the EU wants to get into. It could tear a mile wide hole in the legal fabric of the EU. That said: I wish the would do it because the situation is unconscionable and almost nobody is aware of it.
Using Pegasus to spy on political opponents however, is a bridge way, way too far. Poland is not going to have a leg to stand on either moral, populist, legal, treaty etc. - there's just no argument they can make.
I think the EU should put a lot of heft behind this issue though.
Finally, bit of a caveat, it could be that other EU states are using the same or similar tech to do 'similar kinds of things' - those EU states are not going to want to be embarrassed by public knowledge or airing of that. So that could be a problem.
I trust the French/German political tradition a lot more than I trust Poland's
[0] 23:00 August 4th 1914, in response to the invasion of Belgium by Germany.
[1] 11:00 September 3rd 1939, in response to the invasion of Poland by Germany.
Both France and Britian were obligated by treaty to defend Poland. Germany started the conflict, and knew full well that they would force other countries to get involved. To claim otherwise is counter-factual.
If you punch a police officer in his face, and his partner knocks you out, you can't claim the partner started the fight.
This is besides withholding the funds, which have been mentioned by others and which is happening to Hungary as of now. They are withholding 7.2 billion EURs of the reconstruction fund due to claims of high corruption and an inadequate legal structure and thus control over how it's being spent. (I.e. they can't see the guarantees that a sizeable chunk of it won't be stolen and/or spent on things other than what it's intended for.) And it is, indeed a direct consequence (one of the direct consequences) of the lack of adequate rule of law. No wonder: the very reason these guys dismantle democracy is to seize more power, keep the power and to steal us much as they can. (Which is, besides the obvious personal motivations, is a requisite for operating their power structure.)
EDIT: typos.
That's 0.5M/day related to dispute with Czechs over environmental impact of Turów mine. It seems PiS strategy for negotiating with Czechs is just completely ignoring them, which lead ECJ to impose fines.
[1] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-top-court-orders-pol... [2] https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-top-court-orders-pol...
Then again, that didn't stop the UK.
That strikes me as slightly different than, say, a coalition breaking up a human rights-violating empire and RETURNING democratic sovereignty to its people.
I don't disagree with rest of your comment. But that's nothing like gerrymandering. It's pure politics.
Gerrymandering is choosing your voters, by meddling with an importance of each single vote.
Politics is knowing your base and crafting message at them. No sane political party in the world tries to craft their policies to make everyone happy. Knowing your voters and telling them what they want to hear is politics 101.
Kaczyński dismissed the misappropriation of the funds as "mere technicality".
[0] https://wyborcza.pl/7,75398,27956090,klamstwa-w-sprawie-pega...
So in practicality, not a lot directly.
Having been raised in the 80 and 90s when we still considered Watergate to be a scandal, I find this kind of spying to be an undemocratic abuse of power. But it's the reality we live in now. Most wars these days are wars of knowledge and spying on opponents is, unfortunately, no longer a scandal, but the reality of modern power struggles.
[0] Chief of the Supreme Audit Office who was originally appointed by the ruling party to be loyal, but not exactly competent. Once the internal conflicts in the party spilled over to his family he found his redemption arc - and what an arc it is!
They started by sacking the supreme court and installing its own judges https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/new-polish-regi...
Last independent newspapers were bought by state owned Gas Station chain. https://www.dw.com/en/poland-state-run-oil-company-buys-lead...
The only independent new TV channel was going to get shut down but recently had a last minute veto. https://variety.com/2021/tv/global/discovery-poland-media-bi...
It defies EU who says member countries must have EU law supremacy https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/19/europe/eu-poland-rule-of-law-...
They regularly have parliamentary votes late at night when only the PiS party turns up.
They give a lot of money to the church who then praise the party during services.
Its not a real democracy any more.
1) the 'Supreme / Constitutional Court' issue is not nearly as 'one sided'. There were terrible shenanigans played by 'the other side' prior to their departure, which originated that crisis. While I have little faith in PiS, they had legitimate concerns as least to provide cover for some of their own actions.
and item 4) "It defies EU who says member countries must have EU law supremacy" - sorry to burst your bubble but that is reality. There is no treaty or law that gives ECJ 'Supremacy'. The ECJ in 1964 [1] made a ruling on their own jurisdiction and 'declared supremacy'. There is no legislative or treaty basis for quite the authority they assigned to themselves. Some local courts in the EU (i.e. France) have started to defer to the ruling, therefore legitimizing it, but it's still a 'Giant Problem' in the legal foundation of the EU. It was a big 'non populist' issue for Brexit, not really talked about in the media because regular citizens don't care but it was definitely an issue among the elites, and, it's still a contentious issue in Germany (and other places), where the Supremacy of ECJ is still not effectively recognized and it's a 'grey area'.
