A Spy in Your Pocket? Ronan Farrow Exposes Secrets of High-Tech Spyware in New Film "Surveilled"

this is democracynow democracynow.org I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez we turn now to a film that looks at the increasing use of spyware targeting journalists human rights Advocates dissidents across Western democracies and around the world the HBO original documentary surveilled which is airing tonight on HBO at 900m follows Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan faroh who uncovers how Pegasus and other surveillance programs are threatening democracy across the globe this is the film's trailer why should people around the world care about the hacking that you're documenting here these cases effect 450 million people is a violation of

their rights what we ended up finding was actually the tip of the iceberg spyware is this powerful surveillance tool big spyware companies say they sell this tech only to governments but this multi-billion dollar industry is mostly unregulated the most advanced spy can turn your smartphone into a spy in your pocket it can copy everything and record you without you ever knowing and then just disappear without a trace this company NSO group makes Pegasus Advanced spyware reportedly deployed in at least 45 countries with allegations it's being used to Target journalists human rights activists and political dissidents

what's the most objectionable thing that you saw in your time at the company one of the moral problems that I had was the journalist murder should people be concerned definitely yes does NSO know that some of its customers are abusing this technology this tool could fall into the hands of the Iranians the North Koreans the Chinese we need our experts to know what is out there they targeted my family my mom she worked at the hospitals so they had access to hundreds of data of patients all around the world do you think it's headed down

a path of more domestic impact these Technologies any ferious use that we can imagine we're probably going to see the trailer to the new HBO original film surveilled now streaming on Max the film directed by Perry pelts and Matthew O'Neal on Tuesday democracy Now Juan Gonzalez and I spoke with Matt O'Neal and Ronan faroh who produced the film Ronan is a contributing writer at the New Yorker has latest article headlined the technology the Trump Administration could use to hack your phone I began by reading to Ronan from a recent article in the guardian that notes

in 2017 while reporting on a story on Harvey Weinstein that would along with a New York Times report kick off the me tooo movement the investigative journalist Ronan faroh found himself the target of covert surveillance the efforts to suppress investigations into Weinstein's history of sexual abuse for which the Hollywood Mogul paid the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube were mostly old school unquote I asked Ron and faraoh to lay out what happened well I got a firsthand view of the toolkit that powerful institutions and individuals can deploy when they're trying to suppress reporting and I

saw it on a miniature scale where one Mogul did this frankly insane maneuver of retaining a private intelligence company that literally hired actors uh former military and intelligence people from Israel to play roles and insinuate themselves into individuals Lives who are around the story that included sources that I was working with uh women who as it turns out had allegations of assault against Weinstein um it included journalists working on the story including me and so there was a two-pronged approach there were people posing as people who wanted to talk to us to get close to

us and then there were also subcontractors who were hired to just do the traditional gum shoe work of staking people like me out I had two guys outside of my apartment uh and eventually I was able to get the contracts and all the signatures of the lawyers and prove that this operation was happening and get sources inside this company Black Cube to describe what they were doing uh and actually one of the subcontractors that was following me around all the time sometimes using some high-tech approaches too pinging my phone getting my geolocation data so they

could follow me to meetings um one of them became a source in the end so I I wrote a book about this catch and kill and there's a documentary series on that if people are interested in more but I I did through that experience through this relatively low Tech approach to surveillance get a little picture of how personally devastating it can be to have your private interactions monitored in that way in this case there were real Stakes cuz I was talking to whistleblowers around this story who were risking everything and couldn't be uncovered if I

wanted the story to go forward and I I also saw how unsafe it makes you feel surveillance of journalists and you know this goes for surveillance of dissidents it goes for surveillance of um political opposition members that we see uh in the film and in in the world now so often is not just information gathering surveillance of this type is intimidation and it shrinks the space for all kinds of expression in democracies yeah Ronin from that uh that relatively low Tech type of surveillance to what we're confronting today and in recent years how did then

