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[mellow music playing]
[bird squawking]
So, you have agreed to talk, but you want to make sure
your face isn't shown
and your voice isn't identifiable.
We'll make sure that you're protected in those ways.
So you're hacking these phones.
What kinds of reactions did you get?
[altered voice]
What was the pitch that you were offering these governments?
What should the average citizen, in any country in the world,
know about this company and this technology?
Should people be concerned?
[tense electronic music playing]
- [music fades] - [chatter]
[phone camera clicking]
[man] The software Pegasus
is perhaps the most notorious spyware
in the world.
It allows law enforcement officials
or government authorities
to secretly hack into a target's smartphone.
And that gains you access to photos, videos, messages...
Pegasus can also remotely control
a phone's microphone and camera,
all without any indication at all
that a hack has occurred.
New Yorker contributor Ronan Farrow has a new piece out
about Pegasus and the company that makes it.
So, Ronan, let's just begin from the beginning.
What drew you to this story above all other stories?
Well, as you know, I tangled with some old-school
private investigation tactics, uh, and surveillance.
And we reported on that in the magazine.
I had worked on a series of investigative stories
that pissed off people with a lot of resources.
Some of what they threw at me was traditional:
on-the-ground spies following me around.
But there was also this digital surveillance I ran into, like,
those spies used my phone's GPS data to track me.
I realized that the bleeding edge of surveillance
is these digital tools,
and that they are getting way more powerful.
[phone camera clicks]
The most advanced spyware can turn your smartphone
into a spy in your pocket.
It can copy everything,
your photos, your texts, your emails,
even if you're using encrypted apps.
It can turn on your camera, your microphone,
it can record you without you ever knowing...
And then just... disappear without a trace.
[tense electronic music playing]
Private commercial spyware companies
are selling these tools mostly to governments.
It's a booming, multi-billion-dollar industry.
And a war is being waged
over the future of this technology.
See, to infect your phone,
spyware has to go through the apps on it.
So the Silicon Valley companies that control those apps,
they're in this battle to defend themselves
against incoming digital fire.
In May of 2019,
engineers at WhatsApp discovered suspicious code
hidden within the instructions that get sent to their servers
to initiate calls.
At the time, Claudiu Gheorghe
was the lead engineer responsible
for WhatsApp voice and video calling.
You were really on the front lines of this hack.
What was on the line for you
as you launched into this crisis?
I felt directly responsible, um,
because it's a product that I built from scratch.
[Ronan] Someone had found a hole
in, essentially, your work, right?
[Claudiu] Yeah, and that was really personal.
I was really motivated to fix it.
And not just to fix it. I think what was really important to me,
um, starting that day, was understanding the attack.
So, when you're setting up WhatsApp calls,
there's routine messages that go back and forth
between the user and your servers,
and in one of these messages...
there was something weird.
At that point, it wasn't clear that this is
something intentional.
However, what we ended up finding
was actually the tip of the iceberg.
At what point was there, kind of, a first,
all-hands-on-deck, emergency meeting about this?
The first meeting that I had was maybe around 10:00 a.m.
with the security team.
Everything was on fire at that point,
and on high alert status.
[tense music playing]
[Ronan] It took just over a week
for WhatsApp to patch its servers
and release an update for the app, blocking the attacks.
Then they went public,
announcing that at least 1,400 WhatsApp users
had been targeted with commercial spyware
made by the Israeli company NSO Group.
WhatsApp is urging its one and a half billion users
to update the app right now.
[reporter] NSO Group has been accused
of being responsible for the hack.
They deny it.
[Ronan] NSO is the most infamous vendor
in the growing spyware market.
The company says it developed its Pegasus spyware
to help governments fight crime and terrorism.
Famously, it's been reported that it was used to capture
Mexican drug lord, Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzmán.
But there have also been years of allegations
that Pegasus has been used to target journalists,
human rights activists, and political dissidents.
[reporter] Royalty and heads of state are some
of the 50,000 people around the world
who may have had their smartphones hacked.
That's according to a new report
by 17 media organizations.
An investigation published Sunday in the Washington Post
says the spyware at play is called Pegasus
and was licensed to governments by a private Israeli tech firm.
[reporter 2] It was used to track and target
Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi,
who was critical
of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
[reporter 3] It was at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul
that Jamal Khashoggi met his brutal end.
He was strangled as soon as he entered the building
by a team of Saudi assassins,
who then dismembered his body.
I can guarantee to you,
our technology was not used
on Jamal Khashoggi or his relatives.
[Ronan] In November 2021,
I was reporting on all of this
and trying to get answers out of NSO
and its chief executive, Shalev Hulio.
