‘Snoopgate Sarkar’: The Apple affair is front-page news in English newspapers

Over 10 opposition leaders and journalists yesterday said they received “threat notifications” from Apple warning that they might have been “targeted by state-sponsored attacks”.

This included Mahua Moitra, Priyanka Chaturvedi, Raghav Chadha, Shashi Tharoor, Akhilesh Yadav, Pawan Khera, Siddharth Varadarajan, Sriram Karri and Samir Saran. 

The central government, meanwhile, called the allegations “vague” but said it would investigate.

While the debate raged on social media through the day, was it important enough to make it to the front pages of newspapers today?

It was top news for The Hindu, which had the story on page 1 in its Delhi edition with the headline “Apple cyberattack alert: Opposition corners govt”.  It said “over a dozen” opposition leaders and journalists had received email alerts from Apple. Congress’s Rahul Gandhi alleged the “snooping” was carried out the moment opposition leaders “touch” industrialist Gautam Adani.

On page 10, The Hindu also republished an analytical piece from July 2022 on the Pegasus surveillance scandal and the “fight for reform”.

While the Delhi edition of The Times of India’s main story on page 1 was the Supreme Court hearing on electoral bonds, the Apple affair also made it to the front page.

It said Apple “stressed that alerts regarding state-sponsored attackers targeting the devices – some of which could be ‘false alarms’ – had gone to several individuals in 150 countries and did not refer to any specific state actor”.

In Hindustan Times in Delhi, the “snooping” shared space on page 1 with a report on Amrit Mahotsav. Headlined “Row as Apple sends hacking alert to several Oppn leaders”, it said BJP IT cell chief Amit Malviya “told news channels on Tuesday evening that union minister Piyush Goyal also got such a notification”.

The Indian Express in Delhi had two reports on page 1, the first on the opposition’s allegations and the second on the IT ministry response. It also had a brief explainer (with a longer one on the inside page) to help readers understand why such alerts are sent.

Finally, The Telegraph had two reports on page 1 – one headlined “Snoopgate Sarkar: Opp” and the other “It’s Adani sarkar: Rahul”. 

It should be remembered that developments come nearly two years after India reportedly used Israeli spyware for targeted surveillance. Get all the details here.