He didn’t even notice. A message that you did not open or see. He went into his phone and that’s how it all started. Francesco Cancellatodigital media director Fanpage and journalist known for his incisive articles critical of the Government of Giorgia Meloni, had just published an investigative book on the extreme right European. Shortly after, his phone was targeted Graphitea new generation of military grade spyware developed by the Israeli company Paragon, capable of infiltrating with “zero click”. That is, without the user having to interact with any malicious link or file and, furthermore, extremely difficult to track.
Cancelled he knew it from an alert which he received through an instant messaging service. Even today he remembers that moment exactly. “It was January 31, 2025, at 2:38 p.m., and I received a notification saying that my phone had been attacked,” he explains. Since then, reconstructing what happened has become, he says, an exhausting obstacle course, as nobody —to date— has officially recognized having ordered espionage. “What I still don’t know is the degree of infiltration. This software entered through WhatsApp and, from that moment, took control of the entire phone. What is certain is that, from then on, the person who spied on me had, at a minimum, access to all the conversations, also the encrypted oneswhich I exchanged on that application with friends, colleagues, family, sources, journalists, politicians. All of them,” he says.
A very dark case
The specialized laboratory Citizen Labfrom the University of Toronto, and, this past month, the prosecutors’ offices in Naples and Romehe espionage confirmed with this expensive software, which is also supposedly sold mainly to States for operations related to terrorism and national security. Already last year, an Italian parliamentary committee officially recognized the use of Graphite. Specifically, on June 5, COPASIR—the committee in charge of supervising the intelligence services—published the report of its investigation into the Paragon case. In it, it was admitted that the State had used spyware against some well-known activists, such as Luca Casarini, co-founder of the NGO Mediterránea Saving Human that is dedicated to rescuing migrants.
Francesco Cancellato, director of the Italian digital medium ‘Fanpage’ / IRENE SAVIO
However, the same report claimed to have been unable to determine who had spied on journalist Francesco Cancellato with that same program. And since then the situation has hardly changed. Not even the intelligence services in the Government of Giorgia Meloni have recognized having put journalists in the spotlight. For his part, after the scandal broke out and through a series of communications sent to the Israeli press, Paragon reported the termination of its contracts with the Italian Government. A decision that the Italian intelligence services rejected occurred unilaterally.
“The last we know, as of expert opinion carried out by the prosecutor’s officesis that the espionage began at one in the morning on December 14, 2024 and continued in the following days, in the same period in which several activists“, he relates. “In his case, however, the intelligence services have recognized having spied on them. In mine, they say no,” he adds, alluding to this “strange circumstance.”
On the edge of democracy
Ciro Pellegrinoeditor-in-chief of Fanpage in Naples, is another journalist spied on with Graphite. And, so far, he is one of the few, along with Cancellato, who have decided to publicly denounce him. In his case, he discovered it in April of last year, following a series of alerts sent by the manufacturer of his mobile phone. “It has been detected that your phone has been attacked by a mercenary spyware“, reads the message it displays. “At first I thought it was a jokebut it wasn’t. So the first thing I asked myself was: why? “Why did they do it?” he says, explaining the lack of protection he felt.
Since then, Pellegrino has also fought his own battle to clarify whoand why, they put it in the spotlight. This spy program “is an unconventional weaponrefined and expensive, used against a journalist; a real threat that we still do not fully know. And I’m sure that we are just the tip of the iceberg and there are many more cases [que no se conocen]”, he states in this regard. “Graphite is spyware that usually only governments have access to. “Isn’t this strange?” he adds.
Francesco Cancellato, director of the Italian digital medium ‘Fanpage’ / IRENE SAVIO
The lack of collaboration institutional to clarify what happened, he adds, “pushes the limits of democracy“. “If we continue to be a democratic country, they must give us answers, not close doors in our faces,” he maintains, while express your doubts also about the true capacity of the Italian judicial system to protect journalists from such advanced espionage technologies. And even more. “Graphite is spyware that usually only governments have access to. Isn’t this strange?” he adds, also regretting that there is “little interest and transparency” from the political world in his country in making the truth known. “What is clear is that the Government did not help us and never expressed solidarity,” adds Cancellato.
579 threatened
Alberto Spampinato directs Oxygen for Informationan organization that for years has been compiling one of the most precise maps in Europe on the threats suffered by journalists. Their figures show a trend that is difficult to clarify: last year alone, 579 information professionals were intimidated or threatened in Italy47% more than the previous one. “And the previous one had already grown by 23%.” Since 2006, when the count began, nearly 8,000 journalists have passed through that pressure corridor.
“There is an obvious worsening, also in numerical terms, but it is not only that,” warns Spampinato. “They have appeared new forms of bullying. And one of them is precisely the use of spywareas in the cases of Cancellato, Pellegrino and others.” Added to this drift, he emphasizes, “an unprecedented factwhich will open in 2025 judicial investigations for journalists to reveal their fuentes“.
Spampinato knows the terrain well. His brother Giovannijournalist who investigated the mafia and the extreme right in Sicily, it was murdered in the seventies in circumstances that half a century later remain not completely clarified. That is also why your organization has decided strengthen the offer of legal help to the press in Italy and, in recent years, a hundred professionals have already resorted to this support. The lawyers who collaborate with him offer coverage in a context where every day attempts are made to keep the mouths of those who report more closed.
Recoil
The Paragon case has also been denounced by several international organizations. Among them, andl Rapid Response Mechanism for Freedom of the Press (MFRR), a European project that monitors and responds to violations of this right. In its March report, the organization points out that in 2025 Italy was “the only country in the European Union con new cases of surveillance of journalists through spywarewhich makes it a hot spot for the use of these technologies against the press.” And he adds an equally disturbing fact: until now responsibilities have not been cleared nor has the scope of the ongoing judicial investigations been clarified.
Deterioration is not just an impression. It also certifies Reporters Without Borders (RSF). According to your data, Italy fell to 49th place in 2025 of 180 countries, one of the worst in Western Europe, three positions below the previous year. A decline that, beyond the rankings, has not made the affected journalists retreat in their battle to freely exercise their profession. Because, as Cancellato says, “if we start to think that It is normal for a journalist to be spied on in a democracy, We are accepting that democracies do not work and nothing happens.”
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