But yes, it's a serious problem overall, we can agree.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primacy_of_European_Union_law
Our former head of the Constitutional Court says otherwise, that through ratification of the EU Treaty of Lisbon we have accepted that ECJ decisions and EU law have primacy over national law.
If a bunch of nations are going to get into a kind of Federal Union, and have a 'court' of some kind, wouldn't it be extremely prudent to parameterize what exactly those authorities are?
If you were the PM/Pres or Supreme Court Judge of any country, wouldn't you think it would be the most obvious and important thing to make it very clear and spelled out in law and treaty?
If the framers of the EU actually wanted to hand over 'Judicial Supremacy' to the ECJ, would they, you know actually write that down?
And absence of it being clear, why on god's green earth would nations hand over a fundamental right, one of the pillars of Liberal Democracy, over to a different institution.
Any and all 'decisions' made otherwise, are hugely indirect and speculative i.e. "Well, we signed treaties with the EU after the ECJ declared Supremacy, therefore, they have Supremacy' is still very indirect.
It's one of the more mind-boggling aspects of EU governance, and if you start to take a slightly cynical look at it, it doesn't look good.
The most pragmatic reason for why the ECJ was never explicitly given power was because: it would be illegal, it would cause major uproar in nation states, it would never pass. So what they did was 'allowed' the ECJ to make a little ruling claiming authority, and then as generations go by, as local courts pile on the deferring agreements, it just 'becomes a reality'.
That's a big speculation of course, but there's just no logic at all for nations handing over Judicial authority without it being fairly clear.
If they were 'nitpicking' at 'some narrow issue' - then fine. There is always ambiguity. But this is not that, it's more fundamental.
It's truly bizarre.
And FYI this is not a resolved issue (See Germany: [1]) and there's still a lot going on.
Also worth a glance [2]
In terms of PiS shenanigans, nuance does matter, I don't think we can just be populist and say 'oh they rejected ECJ Supremacy which is ridiculous and evil' kind of thing. All of these issues are a bit tricky.
I think a lot of people in Europe just think that the ECJ naturally has Supremacy, just like a regular Supreme Court, because that's what was agreed to and Poland is 'off their rocker' - like a US State ignoring a US Supreme Curt ruling. It's not the case though. People would be very surprised at the odd reality.
[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/commission-sues-germany-esca...
[2] https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/10/law-tool-eu-integration...
If there is no treaty validating ECJ Supremacy, then that's it. Even a 'statement' or 'interpretation' by an Judge or Expert will be called into question.
Also - you may despair in the short run for the authoritative nature of 'Hungary' but there is a much bigger issue and that is the consolidation of power at the EU level.
Hungary has elections for it's leaders.
The EU does not.
You did not vote for Ursula Von Der Leyen. She was not a candidate, and was totally unknown outside Germany before the election. She was not vetted. She had little public history. Voters did not select her.
She was chosen in a backroom deal: "Here is your new President. We selected her for you. You will find about her platform, later, we hope you like it because obviously you didn't vote for it". Ursula von der Layen layed out her vision for EU long after voters even knew who she was.
The EU Treaties only in 2007 even require the selection of the Pres. to even barely take into consideration the 'recommendation' of MEPs, even then, they have no power. MEPs cannot introduce legislation or sanction leaders.
The EU is the least democratic 'layer' of European governance, combined with the fact that it is at the 'top' and sometimes has the most authority, is a pretty scary thing in terms of the balance of power.
So the EU is 'good for dealing with PiS' yes, probably. But there are other, broader issue.
In Russia people vote for the president, but that does not matter much - what matters is who owns the press and counts the votes. Which is exactly what PiS and Fidesz did: they owned the press. And PiS also messed withe the judges and quite openly admitted to having bough spyware which was used to spy on the opposition. That's the difference between the EU, Poland and Hungary.
> wouldn't it be extremely prudent to parameterize what exactly those authorities are?
TFEU
The ECJ decisions are actually more like recommendations on how the local courts should act.
Countries that don't follow the rulings can't complain if they're suspended from EU resources and mechanisms while that is not solved, like having their exports blocked, be removed from Schengen, etc. (And if they don't like it they're free to complain to the walls since they don't recognize the ECJ...)
