Behold a Winged Horse

“Surveilled” is streaming on HBO.

In the new thriller-like HBO documentary, “Surveilled,” Ronan Farrow teams up with filmmakers Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz to document a three-country investigation into the inner workings of NSO Group Technologies, the Israeli company behind the notorious spyware Pegasus. Along the way, he uncovers the insidious ways in which governments use the program to surveil politicians, journalists, activists and regular citizens. The point of the film is not to persuade anyone to throw their phone away, but to inform audiences about how to question and assess their relationship to technology. I chatted with Farrow and O’Neill soon after the film’s world premiere at DOCNYC. Our conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

Truthdig: Ronan, what made you start reporting on spywares? 

Ronan Farrow: I have dealt with some forms of surveillance myself, where individuals who weren’t happy with the effort I was making to hold them accountable and expose facts that they didn’t want exposed, sicced on me, the kind of traditional human surveillance that has always been possible. And then some higher tech approaches where I was being followed around, partly based on the geolocation data for my phone. 

TD: But the spyware you show in the film is more dangerous, you’d say?

RF: All of that pales in comparison to the outer bleeding edge of sophisticated spyware of the type we look at in this film, like Pegasus. This is a giant industry. There’s a rapidly proliferating number of these solutions, and the advanced ones can literally turn your phone into a listening device, into a viewing device in your pocket, and can disgorge all private texts and emails. I wanted to understand how personally invasive and traumatizing it can be. I know that term is overused, but I don’t use it lightly. It’s a very upsetting thing, and it makes you feel very unsafe, and has a chilling effect on your ability to do your work and to protect sources. I rapidly came to see it as a structural feature around so many stories I was telling — this layer of are you being watched as you’re telling this story? And are journalists around the world being watched in a way that is not just information gathering but also, as I realized through experience, a form of intimidation. 

TD: Matt, Ronan’s research and reported pieces already exist. So why make it into a film?

Matthew O’Neill: The opportunity to bring the audience into the shotgun seat of an investigative journalism story was really exciting. Perry and I are both journalists and filmmakers. That intersection of where the craft meets the cutting edge of investigative journalism was exciting. What a film does is it allows you to feel things and, in this case, the audience goes on the journey with Ronan through the investigation, but also with the real people whose lives are being transformed and, in some cases, disrupted by this technology and the way in which it’s being deployed by governments.

TD: Among the many kinds of spyware, why did you choose to focus on Pegasus? 

RF: Pegasus is just one of a rapidly expanding field of spyware technologies. It is a prominent and robust example, and a number of publications, including the New Yorker, did stories that documented how there was a spiraling pattern of abusing Pegasus specifically. At every turn, I knew it was emblematic of an emerging market for this kind of technology, and that there were a lot of players vying for pole position within that market, and that all of them would contribute to this landscape in which we need more scrutiny and more regulation. 

TD: How did you start reporting on NSO?

RF: NSO was a subject of my reporting. I got connected to them through sources around some of my preexisting Israeli surveillance related reporting. I had my first meeting with Shalev Hulio [former NSO CEO], in 2019. I have to say I respect that they let cameras in, it was partly born of a period in their history when they thought they could win the PR fights through more transparency. The transparency does help, it does make them look better. But ultimately, no amount of transparency is a substitute for really living up to the commitments to police whom the technology is sold to and to put restraints on how it’s used. Some of that can come from the companies, but I actually think NSO is correct in saying that a lion’s share of the accountability is going to have to come from governments, regulating this, legislating on this.

TD: Why did you choose to focus on Spain, when it came to using an example of a country that is using Pegasus?

MO: NSO allowing some degree of access and insight makes the conversation a much richer one. And whether it’s the individuals working at NSO, on or off the record, the Western European clients of NSO, there are arguments that are in favor of this tool, so to speak, that need to be considered as we figure out regulation, checks and balances, transparency.

Everybody knows that Russia and China, if they are not surveillance states already, are aspiring to be surveillance states, and that autocracies are using tools to get as much access to the way their citizenry lives as possible, to track them and control them. It becomes much trickier in a democracy. The fact that [Catalan activists and pro-independence politicians were being spied upon] in Spain is fascinating. You don’t think of Spain as autocratic, or it hasn’t been since Franco was in charge. But the truth is, there’s a slippery slope when you have a tool of this power. This isn’t a phone tap in or a traditional wiretap. Our phones are our lives. So, it has everything. This surveillance tool is so powerful, and if it’s going to have a role in our society, that role needs to be scrutinized. And all the more interesting, is for all of us to look at the role [of spyware] inside democracies, as opposed to autocracies.