That's when the Biden administration placed NSO
on a Commerce Department blacklist.
[reporter] NSO's inclusion on the U.S. blacklist
does make business a lot harder,
with other firms now maybe needing to think twice
before doing business with them
for fear of violating regulations.
[Ronan] The next day, NSO's spokesperson called me
and asked me to meet with Shalev in New York.
[soft electronic music playing]
Will you have your phone on in the meeting?
- I'll try. I'll ask. - Okay.
- This is my colleague, Unjin. - Hi.
- Nice to meet you. - [man] Hi, nice to meet you.
[music fades]
[computer chimes]
Hello there.
I'm in a bar, Ronan.
I thought you were closing the magazine or something.
[David] I was just meeting with a Justice Department official.
But I cut the interview off early, so... [laughs]
So that you could hear from one of your wayward reporters
about what he's up to?
So I talked to, uh, Shalev
for two and a half hours.
[David] Wow.
Tell me about the conversation.
They're still reeling from this announcement yesterday
that they're on this export blacklist.
- And-- - Were they worried?
They weren't worried in the substance
of their answers so much as...
There was a lot of reference to, you know,
"Better schedule that trip to Tel Aviv quick.
We might not exist as a company."
Which I think is a joke.
I don't know that their bottom line
is that vulnerable, but I do think
that it's a serious moment of-of worry for them.
So the kind of, the high-level philosophical picture
that he paints is,
"This is a technology that's blossoming
around the world anyway.
If we're not doing it, someone else is gonna be."
So his case is kind of like,
"Hey, there's all these people doing this.
This is the new reality."
The digital Wild West.
Yeah, and he acknowledges
there's a potential for abuse,
but he says, "We are, relative to the competition,
the ones willing to subject ourselves to more scrutiny
and answer more questions in the press and be regulated."
They, as of now, are saying that they'll go fully on the record
and actually allow me to bring cameras in, in Tel Aviv.
That's great. It sounds like a great meeting.
It's great you made it happen.
- I-I have to go... - Oh, you have to run, right.
Go, go, go. Thank you for making time.
[David] Thank you. Bye.
[Ronan] Israel is at the center of surveillance innovation.
There's a pipeline of expertise
from the country's military and intelligence services
into tech start-ups.
And the Israeli state uses some of that tech,
including in the conflict over the Palestinian territories.
According to an Amnesty International report
released in the fall of 2021,
six Palestinian human rights activists
had their phones hacked using Pegasus.
Knesset member Sami Abu Shehadeh
says that's part of a long history of surveillance
of Palestinian citizens.
So, it was reported a few months ago
that Pegasus, from NSO Group, was found on the phones
of six Palestinian human rights activists.
The defense minister claimed...
these were, uh, subjects of terrorism investigation.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So Israel...
unfortunately,
has been doing this for its citizens.
Mainly for the Arab Palestinians.
I think what-what-what-what is making Israel so... important
in this destruction industry
is that they have a huge laboratory to work in,
and they are using the Palestinian people
to do their, uh, tests.
Then they sell it to the rest of the world.
[Ronan] Israel says it uses surveillance
for self-defense and national security.
[suspenseful music playing]
I started talking to NSO in 2019.
It wasn't until 2022
that they agreed to let me do some reporting
inside their headquarters in Tel Aviv.
Most companies that do this work are pretty secretive.
But NSO has always courted the press...
up to a point.
Hi there.
Ronan Farrow.
[man] Uh, you have an appointment?
[Ronan] Yes. With NSO.
They were opening their doors to me
but also trying to keep a tight leash.
I'd be talking to everyone from software engineers
to salespeople,
and I realized quickly,
NSO's PR team was gonna be hovering.
Hey. Ronan.
Come, let's, uh, take some coffee, tea.
I may take pictures as I go, if that's okay.
- Yeah. - So I can write about it,
you know, for color.
Want to get a sense of the digs.
It's a swanky office space.
It's very American tech start-up vibes.
- Fancy cafeteria. - Thank you!
You want some coffee? Tea?
- What do you want to drink? - Coffee sounds great. Thank you.
I just wanted to start with introducing our team.
Yes! I'm very much looking forward to talking to all of you
and hear about the working level experiences you have.
So this is great. Should we get started?
What made you want this job?
[in Hebrew]
What specifically do you think people have gotten wrong?
[in Hebrew]
You have been involved in relationships
where there's been some kind of a finding,
or at least a suspicion,
that there was inappropriate targeting.
What would you say to the targets
of that kind of misuse of your technologies?
[in Hebrew]
[Ronan] How-How have you navigated
the sort of moral questions
being raised about your work in such a public way?