ECJ rulings are the law of the land as far as they see it, not a 'recommendation'.
There are no rules around sanctions etc. for countries that don't 'comply'.
It's just 'make it up as they go along'.
The problem is: there is no treaty basis for ECJ Supremacy. By opening that can of worms, the EU may find themselves with a 'big losing hand' and more affirmatively lose their power.
As I pointed out in the previous comments, the issue is unsettled even in Germany.
That's disputed, which is the point.
But it's clear they were politically motivated actions to stack the Supreme Court with an ultramajority of Judges of their own liking. Just as PiS did after the fact.
Opening that rabbit hole requires some nuance and objectivity, it's not nearly as one sided as it's presented in some media.
Using words like 'disputed' and talking about previous govenrment shinenigans being responsible in any way for the current state of affairs is true 'false equivalence'.
That doesn't say anything about what the current government has done, or is doing, but contrary to your statement, it's irresponsible not to look at the Judicial crisis outside the context in which it was created, especially in the popular press.
How that's related to legality of their own actions? Obvious solution was to reselect 2 judges who were selected illegally by previous parliament, but they willfully reselected all 5 including these chosen correctly previously. This itself was decided by court (K 34/15), but they just ignored that ruling.
theres 1 + 17 + even municipal television channels.. all at the expense of taxpayers, to make the government look good or push some politically loaded content
If the state has such a stranglehold on the public channels then that is the underlying problem. It would have the same control over private media if it needed to.
Public media and/or limited state support for private news media is absolutely vital for a functioning democracy.
And if someone claims X is good for democracy, he doesn't need to bring data because he's on the Good(TM) side, so he can skip that step, right?
In a democracy, the public chooses their leaders. They do so based on the readily available information. If the only (or overwhelminly prevalent) sources of information have other agendas, such as serving the needs of their conglomerate owners or a totalitarian-aspiring government then that information will be of low quality and likely to further cement the power of those that control the media.
To counteract this, a way must be devised to ensure diligent journalistic types (of whom there is no shortage) have the means and security to do their proper diligence for the public.
I doubt it's the same in Spain.
Not really. They just don't hate it enough to unite against it.
Let's say that there are parties X, Y and Z.
30% of the population votes for X, 30% for Y and 40% for Z.
Now, even if followers of X and Y hate Z more than each other, the winner is still Z.
Netherlands is like the one exception that doesn't require parties to win >4-5% of the vote to get into parliament.
And all of these systems are more democratic than what the USA uses.
> Now, even if followers of X and Y hate Z more than each other, the winner is still Z.
In this situation, Z would not win a runoff election though. In 2020 The PiS candidate won the presidential election[1]. I think saying that most Poles prefer the current government is imprecise but still truthful, therefore.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Polish_presidential_elect...
Yes there's less distinction between the church and the state, that goes in almost every ex-eastern bloc country.Happens here in other countries aswell.Every country has it's shit hidden somewhere, in EE it just stinks more because we don't have money to spray some perfume. The Media is owned by politicians entirely and guess what: that still doesn't do much.You have western[to be read: foreign-imported] rhetoric everywhere, and that makes people still support these 'evil' politicians.So in retrospective you're kind of wrong, because democracy is exactly the thing that put in power the people you don't like.It's a Streisand effect mainly in response to foreign influence that keeps these corrupt politicians in power, because more often than not the alternative is a puppet who knows even less.[By the way is not an excuse for them being corrupt & scummy, i'm just giving a quick rundown to establish these things are not artificial]
Also if you want a free advice: you don't "beat" PiS or any other party that's well-established by crying out corruption, because that's just a lost cause.[You can look at the figure representing european justice right now -- who's from EE -- who correctly stated that there's no difference between EE/WE corruption]; You beat it by recognizing the policies you advocate them don't resonate with the people, and make compromises where necessary.
So I propose that we don't ask why TK doesn't recognize EU law supremacy, but rather reflect that presence in EU means losing sovereignty. This is a consequential loss. The accession occurred without most people realizing this would happen. They believed in an economic union.
I also propose to question the implicit norm, that it's appropriate for an American media conglomerate to own the largest TV network in the country. Western countries are embattled on all fronts. Does it benefit us to have their media in control of our media? My intuition has always been that decision-making apparatus should be located close to the populations it affects. Otherwise it tends in the direction of imperialism.
I feel frustrated by the person who thinks things are going well when Brussels is giving us a pat on the back and thumbs up... ciepła woda w kranie, then it's all good. And who ignores that with the EU connections, we are silently ceding more and more of our sovereignty. In my view, these people are short-sighted and incautious.