TD: You talk about the Biden administration issuing an executive order restricting federal use of commercial spyware. What do you think is going to happen to that now with the Trump presidency coming in?

RF: Privacy law experts I spoke to for the latest New Yorker piece are concerned about how the porous case law interpreting the Fourth Amendment protections [against unreasonable searches and seizures] applies in terms of data privacy — and whether the Trump administration will even enforce the existing porous legal framework.

This is an administration that’s been very explicit about its disregard for the rule of law in multiple respects. Donald Trump has explained that he has a view of the executive branch in which it supersedes limitations. The idea that [they will] even halt the efforts to police the government’s use of this kind of technology … is really questionable, given the kinds of appointments we’re seeing. You have the Department of Homeland Security purchasing a powerful new example of this technology from a firm called Paragon. And you have the Trump administration promising that DHS and ICE will be involved in an unprecedented mass deportation. Donald Trump is saying that his political enemies should be subject to military tribunals, he is saying that journalists who protect their sources should be locked up. It doesn’t require much speculation to have the fears that these experts have. They are talking about Donald Trump and people around him using this technology to enforce some of those promises and threats.

TD: What can people do to protect themselves? 

MO: The simplest thing is that basic step of digital maintenance of rebooting your phone every day. It’s not a cure, but it is something you can do to guard against [most] spyware, not necessarily the most sophisticated ones that are being deployed by government agencies. In terms of what to call for, we believe in transparency. Part of what the film is about is pulling back the veil on Ronan’s reporting process, and what the government needs to do is be transparent about how this tool may or may not be used and deployed. A wiretap on a phone line is not, in and of itself, bad. Herbert Hoover used it in really bad ways and in really good ways. So how is this tool going to be used? The answer is with checks and balances and transparency, and that’s part of what we all need to demand for any tool capable of violating our privacy in the way Pegasus and other spyware can.

TD: There’s a bit in the film where a Catalan activist says that his phone couldn’t be spied upon because he has a +1 number. Is there some kind of agreement over American numbers being out of bounds for this spyware? 

RF: A number of companies that make this tech have tried to assuage concerns about its misuse in the United States in particular by arguing that they have put in place protections that prevent it from being deployed against Americans, whether it’s citizenship or the area code. So that conversation with NSO group was intended to convey a sense of, “Hey, U.S. officials who might be courted into purchasing this tech, don’t worry. We’re going to build into our system a bar against deploying this if the number has that area code.” Activists and watchdog groups are rightly skeptical about how substantive a measure that is.

The American market is so lucrative. Paragon, for instance, did really premise their pitch to the United States government saying that with other foreign governments that buy the tech, they were not going to allow it to ever be used to hack Americans. 

The main thing is that in all these cases, when a company like that sells to the U.S. government, the guardrails are off. Paragon is not preventing the Department of Homeland Security from hacking Americans, and that really should be a core area of concern. There is a separate effort that has to transpire where the American government and other governments defend their people against outside attacks. But what we’ve seen in these cases is of Western democracies losing control of this technology and abusing it. This is the greatest threat that comes from within. There are no guardrails built in for that on the side of the companies. Those guardrails are going to have to come from legislators pushing [for them].

TD: Were you wary that the film may make people unjustifiably paranoid, or do you think people can’t be scared enough of what is going on?

MO: Scared or informed? The potential for privacy being invaded is very real. Are we throwing out our phones? With the exception of some people on an extreme fringe, that’s not an option for most Americans. So, a healthy knowledge base about the potential of spyware will help us all engage, not only with our government, but also with the technology companies that we all use. Whether it’s the operating system on an iPhone or data and how we use our devices.

TD: Is there anything hopeful the audience can take away from this film?

RF: That journalists around the world see the way. This is a film that also celebrates what they do. This is not just about my work, it’s got hat tips to a lot of other publications. One of the first things I do when I’m on the ground, as you see in the film, is connect with journalists who are in the thick of it. I hope people also see that, and that viewers who are not journalists, are driven to support publications they believe in. I hope journalists feel motivated to keep the work going.