[in Hebrew]
[Ronan] You know, what happens in a case
where maybe the government thinks these are criminals,
but outside observers say, "Hey, those are activists"?
I'm a tech guy and I'm an intelligence guy, okay?
I know how to create investigation systems
and now I can know how to make it technically
the best way possible. Okay?
The question you're asking now, this is for the big guys.
Big questions.
NSO claims that potential customers
are thoroughly vetted,
and it emphasizes that each sale needs to be approved
by the Israeli Department of Defense.
General Counsel Shmuel Sunray
is in charge of that compliance process
and of the internal investigations
the company says it conducts
when there's an allegation of abuse.
- Hello. - Hi.
- Pleasure to have you here. - Yes, it's good to be here.
It's an interesting time to be here.
You're up against a pretty widespread perception
that this talk of compliance efforts
and internal investigations
is-is viewed as being non-substantive.
First of all, the efforts are truly substantive.
Unfortunately, I think one of the main problems we have
on the perception side
is that all the good work that we do,
um, cannot be published in its details.
I mean, it cannot be... we cannot share, like,
when we disqualify a certain customer
for a due diligence reason,
or we shut down a system for a misuse.
Even if we would have wanted to, we are prohibited from doing so.
As you might imagine in the course of this reporting,
I'm gonna be talking to quite a few targets
of NSO's technology,
some of whom, you know, really feel
that this was destructive in their life.
What would you say to targets of Pegasus
and other NSO software?
[Sunray] Anyone who feels he's a target,
I would really appeal for them to go
and go through our process.
I think that our record has proved itself.
We, you know, don't want our technology
to go and be used in such a way.
And if it was our technology that was used,
we feel very bad about it
and we'll make our utmost to make sure
that no other targets will be in that situation.
[Ronan] I asked Sunray repeatedly
to give me specifics about these investigations
or proof that contracts had been canceled as a result.
He declined.
- Should we break for lunch? - Yeah, yeah...
[laughing]
Okay, great.
[Ronan] Oh, so this is the Shalev suite.
- [Ariella] - [Ronan] Okay.
I convinced Shalev Hulio, the CEO,
to go on the record for my New Yorker article,
but he refused to appear on camera.
When I pressed him about the allegations of abuse,
he also wouldn't provide specifics
about the company's internal investigations,
citing the privacy of NSO's clients.
Both he and Sunray
compared their company to an arms dealer,
just in a field that doesn't yet have regulations
like the Geneva Conventions.
I needed to find unvarnished takes
on how NSO really operates.
One of the calls I made
was to Israeli journalist, Chaim Levinson.
What has the experience of reporting on NSO
been like for you?
[dog barking]
At the beginning they were very closed,
didn't talk to journalists, "You all are against us,
you don't understand,
it's a security issue," et cetera.
But lately, in the last year, they've become very friendly.
[Ronan] Do you buy what NSO is selling
to journalists and governments around the world
when they say, you know, "Yes, there have been some missteps,
but we want to be, and we are now, the good guys"?
I think they understand they are in a very, very bad PR situation
and the previous policy didn't work.
And now they're thinking if they explain to the people
what exactly they are doing, it will help them.
If you ask me, the head of the problem is not the PR.
The problem is the issue.
NSO can hack your phone with zero-click technology.
And this is a tool that, until NSO,
only very industrial countries had--
United States, security services of Israel.
But for countries like Angola,
it's impossible to develop such a technology.
They don't have the human resources to breach
Apple and Google engineers.
[Ronan] What makes NSO special?
They are willing to sell to countries
with huge democracy and human rights problems.
Other companies are not willing to sell, and NSO are.
[Ronan] Chaim introduced me to something rare--
a former employee who had firsthand knowledge
of NSO's sales efforts and was willing to speak
without the company's permission...
if I promised to conceal their identity.
Is there anything specific that makes you fearful
of how they would react
if they did see your face and your identity?
[altered voice]
[Ronan] So tell me from your standpoint why you think
it's important to have this conversation.
What's the most objectionable thing that you saw
in your time at the company?
So you sold Pegasus to these different governments?
Pre-sold.
You pitched Pegasus to governments around the world?
What were the-the main customers
that you saw the company deal with?
Um, they claim
most Western European countries use them.
Is that true?
[former employee] Um...
Some examples?
And beyond Europe. Any examples
that were sort of significant in your mind
or that gave you pause?
Mm-hmm.
Any African? Oman.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
What was the price tag on this?
What was NSO charging for Pegasus?
[Ronan] Does NSO know
that some of its customers that it's selling to
for those big-ticket prices you mentioned
are abusing this technology?
