Is Your Phone Spying on You? Ronan Farrow on His New Doc “Surveilled” | Amanpour and Company

and next it's the one thing we practically never leave home without but could our smartphones be spying on us well after becoming a target of hacking himself pulet Sur priz winning journalist Ronan faroh made it his mission to shine a light on the shadowy world of cyber surveillence faraoh joins Michelle Martin now to discuss his new documentary surveilled and the frightening reality of spy wear thanks Christian Ron and phoh thanks so much for talking with us once again always a pleasure thank for out of me so this might seem basic but if you could just

take us to the beginning what is spyware and how did you become aware of it so the most modern forms of spyware that we should all be most concerned about can hijack your phone undetectably turn it into a listening device turn on the microphone turn on the camera and disgorge all your personal content and send it remotely to whoever is operating the technology so the core thing to know is that for a long time time this has been used as a tool of Oppression under dictatorships autocracies we see it show up on the phones of

people around murdered dissidents journalists it's been linked to hundreds of acts of violence around the world but what I've been tracking in recent years of my reporting is that in one Western democracy after another countries that supposedly have protections against these kinds of intrusions and their bodies of law we're also seeing scandals in which this kind of surveillance technology is overused we've seen it happen in Poland in Greece in Spain and a lot of this documentary surveilled is actually set in Spain where we document one of the largest clusters on record of peaceful Civil Society

members and opposition politicians being hacked in this way and I can tell you Michelle from my own experience being followed around surveilled in various ways including sometimes high-tech ways where someone was following me tracking my GPS data it is not just information gathering it is in ation and it shrinks the space for opposition expression of all kinds so it's something we should all just be really concerned about and the film shows that not just opposition politicians and activists but innocent bystanders a political people are caught up in this all the time I think we have

to get really basic here because I think some people feel that look if you're not doing anything wrong then what do you care whether people are following you around or listening to your conversations and so for I just think you really need to explain for people why this matters I think the reasons to care about this are twofold first of all you might have the posture that you just described Michelle um I'm not doing anything wrong why would anyone want my data nobody wants my nudes you know and and that may intuitively make sense but

what we see over and over again when these orwellian surveillance drag Nets happen again increasingly in Western democracies where people said not here it couldn't happen here is that innocent bystanders totally apolitical people are caught up in those drag Nets 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 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 organ cultural organizations of Catalonia targeted this is not some future or wellend scenario it really it happened here it's happening here it's happening here and and to get at the other part of why people should care about this whether you wind up on a list or not you have to be invested in how this kind of Technology shrinks the space for all forms of descent and opposition you know we've seen extreme cases of that Michelle like

in the The Case of the journalist Jamal kogi there was an allegation that Pegasus one of these powerful forms of spyware showed up on phones of Associates of his now some of the players involved in that fact pattern deny it but that seems to be the case and and that's the pattern you had him communicating dissent about the Saudi government and he wound up dead so that's an extreme case but in all of the countries that have this Tech technology at its their fingertips and the US government has purchased this technology which we can talk

about we have to be concerned about how private Communications that Express dissent can quickly become a source of retaliation one of the people you interviewed told you that the system of checks and balances we have come to take for granted in the west has unraveled before our eyes so walk us through your reporting let's go to Spain which is the where a lot of the reporting in the in your documentary is is based what happened there and how did it happen in Spain a country where people really did say Well it couldn't happen here you

have a peaceful political movement in Catalonia which is an autonomous region Barcelona's the capital there's a population there that thinks that they should separate and be an independent state whatever your views on that these are peaceful politicians and Civil Society members and what we found there I followed the work of a a watchdog group called citizen lab was is that there was one of the largest clusters of hacking victims in the world just one politician after another these are European Parliament members in some cases and we show in the film these cases of politicians testing

their phones and finding out they've been hacked [Music] when does it look like you were infected I have to check uh at the date but around that day 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 surprised and angry at the same at the same time and they don't know what sensitive conversations have been discouraged they don't know if the Spanish government is going to retaliate against them and in the US we have been as a government flirting with this

