The Hindu Editorial Vocabulary 25th December 2024

The Hindu Editorial Vocabulary 25th December 2024 is an effective tool for regularly learning new words and their contextual meanings. Candidates can utilize this free resource daily to improve their vocabulary knowledge, especially those preparing for government exams like the IBPS PO, SBI Clerk, SSC, and Others.

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Damning (strongly criticizing or condemning) silence: On India’s Pegasus probe

U.S. ruling gives fresh cause to reopen India’s stalled Pegasus probe

A U.S. court’s decision holding an Israeli company liable for surreptitiously (in a secret or stealthy manner) installing Pegasus, a spyware suite, on the phones of targeted individuals through WhatsApp, has brought the focus back on the Centre’s questionable (doubtful or uncertain) inaction when such surveillance allegations surfaced in India in 2021. The U.S. District Court for Northern District of California ruled that NSO Group Technologies violated both federal and State laws against computer fraud and abuse. WhatsApp sued the NSO Group in October 2019, alleging that its system was used by the Israeli company to plant malware on approximately 1,400 mobile phones and devices for surveilling their users. In a summary (a brief statement or account of the main points) judgment, the court agreed with WhatsApp that its application had been reverse-engineered or ‘decompiled’ (the process of converting compiled code back into a source code) to create a modified version called ‘WhatsApp Installation Server’ or WIS. In the backdrop of this ruling, the question that arises in India is about the fate of reports submitted by a court-appointed expert committee in 2022 to the Supreme Court of India. The then Chief Justice of India (CJI), N.V. Ramana, had read out a few paragraphs from the report of the panel’s overseeing judge, Justice (retired) R.V. Raveendran. The report said the Technical Committee found no conclusive (decisive or definitive) evidence on the presence of Pegasus, but there was some kind of malware in five out of the 29 phones examined. The reports are yet to be made public.

Even if there was no effective hearing or follow-up action, what cannot be forgotten is that CJI Ramana had observed in open court that the government did not cooperate with the committee’s investigation. It was conduct typical of the Modi regime, which has repeatedly demonstrated that silence, denial and obfuscation (the action of making something unclear or unintelligible) form its stock responses whenever allegations emerge. It showed no interest in probing disclosures that the phones of journalists, activists, doctors and court staff were targets of spyware. It made a strange claim that the country had such ironclad (strong and unable to be broken) laws that illegal surveillance was not possible. It adopted the untenable (not able to be defended or justified) position that acknowledging that its agencies possessed any particular software would jeopardise national security. All this, despite admitting in Parliament that it was aware of some users being targeted by Pegasus through WhatsApp. It did not respond to credible reports that Pegasus may have been used to plant evidence on computers to frame dissidents. In the light of a judicial decision, albeit an overseas one, that the NSO Group is liable for the use of its spyware by its clients, solely government entities, the time has come for sealed reports to be opened and deeper probes begun. The government should come clean on whether it possesses surveillance software. Otherwise, citizens will be rendered even more vulnerable to illegal surveillance.

Hindu Vocab Wordlist 25th December 2024

Upskill yourself and enhance your vocabulary knowledge. Candidates should begin learning new words daily with Hindu Editorial Vocabulary on 25th December 2024.

1. Damning: Showing that someone is guilty of a crime or that something is very bad.
2. Surreptitiously: In a secret way, without anyone seeing or knowing.
3. Questionable: Thought to be wrong, or not likely to be true or correct.
4. Summary: A short statement that gives the main information about something, without giving all the details.
5. Decompiled: To convert a computer program from machine language back into source code, typically to understand its structure or to modify it.
6. Conclusive: Proving something in a way that is certain and allows no doubt.
7. Obfuscation: The action of deliberately making something unclear or difficult to understand.
8. Ironclad: Impossible to contradict or weaken.
9. Untenable: Not able to be defended or justified.
10. Jeopardise: To put something in a situation in which there is a risk of danger or failure.

Hindu Vocab Master 25th December 2024 with Synonyms & Antonyms

Here are the synonyms and antonyms of all the difficult words in Hindu Vocab Master Hindi equivalents for all the words for 25th December 2024:

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