'Surveilled': Behind the spyware technology Trump could use to hack your phone

We discuss the new HBO Original film Surveilled and explore the film’s investigation of high-tech spyware firms with journalist Ronan Farrow and director Matthew O’Neill. We focus on the influence of the Israeli military in the development of some of the most widely used versions of these surveillance technologies, which in many cases are first tested on Palestinians and used to enforce Israel’s occupation of Palestine, and on the potential expansion of domestic U.S. surveillance under a second Trump administration. Ever-increasing surveillance is “dangerous for democracy,” says Farrow. “We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” As O’Neill emphasizes, “We could all be caught up.”

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org. I’m Amy Goodman.

We end today’s show looking at how surveillance spyware, including programs like Pegasus, is being used to target journalists, human rights advocates, dissident voices across Western democracies and around the world. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow looks at the issue in his new HBO Original documentary Surveilled, now streaming on Max, the film directed by Perri Peltz and Matthew O’Neill. On Tuesday, Democracy Now!'s Juan González and I spoke to Matt O'Neill and Ronan Farrow about Surveilled.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Given the fact that Israeli industry has become such a main source of this surveillance technology, do you have any indication that it’s basically United States military funding that goes to Israel, and the government then contracts with its own so-called private companies to develop this technology?

RONAN FARROW: In an attenuated way, there absolutely is that flow of resources. Israel has become a cradle for innovation in this kind of technology for a combination of reasons. I mean, Tel Aviv is a center of tech innovation in general. They have a great pool of tech talent. And Israel is set up in a very specific way, where there’s mandatory military service. People at a pretty early time in their careers go into government, military and intelligence units, and then, also pretty early in their lives and careers, they come out of that service, and they apply those skills and that knowledge in the private industry.

So, you have companies like NSO Group and companies like Black Cube, that Amy mentioned, that do more traditional human intelligence operations, that have all of these resources directly from a government that is, of course, as you point out, supported largely by the United States and its military aid. So, a lot of these solutions are Israeli as a result of all of those factors.

AMY GOODMAN: How much does Israel target Palestinians? We’ve talked with reporters like Yuval Abraham from +972, who exposed Lavender and “Where’s Daddy?” where they follow people home, Palestinians in Gaza. Of course, we know about the exploding beepers and phones in Lebanon. And then I want to ask: Did you ultimately take down the head of NSO Group, which makes Pegasus?

RONAN FARROW: So, first of all, on this question of targeting Palestinians, the reporting suggests, yes, there have been a number of documented cases of spyware technology being found on the phones of Palestinian activists, politicians. We talked to a Palestinian former Knesset member politician in the film who puts forward the theory that Israel essentially uses the Palestinian populations as a laboratory for this technology. And, you know, one of the reasons why private spyware companies thrive in Israel is that in addition to the Israeli government’s internal, very robust capacity for this kind of espionage, there’s always a demand for more of this kind of tech, including from private vendors, to deploy in the conflict that surrounds Israel at all times. Because they are a highly militarized state beset by all of these existential threats, and especially now in this state of conflict, there is just always a context in which to apply and refine this technology. And there has been additional reporting that in this most recent conflict, as well, there’s been a deployment of Pegasus in an effort to try to track hostages.

Now, of course, there’s controversy within Israel. People see some of the intelligence failures around this latest conflict, and there’s right-wingers who in that country say, “Well, there should be more use of this technology.” But certainly, to your question, people who care about the agony of Palestinians right now, I think, should be aware that this technology has wormed its way into this conflict, and that this conflict has reinforced the development of this technology.

To your question about the leadership of NSO Group, I would not say that I took out the head of NSO. The head of NSO was, as we acknowledge openly in this film, a source of mine. He did depart that company amidst a lot of the scandals. The company was very embattled, and then there was a leadership change. The reporting of a whole consortium of international publications, a lot of different outlets, I think, contributed to those scandals. I would say the foremost player in disclosing information about this company was the watchdog group that we track in the film, Citizen Lab.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ronan, what could the outgoing Biden administration do to curtail the ability of the incoming Trump administration to use the powers of this technology? Or what could Congress do, do you think, given the makeup of the Congress, of the new Congress coming in?

RONAN FARROW: This is where it gets really tricky and, frankly, even bleak. And I think this is why activists and journalists tracking this issue are in a state of such alarm. The Biden administration, the executive branch, can do relatively little, as far as I understand, that can’t be undone by the Trump administration. More robust executive orders, you know, are a possibility, but the Trump administration, A, can pass its own executive orders and, B, has just shown an unprecedented disregard for the rule of law.