technology parties in power on both sides of the aisle have purchased this Tech have EXP Lord using it have come close to it under the first Trump Administration the FBI did purchase Pegasus one of these Infamous forms of technology they said for testing there's a lot of evidence that they intended to to do more than testing um it seems like it hasn't been deployed operationally yet but in my latest story I talk about how they have despite some efforts under the Biden Administration uh to limit the the government's ability to purchase foreign spyware they've gone

ahead and purchased more um under the Biden Administration the Department of Homeland security just purchased another really potent form of Israeli spyware technology uh a software called graphite built by a firm called Paragon um that contract is currently being reviewed but but you're going to have a situation where the new Administration comes into power in this country with this kind of tech at its fingertips and this is a new Administration that has threatened to go after journalists to go after opposition members so you can see why privacy rights Advocates and democracy advocates are really fearful

about the potential for this happening here as it has happened increasingly in so many places where people didn't expect it one of the most famous I don't know when you say Infamous companies in this field is the NSO group known for pegas their their software you were actually invited inside their headquarters in Tel Aviv in 2022 what do what do they say about what they do and what the capabilities of it are and why they do it the whole framework for the debate around this technology is what we see all the time in terms of

powerful intrusive law enforcement tools which is there's an argument that theoretically it can be a really good thing for law enforcement investigations and I I talked to in this film for instance law enforcement officials from Western democracies where by the way the public doesn't know that they have and are using Pegasus and I hear the argument from the the law enforcement officials saying well we love to be able to completely open up anyone's phone anytime we want uh and and they say they use it to Target terrorists so that's the kind of um the show

that's put on by Advocates of this technology and that's what I get in the film when I go into nso's offices they say look we're we're trying to make this technology to help the good guys in law enforcement but then I interview on background in Shadow whistleblowers who have left that firm because of ethical objections and what they point out is that the business model of these top spy wear makers is often really skewed where the Western democracies that put a good face on this and say that they're using it with at least some limitations

get a really low fee and the bread and butter of the business the giant fees come from places like Saudi Arabia uh where really the spyware makers know that the client is going to be using it to quash descent and what the Spy wear makers themselves say the the top lawyer at NSO group is on camera saying this in this film is that they're basically arms manufacturers and that it's not their fault in their view that there's no equivalent to the Geneva conventions for this really powerful tool that is in practice a weapon that can

really harm Democratic Values so the NSO group is based in Israel does the Israeli government maintain any control over who they sell to yes so the Israeli spy firms um particularly NSO group make the argument that their client selection and activities are all tightly controlled by the Israeli authorities and and the fact that this is a technology that is flourishing out of tviv specifically is Not an Accident Michelle you know this is a a highly Innovative um Tech setting in general with a really strong pool of talent but it's also specifically a place where people

come out of mandatory military service they come out of the intelligence units in the Israeli military and they they have a skill set pretty early in their career after they serve that they then apply starting these companies uh and working for these companies so that's one reason why you have Israel at the Forefront of this kind of private Tech and there's a really close relationship with the Israeli government and these private spyware makers for example the NSO group has been reported to be deploying its technology on behalf of the Israeli government in its current conflict

in the Palestinian territories to try to find hostages and by the way on the other hand we talk to Palestinian politicians in this film who say look it's not just in this current Conflict for years Israel has been using the Palestinian population as a lab that they they surveil activists in that space so let's go back to the United States and I want to mention that there is both the the documentary and there's also a piece that you've published in the New Yorker okay in the New Yorker article you detail how Ice immigration Customs Enforcement

acquire Paragon spyware technology under the Biden Administration with indications that it could be used more aggressively in the incoming Trump Administration for the record you spoke to Nathaniel Fick the B administration's Ambassador at large for cyberspace and digital policy and he defended quote legitimate law enforcement and National Security uses of these Technologies but let's you know we are a couple of weeks away from the Trump Administration returning to office they've made it very clear that they expect to have a very aggressive uh deportation policy how might this technology be used in the surface of that

