Rabat – Morocco’s National Commission for the Control of Personal Data Protection (CNDP) announced on Thursday that it will hold a hearing from “an international specialist in Strategic Intelligence” to discuss the “unproven technical allegations” Amnesty International, Forbidden Stories, and Citizen Lab have made against Morocco.
The hearing will focus on the ethical rules relating to the attribution of technical traces of malicious cyber attacks, Morocco’s MAP News Agency reported.
The CNDP also invited Citizen Lab to take part in the hearing, as it “remains open to holding working meetings with other entities interested in the subject.”
A press release from the CNDP also recalled holding last month the first hearings on the subject, and that the event noted the importance of working with technical experts to understand the mechanisms through a “dispassionate approach.”
The commission said its process to investigate the unevidenced spying accusations against Morocco is starting to bear fruit, and that its first results will be released to the public once they are finalized.
The first hearings were held in late February, and saw the CNDP invite several national and international experts to share their analyses and conclusions on the topic.
The commission held meetings with Jonathan Scott, a researcher of malware, spyware, and forensics.
Scott released a report in February exonerating Morocco of the spying claims made against the country by Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories, a consortium of news media organizations. Notably, Scott discovered that Amnesty had found a false positive indicator in the espionage reports on journalist Omar Radi but did not mention it.
CNDP also released Arabic and French versions of Scott’s report entitled “Exonerating Morocco: Disproving The Spyware.”
Amnesty International and Forbidden Stories had accused Morocco of using Israeli spyware Pegasus to spy on journalists, activists, and foreign officials.
Morocco has consistently denied the accusations, even initiating legal action against the two organizations and news outlets that promoted their claims.