PL may not be a real democracy anymore, but EU never was one. We don't elect the President of the European Comission, the head of the executive branch. Bureaucrats decide that. And their pick José Manuel Barroso went to Goldman Sachs shortly after leaving office...
I don't want a person like this at the head of the executive branch of the union with legal supremacy over my country. I much prefer Kaczor and an army of moherowych beretów. Przynajmniej swojskie.
Though lawful, Republicans ignored their own 'rules' and just refused to 'seat' nominee (by not holding a hearing despite having almost half a year of time left). To be fair can argue wouldnt be confirmed even if they held a vote, but then why didn't they allow that? They then flipped those rules again when it suited their agenda.
It's not totally the same, but reads similar to me.
IDK if it's more scary that I personally believe Dems should exercise the same power to balance it back out. Though that would probably just cause a loop of reciprocating action towards chaos unless Dems can fix issues like the electoral college, redistricting, or add new states to balance the power towards more representational Democracy. Not many other remedies I can think of though.
The court in the US has huge power and they are doing similar things as in Poland such as rolling back abortion rights, LGBTQ rights (I argue this in the recent private school funding ruling and I wouldn't be surprised if they use more 'religious discrimination' to legally allow discrimination against the groups these religions despise).
This goes to your point about power of religion.
I would also add power of media to spread flat out lies (worse, that they are smart enough to realize what they are doing) to further their agenda. While not government funded, the Republican admin and Republican elected basically dictate and actually organize the coverage. Crazy to me.
[Party B] followed the rules. [Party A] did not have sufficient votes to appoint a judge, and so no judge was appointed. [Party B] is under no obligation to assist [Party A].
>> They (Party B) then flipped those rules
[Party B] changed no rules. [Party B] had the votes to appoint a judge, and so a judge was appointed. [Party A] did not have sufficient votes to oppose it.
Beyond that factually, like a lot of things in the US govt, rules can be institutional momentum and tradition instead of actual laws. For sure that's debatable use of the word rules but I think in practice for the last century a lot of these unwritten machinations of government moved along without politics getting in the way.
The Thurmond rule is an example of this specifically on SCOTUS confirmations.
Logically or legally right or wrong, Republicans didn't even allow an up or down vote. I think there was a small chance 5 Rs could have voted for Gorsuch maybe not. Obviously not 14 to break cloture.
Trump is the king of destroying the un-written guardrails which have protected the country.
Baseless fear mongering is not new but it does feel more common. The supreme court is not dramatically out of wack nor have they "rolled back abortion rights". They specifically rejected a particular emergency appeal because of issues with immediate harm.
Preventing state discrimination in charter school funds is not a rollback of lgtbq rights, which are stronger than they have ever been, nor are charter schools mandatory.
Media is not republican controlled and the vast, vast majority of media coverage in the US is liberal in leaning.
Please stop doomsaying.
You needn't use your real name, of course, but for HN to be a community, users need some identity for other users to relate to. Otherwise we may as well have no usernames and no community, and that would be a different kind of forum. https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
We had real goveremnt for less than month after 89, then we got russian puppets.
PO, Nowoczesna is definitely pro EU = Germany. Tusk wanted to be singer but failed so he sold the country to Germans. I would even like EU federation but older people (>50yo) are definitely agaist it.
Actually it's during short PiS rule that Poland joined EU and retained own currency. Both good decision in retrospective.
This time around they are 100% propaganda mode and this Pegasus use is definitely overreach. Make no mistake during PO days they also raided and poor teenageers. Now at least it's limited to oposition. Think Aaron Shwarz case.
But TBH they are better at ruling than alternatives and history shows you need to have strong grasp to pull up so to say. If anyone thinks that Germans will allow Polish economy to catch up while they rule is mistaken.
They want to have cheap labor nearby border and Ukrainians prefer to work in PL due to language, which makes PL economy very competitive. Good play would be to make Ukraine part of EU but RUS won't allow it, so next best play for Germany is to win propaganda game in PL or just let Russians pick Ukraine so it's win-win for both Russia and Germany. With nord stream 2 from our PoV it's Ribbentrop-Molotov lite.
I wish there was some better party to vote.
Why I think US is aiding PiS? Germans are their biggest competitors in the west. If they lose race with China then US future will depend on India, Russia and EU. They will want a wry here and Poland is perfect for that, which makes me nervous TBH.
Geopolitically we are like Taiwan or SK of Asia (wry against Japan and China).