your uh uh you decide to cover this aspect of the Hightech surveillance well I through that reporting I developed sources in the Israeli private intelligence world and I spent some time in Tel Aviv I spent some years years getting close to people in this industry in this world and I clocked through my own experiences just how pivotal a challenge this is for anyone who cares about maintaining people's basic rights and maintaining the free flow of information and democracies in order to protect those rights surveillance I realized was a lynchpin it wasn't some sidebar issue it

was one of the tools that people used to try to suppress democracy to press the free flow of information it is part of the authoritarian Playbook that we see historically again and again the police States emerge where there are oversteps into privacy violations and I realized as I was looking at this issue and experiencing these Dynamics as a journalist myself that the bleeding edge of this kind of surveillance and the thing that was transforming it and making it more available and more intrusive and scarier was this modern spyware that can take control of phones at

a time when we're more and more in meshed with our phones and I realized that this was one of the for most challenges confronting journalists around the world and also one of the challenges that anyone even if you don't think of yourself as being in a vulnerable category you're not an activist you're not a dissident should care about and should understand because phones are increasingly not private spaces I I dealt with in addition to being followed around um Dynamics where personal information was leaked around stories I I worked on stories about Trump's collaboration with the

national Inquirer uh that ultimately helped catalyze that that indictment um around Trump and hush payments and during that reporting I also had you know intimate texts leaked um you know there were all sorts of efforts to use private information as a lever so I was just seeing how again again if you want to expose the truth if you want to be a voice of opposition to power you're inevitably dealing with this kind of surveillance and I was seeing how the highest Tech version of it was the scariest was the most secretive was the most poorly

understood so tell us about Pegasus and this amazing film surveilled takes us to Israel takes us to your investigation of the company and who the company is selling to so the biggest players in the spyware Market which is now a multi-billion dollar industry and it mostly is comprised of companies that want to stay secretive so there's not a lot of reporting on this there's not a ton of public facing websites companies that do have a kind of public facing presence they don't actually talk about what they do or who their clients are this is one

reason why the reporting was necessary now in this multi-billion doll industry the big players claim in a bid for legitimacy that they only sell to government offices mostly government intelligence agencies um government defense offices but the the technology that's privately available for purchase by those offices is now cheaper more efficient more intrusive so what you're seeing is two categories of change you're seeing governments that previously didn't have the size and the resources to have a CIA style high-tech surveillance operation just by a kind of CIA and a box um you know we talk in the

film to officials in small Western democracies who love this technology and and by the way I should point out small Western democracies where the populations of those countries don't yet know that this technology is being used against them and you know we we hear from those officials um how they think it's great that they can ostensibly in some of these cases with warrants um but much more freely and cheaply just hack into people's phones as needed in law enforcement operations there are legitimate Arguments for the use of this technology like with any surveillance technology and

theoretically in those Western democracies where there is a process to get a warrant this is something that shouldn't have to be scary but what we see over and over again is that it just gets abused I I would argue inevitably surveillance technology has historically always been abused now the technology is more advanced and more frightening than ever and more available than ever so abuse is more possible and more ready than ever what we've seen in the last few years is not only that repressive regimes with a poor human rights record are using this technology against

journalists and against dissidents against political opposition members um and and sometimes by the way with dangerous and even deadly results there have been studies that have linked hundreds of cases of violence to spyware technology um a lot of the players involved including NSO group deny this but NSO group's Flagship technology Pegasus was allegedly found on the phone of at least one associate close to Jamal hogi in the time frame when he was murdered by the Saudi regime um we see this over and over again um Javier Valdez in Mexico great reporter who was working on

cartel stories was killed people around him had had Pegasus on their phones uh so that's the pattern under repressive regimes but we're we're seeing not only that but also one Western democracy with an ostensible commitment to human rights after another see scandals in which this Technologies purchased and then overused we've seen it in Greece we've seen it in Poland where just this week uh a former spy Chief in that country was actually arrested uh as part of inquiries into a massive spy wear drag net that happened under the the previous administration there um and we've

