News - Middle East - UAE: The global "One Free Press Coalition" concerned with press freedom issues highlighted the UAE's scandals of spying and hacking to monitor journalists and activists with the aim of suppressing freedom of expression.

The Coalition has placed the prisoner of conscience in the Emirates, Ahmed Mansour, in the list of the ten whose cases are considered the most urgent in the world. It stated that Mansour was targeted by Emirati hackers several times starting in 2011, when the Committee to Protect Journalists documented threats and legal actions related to his blog.

The Coalition noted that it has identified a list of the 10 most urgent for the month of October 2021 in light of increasing reports revealing the breadth and extent of the use of spyware to monitor journalists posing a threat to press freedom.

"While surveillance of journalists is not a new phenomenon, the extent to which bad actors go to silence the press, and rapid technological progress has exacerbated the problem" The coalition said.

The coalition noted that the spyware has the ability to expose journalists' sources, movements and other private information that can be used to censor them, obstruct their work, or put them or their sources at risk.

CPJ has also found that these attacks often go with other violations of press freedom and impede journalists' ability to cover important news on issues such as politics and corruption.

Prominent international media called for a boycott of the UAE in response to the widespread espionage violations practiced by Abu Dhabi with Israeli technologies.

The American newspaper "Washington Post" said that the scandal of the Israeli company "NSO Group" confirms that spyware must be kept out of the hands of evil governments such as the UAE.

The newspaper added that the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Mexico and all those bad actors who used illegal spying techniques should be boycotted.

The investigation revealed a resounding scandal of the Emirati regime targeting 10 thousand phone numbers through the Israeli spy group Pegasus NSO.

These details were revealed as part of a collaborative investigative investigation coordinated by Forbidden Stories for Paris-based journalism and Amnesty International's technical lab.