So, not only are there existing loopholes, not only can those loopholes be widened, but we may have a set of players coming in, based on their own statements, who just disregard the entire framework and overreach in various ways. You see a clear, concerted effort in Trump’s appointments in this new Cabinet and wider administration to circumvent the rule of law. You see the selection of someone like Kash Patel, who would very clearly give Trump free rein to manipulate law enforcement investigations if he were running the FBI, and has suggested that the executive should have absolute power, has suggested that journalists should be prosecuted.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Patel speaking to Steve Bannon on his podcast the War Room.

KASH PATEL: We will go out and find the conspirators, not just in government, but in the media. Yes, we’re going to come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens, who helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections. We’re going to come after you. Whether it’s criminally or civilly, we’ll figure that out. But, yeah, we’re putting you all on notice. And, Steve, this is why they hate us. This is why we’re tyrannical. This is why we’re dictators, because we’re actually going to use the Constitution to prosecute them for crimes they said we have always been guilty of but never have.

AMY GOODMAN: That’s Kash Patel, the Trump nominee for head of the FBI, to replace Christopher Wray, who was already called on the carpet around buying Pegasus. So, when not only Kash Patel, because who knows if he’ll make it, but President Trump has repeatedly talked about journalists, for example, as the enemy of the people, your final thoughts, Ronan?

RONAN FARROW: Trump and his associates have explicitly threatened journalists with prosecution, and specifically threatened journalists who protect their sources with prosecution. That is dangerous for democracy. This is one of the first times — and I’m, as we discussed, someone who’s dealt with a fair number of surveillance and intimidation efforts — that I felt frightened to work in this country.

I think in this incoming administration, we’re going to need the work of journalists more than ever. And we’re going to need the space for journalism, for dissent, for all of the spaces that are shrunk and cracked down on when you have this technology freely used in an unfettered way. And we’ve just seen this horror story play out in one country after another, even where there are ostensible protections in place. We see how hard it is to get accountability after the fact. We see how tempting it is for law enforcement to overreach and start to target people in a vindictive, politicized way. And then you have these sets of statements, where you have Donald Trump threatening political opponents with military tribunals, for instance.

And as ever, we’re in the media engaged in this debate of what’s a joke and what’s not, but these kinds of appointments, or at least attempted appointments that we’re seeing, are no joke. And this technology that is already at the fingertips of this government, that’s no joke. So, people need to really care. And members of Congress, of whatever party, who remain sane in a context that is increasingly not normal, really need to clock and appreciate this issue.

I have seen, in talking about this film in public spaces, how the public gets it, how ordinary Americans understand that it is scary to have these spaces shrunk and cracked down on. And I think that politicians who take a stand and realize that the spyware companies in this film who say this is a weapon of war — the spyware companies themselves. We have NSO’s lawyer on camera in the film saying, “There’s no equivalent to the Geneva Conventions for this. And that’s not on us. We’re making and selling a weapon that is largely unregulated.” We’ve got to fix that. And I think people care, is what I’m seeing. And my hope is that political representatives understand that the people care. And this is not a partisan issue. People who don’t want big government, people who have traditional conservative values should especially care about protecting people from this tech.

AMY GOODMAN: Matt O’Neill, you traveled the world with Ronan as you interviewed people almost on every continent. I want to ask you, for example, about Guatemala. In 2022, a group of journalists working for the award-winning Central American independent news outlet El Faro filed a lawsuit in U.S. court against NSO Group, the Israeli company that operates Pegasus spyware used to monitor and track journalists, human rights activists, dissidents. The El Faro journalists, which is based in El Salvador, allege Pegasus software was used to infiltrate their iPhones and track their communications and movements. Now, you didn’t go to El Salvador. They sued, and one of the heads of it went to Guatemala.

MATTHEW O’NEILL: Yes, we went to Guatemala City to interview Roman Gressier, who was targeted by Pegasus spyware. And I think this is indicative of what you see on every continent where Pegasus is in use, is that you’re seeing journalists, civil rights activists, human rights activists who are being targeted with this software. If you’re looking at El Salvador, this tool is only as responsible as the people using it. So, in El Salvador, they’re prosecuting journalists. In Saudi Arabia, they’re tracking down and executing journalists. If we have this software here, I think people listening at home might be thinking, “I’m not going to be subject to an ICE investigation. The Department of Homeland Security isn’t interested in my selfies or my pictures of my kids.” And that’s likely true. However, if this investigative tool makes it into the hands of people who have an expansive idea about what criminality is or what the reach of their institution is into people’s lives, we —

AMY GOODMAN: Or proudly announce their enemies lists they have.