[mellow music playing]
[phone ringing]
[phone clicks]
Hi, Oded.
[Oded on phone]
More importantly, how are you?
[Oded on phone]
[Ronan] Yeah. As you can imagine, uh,
I'm-I'm gonna call everyone around the story.
Um, I think it's been a fairly short list of formers.
But, you know, if there's anyone you suggest I add to that list,
I welcome it.
[Oded]
Mm-hmm.
Yeah. Oded, you know, I'm always an open book on this stuff.
We've talked about this at length.
I have been very glad to see that I think you're savvy
about knowing that more transparency
is a good thing for NSO at this point.
I know it's been a, kind of, a hard time
with a lot of controversy.
Any time you have a concern, you know, raise it.
And I'll answer honestly.
[Oded] Okay.
Okay.
[Oded]
- Bye. - Bye.
[tense electronic music playing]
[Ronan] Though NSO was wary of me speaking
to its former employees,
the company was willing to let me speak
to one of its current Western European clients.
[computer chimes]
Hello.
He's going to be ten minutes late.
He's on his way to his laptop right now.
How many other outlets, uh,
has, uh, our friend who's about to come on,
uh, spoken to in this way?
- No one. - [Ronan] No one?
I was assuming that he was the source
of the Wall Street Journal article.
I think that was also a Western European law enforcement.
[Ariella] We have several customers from Western Europe,
but we don't have a lot of customers
that are willing to speak with journalists.
I will need to know his-his full name
and identity and everything.
Only for your... But only for your knowledge.
Yes. You don't have to worry.
If I verbally agree
that a source is an unidentified background source,
uh, you know, described as a European intelligence official
then-then that is, uh, that's the ground rule.
Yes, you can even say, you know,
West European law enforcement agency,
I mean, whatever that will not--
will not expose the name of the country, the agency,
or, of course, his name.
Tal, is he joining?
He's connecting right now.
Okay, great.
- [computer chimes] - [scrambled voice]
[Ronan] Hello!
Thank you for doing this.
I appreciate your taking the time.
[NSO client]
So when did your, uh, agency first become a customer of NSO?
[NSO client]
How much did you pay for the software?
[NSO client]
Tens of millions of euros?
What's the... what's the...
Okay. Understood.
And what type of product did you purchase?
Is this Pegasus, primarily?
And what is the software being used for?
Do you think it would be a scandal
if it was known widely
that you were using Pegasus?
Do you have to get a warrant to use Pegasus?
And how many people have you targeted, uh,
since 2015, with, uh, Pegasus?
Roughly. Roughly.
Mm-hmm.
[NSO client] Okay. So, um...
Very helpful.
- All right. Take care. - [Tal] Thank you.
Okay.
Are we all, uh, dispersing now?
- And sorry for the mistake. - Oh yeah, I saw.
So it's two-two journalists he talked to.
Do you remember which ones?
He was the Wall Street Journal source?
[Oded] It was-- it was one of the Wall Street Journal
and one is Israeli TV.
[Ronan] An Israeli one. Okay. Got it.
Okay. Um, this is very helpful to know.
Thank you again, everyone.
- Enjoy. - Okay. Take care.
[computer chimes]
I don't doubt these law enforcement officials
when they tell me they love having
such a powerful surveillance tool...
and that they sincerely want to use it to ensnare criminals.
But there's evidence that Pegasus is being used
in at least 45 countries.
And it's mostly happening
under a veil of secrecy,
without public input or oversight.
Pegasus might have lived up to the promise
that it's undetectable...
if it weren't for a group of researchers in Canada.
[soft, dramatic music playing]
The vast majority of what we know about NSO abuse
comes from researchers
at the University of Toronto's Citizen Lab.
They have found examples of the spyware being used
to conduct surveillance
on dissidents, human rights activists,
and journalists around the world.
- Hey! - Ronan, how you doing?
- It's great to finally meet you. - Great to meet you too.
Thanks for letting us into the inner sanctum.
[Ron] Of course.
[Ronan] For more than a decade,
Ron Deibert and the team at Citizen Lab
have been studying the pieces of malicious code,
known as exploits,
that target vulnerabilities in your phone's apps
or operating system to install spyware.
[Ron] We're really lucky to have this space.
This is, uh, the lab.
These are the spaces where most of the work gets done.
[Ronan] Got it.
So what are they doing in there?
[Ron] We have a person who suspects
that they've been targeted with spyware.
And so what they will be doing is walking them through
how to gather the data that we need
to do forensic analysis of a phone.
How difficult has it been to catch these exploits?