seen it in Spain where some of this film is set and where we help helps document this massive cluster of hacks where the Spanish government which you wouldn't think would be a player that would be responsible for this kind of a breach uh they just attacked one Civil Society member after another associated with a separatist movement but but peaceful one in Catalonia and uh Matthew O'Neal you're the the director of the film and specifically the the focus of the film on on Spain and the and the independence movement in k Ionia what um what most

surprised you when uh in doing that work in Spain well I think when Perry Pelt and I first sat down with Ron and and Perry's the other director of the film when he started talking about the way his reporting was leading to Spain we had heard of Pegasus we think it's a really important subject this cyber Espionage we associated with autocracy Saudi Arabia the imagine the capabilities of a Russia or a China but that this was happening in Spain and that Ronan was sitting on the cusp of exposing what at that point was the largest

cluster of Pegasus infections inside uh uh any one place in one group I think it started with' 67 now it's in the in the hundreds we our eyes were opened because it felt like this story what was in what was unfolding in a democracy in a u Ally was something that people needed to know about and our our idea as we talked about how to tell the story because ronan's reporting was already so extensive was what could we do to give the audience access to ronan's process and see the reporting and the discoveries unfold and

that's part of what makes surveilled I think really interesting Perry and I have been longtime admirers of Ronan as a journalist and a reporter and this gave not only us but all of you at home the opportunity to ride along shotgun with them so this is clip from the HBO documentary surveilled in which Our Guest Ronan faroh speaks with the citizen labs elas compo in Catalonia why should people around the world care about the hacking that you're documenting here in Catalonia this is going to be one of the first cases where there's such a large

and vast number of affected uh people and from a vast and different uh type of categories of of um of society so we've had the parliament of of Catalonia targeted we've had the government of Catalonia targeted we've had lawyers targeted we've had uh civil leaders of or cultural organizations of Catalonia targeted this is not some future or wellan scenario it really it happened here it's happening here it's happening here and this is another clip of the HBO documentary surveilled featuring Jordi CLE a Catalan politician former member of the European Parliament the iPhone will generate a

diagnostic file which won't include personal data we just received confirmation that your phone was hacked twice one on the 11th of June and then again on the 27th of June 2020 2020 when does it look like you were infected I have to check uh at the date but around that day I was appointed um member of the European Parliament how do you feel knowing that you may have been compromised in this way well I feel surpris and angry at the same at the same time so that's the catalon politician former member of the European Parliament

Jordy Sole and before that elas compo who is the investigator he lives in Barcelona his sister and parents were also their phones were infected with Pegasus uh Ron and faroh if you can talk about the significance of this and it goes to the whole issue of you've got a spy in your pocket exactly what are the authorities those who are paying for this the information they're getting from your phone well everything potentially people have to start realizing that their phones are now public spaces in so many ways even if you're just a person using your

phone in a run-of-the-mill way and you don't think you're in one of these vulnerable categories anyone with the resources can hack your phone if they want to uh any country even places where there are supposed protections of privacy rights are now Battlegrounds over this technology where we are seeing people like the sister and parents of Elias compo who you mentioned um who are a political getting caught up in surveillance dragnets I I've been in my ongoing reporting in recent weeks talking to Privacy Law experts who really stress at this point that one should know about

this and care about this and exercise good digital hygiene and get the protections that you can maybe even get your phone tested whether you are again in a vulnerable category or not and so in this case in Spain you saw people like Elias's parents who are just do have all of their patients sensitive records and photos and scans um just you know divulged to whoever wants to use them all they know is the government now potentially has all of this information and the phone becomes a microphone the Pegasus and other similar Computing Technologies can turn

on your microphone without you knowing can turn on your camera and record video without you knowing uh and send all of that information back to whoever has purchased and is working with NSO or whatever the spyware company is to operate the technology and Ronan what if a if a person did want to uh disinfect uh their phone if they suspected that they were being surveilled uh is there a new industry arising now to basically check phones and uh are we seeing sort of an arms race between the surveillance folks and the anti-s surveillance folks in