well this is what Privacy Law Advocates are so frightened about you have first of all a legal framework for privacy protections and for limiting this kind of spyware technology that's very porous Michelle I mean after some of my reporting the Biden White House announced in some of those stories I did that they would do a new executive order that would ostensibly limit the government's ability to purchase foreign spyware that had been used abusively it still allows for plenty of new purchases of foreign spyware which means more offices in the government can use it it's more

available there's a lower threshold and less examination of when it's used um there are no real clear standards laid out for how and when the government can use this um and and then you have this incoming Administration where every single privacy lawyer I've talked to has said you know not only can they exploit all of those holes in the existing framework they're not even sure that the incoming Administration will care about the legal framework you you really do have incoming officials Administration members who have said that they disregard the law that they view the executive

as having absolute power if we have a combination of a disregard for any guard rails and this technology already being at the fingertips of the government the consequences are genuinely frightening to me it's one of the first times I've been afraid as a journalist um you know even as one who's dealt with a fair amount of intimidation there's always been a legal framework to limit the intrusions on the work that we do in our profession and you know if you lose the space for opposition conversations for investigations to try to hold people in power to

account you lose the potential for the next Watergate for the next Pentagon Papers um that that's something we should all care about I think and and in this case the Department of Homeland Security has this technology the Biden Administration says they've paused the contract they're reviewing it um but it's very powerful phone hacking technology and you could easily see how ice specifically under the Department of Homeland Security could deploy that in the context of a mandate of mass immigrations which is what Trump has promised I mean I think people would argue that if you are

in the country out of status then why shouldn't the government know where you are well I think there's two responses to that one is even for people who are caught up in the immigration issues at play here people who are here in a completely permissible way and they're awaiting immigration proceedings of some kind people who are here illegally um I I think that there is also a good argument from Human Rights Advocates that the private Communications of those people shouldn't be up for grabs without a specific law enforcement warrant that is about more than just

their status and what I've heard from these Privacy Law experts again and again is technology purchased by the Department of Homeland Security specifically that's often the institution that gets the technology that is legally questionable because they have a clear National Security rationale that Shields them from scrutiny a bit and once it's in the hands of DHS what I've been told again and again is you can't guarant that it's just being used by Ice we don't know the answer to that because there hasn't been transparency on that so I think it's pivotal that individuals demand and

Congress demands going forward that there is more transparency about who's using this technology and when so this is really going to be a protection that has to come through checks and and balances through an outside counterbalance in the form of Congress um you know this is a largely unregulated space that I think the history that you just just described shows us desperately needs regulation as the technology becomes more pervasive and more intrusive what about a paragon did the company have any anything to say about the way their technology might be used in in these immigration

efforts that we've talked about there are two camps in this industry there are the people who see all of the scandals that have emerged around NSO group and their response is well we're going to keep selling to the bad guys and we're going to be more secretive about it and then there are the play ERS who see the lucrative market for selling to the American government and other big Western governments and they realize that those governments are going to be averse to association with Scandal and so they try to present themselves as a cleaner alternative

um Paragon is one of those companies part of their pitch is well we're going to police more expertly whether our technology is abused um you know we're going to be a little cleaner about which client states we deal with we're not going to deal with the real bad guys you that was also the pitch that NSO group made whether Paragon succeeds in that we don't know but that is that is what they say they say look um we're trying to limit ourselves to countries that aren't going to abuse this and and a source at that

company told me that the vetting process that led to the Department of Homeland Security purchasing their technology ology included them demonstrating over and over again that they had robust mechanisms for pres preventing their other client states from spying on Americans but pivotally there's no guard rails on DHS itself spying on Americans those guard rails have to come from within R and phoh thanks so much for talking with us thank you Michelle always a pleasure [Music] [Music]