It’s odd to open a social media app to a targeted ad about an item you have never shopped or searched for and have only mentioned to a friend or partner, yet this has happened to everyone. It’s peculiar to think of it that way, especially after you have ordered the specific item, but instead, It’s a bit too terrifying to fathom that phones are always eavesdropping on us. Am I right? Similarly, the new HBO documentary Surveilled exposes a truth that is quite unappealing So Ronan Farrow’s What Has Been Doing or Directing is a remarkable film, and his investigation and deep dive into the world of digital spyware have brought the immense repercussions of online purchasing able to bring Matthew Oneill And Perri Peltz and along with him the entire world’s attention. An interdisciplinary approach providing attention outlining specific details has become a necessity over the years and has been aptly done as Ronan himself reported these were primarily bought by Israel’s commercial spyware firm NSO Group. The software Pegasus, And journalists, activists, dissidents, and even politicians with the use of this software turned into pedophiles, where a baby is controlled by a wand for example.
A former NSO Group employee comments that “it’s very powerful”, “it’s very intrusive”, and it really is. Pegasus is able to hack a smartphone and acquire GPS data, contacts, pictures, and other information by hacking every application, even encrypted ones. It has the capability of activating the target camera and microphone and filming or recording audio and videos, all without consent and sometimes without even their knowledge. Farrow explains, “The bleeding edge of surveillance is these digital tools,” adding that “they are getting way more powerful.”
Farrow reported for over two years setting out on multiple continents, Tel Aviv being one, and considering the nature of the investigation, it would be an understatement to call this a journey of immense detail. He took his cameras along to the NSO Group and spoke directly to some of the company representatives about his ethical concerns, of which, he received calibrated answers about their ‘positive impact’. Preparing for the documentary, Farrow was in contact with former PNS employees who told him how they were forced out after the incident of the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Thanks to the Pegasus software, the killing was staged to look like a harvesting event. To sail through the proportions, NSO reached out to Farrow to ask him which of the NSO ex-workers he had previously worked with. Farrow, the sensible man protecting his source, would not share the information.
It’s not just autocrats and dictators using it, an astonishing 45 countries are reportedly using Pegasus, Western democracies being one of them, but of course secretly.
“We find ourselves in a period which has clear signs of democratic deterioration which is well documented,” said Ron Deibert of the Citizen Lab Toronto, which has been examining and putting this technology to the public. “Authoritarian tendencies are on the rise across the globe. The unchecked expansion of the surveillance industry, I have no doubt, is among the important causes of those trends.”
And this is the structural master stroke of “Surveilled”, because Farrow and directors O’Neill and Peltz know that while it may be one thing to target journalists and activists in the UAE or for that matter even in Spain, sitting in the last 20 minutes or so when the threat is specifically to the viewer, it is something else. It is not merely that employees of United States government workings residing abroad have also been spied upon by the Pegasus, the NSO group was looking into leasing software like Pegasus to law enforcement bodies before the company was placed on an exports blacklist in 2021, and such agencies were not unlikely to be keen on the idea to say the least.
As Farrow describes, the Biden administration in March 2023 imposed an executive to prevent government institutions from acquiring foreign spyware. But as he goes on to say, a few days later we participated with a few other nations in a joint statement wishing to purchase the technology however it was done so in a more respectful manner.
Farrow proceeds to mention U.S Congressman Jim Himes who says “Some of us have to start doing the hard work of assuring that law enforcement uses it consistent with our civil liberties. ” Clearly these eight words raise the question of who depicts trust on the justice system. The sea of buzzwords at Once, Katya Ruiz, who oversees the Cybersecurity Operations of the State Department was very confident and said, “The United States uses every tool of national power in pursuit of interests, grounded in our values”.
However Farrow tends to do a much better job at explaining these issues in detail since he is very articulate when speaking in hand, it gives him an edge over other reporters. Although he does do a good job at showcasing the issue to us and using provocative words, he does have the tendency to be purposely unnerving.
It’s a long, complex, disguised story. The criminal elements are highlighted– well, so are the terrorists in the phrasing. But a phrase like ‘the most advanced spyware can turn your smartphone into a pocket spy’ pretty much settles it. O’Neill and Peltz also make some documentary hay out of the practical details of an investigation like this; he is not allowed to film his interview with NSO’s CEO, for instance, so they put the camera on him while he is explaining it to his New Yorker editor after the interview.
Farrow is probably a little too ‘in the face’ or ‘too much in the foreground’, I feel, in some places, he is featured almost as much as the story itself and the events unfolding, but if you are one of the few celebrity journalists who is left standing then I guess there’s no reason not to use him as such. He leaves behind a weighty presence, and the style and pace are snappy (the running time is one hour). As a result, “Surveilled” is more of a “Frontline” episode, or so it feels like only this one is better made and is seriously scary, with all its outcomes being harsh. ‘We can’t put the technology genie back into the bottle,’ Ambassador Fick tells Farrow.
As Farrow puts it at the end of the voice-over, “The only way to have privacy is to have no phones at all,” this is the only conclusion I was able to take, while letting out a smirk to watch Farrow’s report. “Once they are out in the open, whatever evil purpose we think, we will most likely witness”. In the entire process of watching a promo clip of the movie, I was required to download a verification application on my cellphone.
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