terms of these uh these smartphones that almost virtually everyone has in their pocket well when I talk about the world now being a battlefield over this technology one of the fights one of the fronts in that battle is between the technology companies the platform holders that operate your operating system on your phone like apple that operate your messaging applications like WhatsApp um and on the other side of the battlefield the spyware companies so in the film and in my print reporting I talked to both the programmers at for instance WhatsApp uh who every day there's

a team within that company within meta now owns it looking at what are the attempts to intrude on this technology what are these at times astonishingly creative Technical Solutions that allow this technology to worm its way into your phone um through little vulnerabilities in the code and then I also talk to the programmers at for instance NSO group who are really proud of that daily fight where they find Creative Solutions to get into the phones and and who have to exercise a lot of rationalization frankly is my view in the face of all this evidence

that those efforts are being misused and abused to Target vulnerable people so in the film surveilled um you interview a whistleblower right at NSO um Ronan faroh interviews an NSO whistleblower who's asked for anonymity so you're hacking these phones what kinds of reaction did you get it's jaw droing it's very impressive the first time you see what was the pitch that you were offering these governments usually we had like one iPhone one Android device we used to demonstrate how we can exfiltrate the data from those devices actively take snapshots of the screen or pictures from

the camera actively record through the microphones what should the average citizen in any country in the world know about this company and this technology it's very it's very interesting should people be concerned yeah yeah we're telling these governments how to exfiltrate the data he says and his voice is disguised as you talk to him an NSO group whistleblower and they make uh Pegasus so if you can talk about the US buying this technology from Trump to Biden under multiple administrations of both parties we have seen overreaches of surveillance technology under the first Trump Administration the

New York Times has reported extensively on this uh there was actually a a purchase of this very technology Pegasus which again can seize control of a phone turn it into a listening device disgorge all of your private data um by the FBI so the FBI purchased later Christopher Ray the FBI director told Congress just for testing purposes a pegasus account uh through they did it through a subcontractor later uh the New York Times sued for more information that showed pretty clearly that this was not clearly delineated just for testing purposes there was a whole conversation

within the FBI where they wanted to deploy this potentially on American soil in an operational very real way now as far as we know that didn't happen that stopped and under the Biden Administration there have been halting efforts at least of a limited quality to curtail the use of this technology there's often dissensus and ention across the government on this I know of cases that have not yet been made public where Department of Justice offices uh where Department of Defense offices have purchased foreign private spyware technology to help in their efforts because not all of

these offices have the resources of the CIA um now the Biden Administration in response to my reporting calls did announce and and we disclosed this for the first time publicly in one of my New Yorker stories an executive order where they essentially said foreign spyware that has a record of being abused can't be shouldn't be purchased by the US government but the standards for what meets that Criterion are really amorphous and what we've seen since then is that the US government has gone right on purchasing more spyware just this past fall we saw the uh

uh Department of Homeland Security and there's been reporting that this is specifically ice the immigration office under the Department of Homeland Security purchase another really powerful Israeli spyware technology called uh it's a company called Paragon and the technology is called graphite and you know I have sources within that company they do build themselves as a more ethically clean alternative and one of the things that they promised the US government in the vetting process that led up to this multi-million dollar contract uh was that they would put restraints on how other clients other foreign governments that

use their technology can use it to hack American citizens but we don't know how exact those restraints are a and more to the point there are no restraints on hacking people in America including Americans by Ice Itself by the Department of Homeland Security itself and Privacy Law experts have been in a state of high alarm about this partly because they point out that the Department of Homeland Security is often the US government office that purchases ethically and legally questionable technology and is able to circumvent a lot of scrutiny by arguing that they have a law

enforcement National Security basis for using it so you now have a perfect storm Amy of Technology of this type that's really powerful and really easily abused in the hands of the US government again under the Biden Administration the Biden Administration has in response to reporting on this just recently paused that contract they say they're reviewing it but the thing is right around the corner the Trump Administration is coming in and we can talk about this but obviously the Trump Administration is bringing in a raft of officials and Trump himself who have made explicit threats against

the groups that again and again in Western democracies have been most vulnerable to this kind of espionage