By Raphael Satter
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Meta Platforms warned a well-known Italian migrant rescue activist that he was recently targeted with spyware, according to a screenshot of the alert shared with Reuters, making it the second such case made public in Italy so far.
Luca Casarini, who co-founded the Mediterranea Saving Humans charity, said he received the warning over Meta’s WhatsApp chat platform on Friday. It was the same day Meta publicly accused surveillance company Paragon Solutions of targeting roughly ninety of its users in more than two dozen countries, including an unspecified number of reporters and activists.
Meta’s announcement, which was paired with a cease-and-desist letter to Paragon, alleged that the reportedly American-owned company had tried to steal data from its users using a sophisticated technique that required no interaction from its target, a so-called “zero click” hack.
Meta declined to comment on the message sent to Casarini. Paragon and its owner, Florida investment group AE Industrial Partners, did not immediately respond to emails.
Casarini is often criticized by anti-migrant, pro-government newspapers in Italy for his charity’s work saving migrants in the Mediterranean, where Africans desperate to reach European shores in overcrowded boats that often capsize.
Casarini has previously been prosecuted for allegedly abetting illegal immigration, and he told Reuters that his communications had been intercepted as part of that case. But he said he did not know who was behind the attempt to break into his phone flagged by WhatsApp or whether it was judicially sanctioned.
“It’s a violation of democracy,” he said.
Italy’s interior ministry did not immediately return a message seeking comment.
Casarini’s disclosure follows a few days after that of Italian journalist Francesco Cancellato, who outed himself as the recipient of one of the WhatsApp alerts on Friday.
Cancellato told Reuters his independent online newspaper, Fanpage, specialized in undercover investigations, notably a recent expose of Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s youth wing which showed members describing themselves as fascists and shouting the Nazi slogan, “Sieg Heil.”
Cancellato said he was shocked by the intrusion but wanted to reserve judgment about who was behind the hacking until his newspaper had conducted its own investigation into the spying.
(Reporting by Raphael Satter; Editing by Christopher Cushing)
