What is the Paragon case and what is happening

Paragon solution is an Israeli company that has developed Graphite, a software with military-grade surveillance technology capable of penetrating even encrypted smartphones. On 14 February, following the case of espionage against the founder of the NGO Mediterranea Saving Humans, Luca Casarini, and the director of Fanpage, Francesco Cancellato, Aise and Aisi decided to temporarily suspend the use of Graphite pending the Committee's investigations. In 2022, the Media Freedom Act (Mfa), developed by the EU to protect the independence of the publishing world, banned the use of spyware on journalists. 'Following the uproar caused by the affair', reads a report by Copasir, 'during the inspections carried out by the Committee at the agencies', the report states, 'it was specified that, following the suspension, the decision was taken to terminate the contract with Paragon in any case'.

Paragon 'offered both the Italian government and Parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist in violation of Italian law and contractual terms. As the Italian authorities chose not to proceed with this solution, Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy'. This was informed by the company that produces the Graphite spyware that, according to Meta's findings, was allegedly used to intercept Fanpage editor Francesco Cancellato.

Italian intelligence did not 'consider acceptable Paragon's proposal to carry out an audit on the system logs of the Graphite platforms in use by Aise and Aisi, as it was invasive, unverifiable in its scope, results and method and, therefore, not in line with national security requirements. Had such verifications been carried out by a private and foreign party, they would have severely compromised the reputation of the Italian Agencies in the international intelligence community and exposed data that are confidential by nature'. This was reported by intelligence sources, after Paragon made it known that it had proposed to the Italian authorities, who replied negatively, "a way to determine" whether Graphite "had been used against the journalist" Francesco Cancellato.

The report on the use of Graphite spyware by the security intelligence services of the Republic states that the journalist Francesco Cancellato 'has not been subjected to interception activities by the Italian security intelligence services through the use of Graphite spyware', nor does it appear that 'any other form of information activity by the same bodies has been authorised'. The company would have no knowledge of the identity of those being targeted by customers or of the data being recorded by its device. But a note from Paragon denies the Copasir: 'The company,' Paragon's note reads, 'offered the Italian government and parliament a way to determine whether its system had been used against the journalist in violation of Italian law and contractual terms. But since the Italian authorities called it off, 'Paragon terminated its contracts in Italy,' the company reconstructed.