Interior Department grounds drones over cybersecurity concerns

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on Wednesday asked the FBI and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) to probe recent reports that Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’s phone was hacked by Saudi Arabian officials.

Murphy, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray and Acting DNI Joseph Maguire strongly urging them to open an investigation into the alleged hacking incident, which involved a malicious file being sent to Bezos’s phone from the WhatsApp account of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.

Murphy also asked that the intelligence agencies brief Congress on “all preliminary and final conclusions” involved in a potential investigation into the hack of Bezos’s phone.

Top United Nations experts last week labeled the hacking as retaliation for criticism by The Washington Post, which Bezos owns, over the killing of U.S.-based Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Turkey in 2018.

“The information we have received suggests the possible involvement of the Crown Prince in surveillance of Mr. Bezos, in an effort to influence, if not silence, The Washington Post’s reporting on Saudi Arabia,” Agnes Callamard, U.N. special rapporteur on summary executions and extrajudicial killings, and David Kaye, U.N. special rapporteur on freedom of expression, said in a joint statement.