MATTHEW O’NEILL: We will all be caught up. We don’t need to be the target of an investigation. They could be targeting you, and our text exchange this morning would have looped me right into that.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can talk, Ronan, about what you do? Juan asked you this question before. But really specifically, it amazed me how simple some of it is, and, of course, much more complicated to stop this level of spying.

RONAN FARROW: Well, it’s simple, but it’s not foolproof. You know, I have been told by senior people within spyware companies that rebooting your phone every day is a great practice.

AMY GOODMAN: Why?

RONAN FARROW: It doesn’t foil all of these forms of technology. Reboot survivability is built into some of them. But others, including, at least when I last checked in on it, Pegasus, will actually have to reinfect you after a reboot.

AMY GOODMAN: Meaning turning your phone off.

RONAN FARROW: Just turning your phone off every day is a good digital hygiene practice — again, not foolproof. And increasingly, these technologies are more and more sophisticated and can survive reboots. But it will clear out some types of spyware infections.

Also, this may seem obvious, but just keep all of your devices updated in every way you can. I mentioned that kind of Mr. Robot digital sniping between the platform holders like Apple and Meta and the spyware companies. What that means is that every single day there is a multibillion-dollar industry that is geared towards finding the vulnerabilities in the latest Apple patch, the latest WhatsApp patch, and exploiting them. And on the other hand, there are teams of sophisticated programmers within the companies that make your software and your hardware that are spending their lives creating those new patches to close up those vulnerabilities. And we see some of those battles in the film, if you’re interested in learning more. But the end result is: update everything all the time. When you get that little alert, it’s annoying, but don’t wait.

AMY GOODMAN: Aluminum foil?

RONAN FARROW: Well, we do — we follow a scene in the film where a live infection is found of another type of spyware technology, Candiru. And Citizen Lab investigators race to the scene, and they have the activist who’s been infected wrap his laptop where the infection is taking place in tin foil to create a Faraday cage, like you get when elevator doors close and you lose reception, to interrupt the flow of data in and out of the laptop, and hopefully prevent a signal from being sent to it that might cause the technology to delete itself. In that case, it was successful. They managed to prevent the technology from self-destructing, and they got a live example of how this infection was working. And it actually helped Microsoft generate a patch that thwarted this technology for a time.

So, tin foil, theoretically — or even better, you can get Faraday bags, that in secure settings sometimes people use to interrupt transmissions to their devices — can theoretically be a help, but I wouldn’t count on it, because you’ve got to wrap those things really thoroughly. And I have also talked to sophisticated technology experts who say, “You know what? That’s really far from fail-safe.”

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Ronan, did you find in your investigation any companies or platforms that had better practices in terms of securing individual phones against surveillance?

RONAN FARROW: Well, I have been impressed, whatever you think of the wider companies, with the commitment of the programmers who are playing defense on this issue within Apple and within WhatsApp. You know, these companies are sometimes secretive about what they do on this front. Nobody likes to publicize that the device you make or the software you make is so vulnerable. But I’m grateful to the sources within those teams who spoke for this reporting and to the cases in which the companies in question, Microsoft or Meta, for instance, agreed to participate even in the film. You know, we have people going on camera talking about how they do this. I think more openness about this is called for and that people should celebrate the cases in which companies put resources into protecting their customers in this way. There’s not enough, but there is some going on, and that does deserve acknowledgement.

AMY GOODMAN: Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow and Matthew O’Neill, talking about their new documentary Surveilled. It’s streaming on Max. The film looks at the activity of spyware companies, including the Israeli firm NSO, which makes the spyware program Pegasus. The film is directed by Perri Peltz, Matthew O’Neill, and produced by Ronan Farrow. Ronan won the Pulitzer for exposing Harvey Weinstein’s history of sexual abuse. The Hollywood mogul paid the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube to suppress Ronan Farrow’s reporting. We’ll link to Farrow’s New Yorkerarticle, “The Technology the Trump Administration Could Use to Hack Your Phone.” Go to democracynow.org to see Part 1 of our discussion.

Happy birthday to Igor Moreno! I’m Amy Goodman. Thanks so much for joining us.

The original content of this program is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Please attribute legal copies of this work to democracynow.org. Some of the work(s) that this program incorporates, however, may be separately licensed. For further information or additional permissions, contact us.