'Cause many of them, including Pegasus,
are designed to clean up after themselves.
We've been fortunate now, uh, to capture
several different vendors' spyware in the wild,
usually from targets.
Um, the one that really stands out for me
is the case of the Saudi women's rights activist,
whose phone was hacked with Pegasus.
Which is why that excuse that NSO Group and others use
is so specious.
You know, "Don't worry. Nothing to see here,
because we only sell it to governments
to be used for crime or terrorism."
It's not a-a good way to think
about the limits of this type of technology.
How do you see the industry evolving from here?
If we succeed, you could imagine
a much different environment ten years from now,
where there is robust oversight mechanisms,
and much more transparency.
That would be my ideal world.
The way things are going, though,
frankly, frightens me
because we live in a time where there is obvious,
well-documented democratic backsliding.
Authoritarian practices are spreading worldwide.
I firmly believe the surveillance industry,
unchecked as it is,
is one of the major contributing factors to those trends.
[Ronan] A lot of the coverage of the dangers of spyware
has focused on the way autocrats and dictators
outside the Western world use it.
But Citizen Lab's work shows
that Western democracies are abusing spyware too.
They tipped me off to an investigation
they were conducting in Catalonia,
a region of Spain,
where they suspected Pegasus was being used
to surveil local politicians and activists
on a massive scale.
[tense music playing]
- Hey! - Hi.
- How are you? - Thank you for coming.
Yeah! I'm looking forward to it.
It's also stunning here.
I was not fully expecting that.
Elies Campo was born here.
He's worked in Silicon Valley for WhatsApp and for Telegram.
And now, he's Citizen Lab's investigator
on the ground in Catalonia.
A few people from Catalonia messaged me and said,
"Hey, I just received this message on WhatsApp
about being, uh, targeted or being hacked at some point,
um, and I don't know if it's, um, it's real or not."
I contacted my ex-colleagues at WhatsApp.
They told me that they couldn't communicate anything with me
because of privacy issues but I should contact Citizen Lab
and see if they could help. So I reached out to Citizen Lab.
The conversation went that these cases from WhatsApp
were probably just the tip of the iceberg, um,
and that we... if we organized a little bit
and had some kind of strategy, we'd probably find more.
Why should people around the world care
about the hacking that you're documenting
here in Catalonia?
[Elies] This is gonna be one of the first cases
where there's such a large and vast number of affected people
and from a vast and different type of categories
of, um, of society.
So we've had the Parliament of Catalonia targeted.
We've had the government of Catalonia targeted.
We've had lawyers targeted.
We've had, uh, civil leaders
of org-- cultural organizations of Catalonia targeted.
[Ronan] This is not some future Orwellian scenario.
It really-- It happened here.
- It's happening here. - It's happening here.
[solemn music playing]
[Ronan] Citizen Lab suspects that people in Catalonia
are being targeted for political reasons.
Catalonia is a semi-autonomous region in Spain,
with Barcelona as its capital.
There's a significant segment of the population there
that wants Catalonia to be an independent country.
[crowd chanting]
[Ronan] In 2017, Catalan leaders organized a referendum
where they asked voters to decide
if the region should be independent.
The Spanish government in Madrid
declared the referendum illegal
and even raided polling sites on Election Day.
Tensions are still pretty high today
between Catalonia and Madrid.
And there's a lot of Catalan politicians
that still favor independence.
I joined Elies in the Parliament of Catalonia,
where he was testing politicians' phones.
Walk me through what you've been doing
and what you're finding with these ones.
- Yeah, so we analyze the device. - Yeah.
And we try to find traces
that there was the malware
at some point in that-- in that device.
And how we do that is through some analysis on the device.
We extract the file, and uploading it to the cloud,
and the cloud is doing the analysis
of, uh, of trying to find traces.
What's next? You have members of Parliament coming in, right?
Yeah, a European member of the Parliament
that's currently in Barcelona,
and, uh, his name is Jordi Sole,
and, uh, we're gonna talk to him
and look at his device now.
- [Ronan] Great. - [chatter in Catalan]
Hola, que tal?
Hola. Laura.
[in Catalan]
[ominous music playing]
Uh-huh.
Mm-hmm.
When does it look like you were infected?
[Jordi] I have to check, uh, the date.
But around that day, I was appointed, um,
member of the European Parliament.
[Ronan] 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.
Uh, and it's, uh, somehow it's ironic
because next week, in the European Parliament,
we are gonna vote to set up an inquiry committee on Pegasus.
Um, so it's...
it's-it's only... it's only ironic
that just a few days before, I learn,
as member of the European Parliament,
that I've been infected by Pegasus.
[Ronan] What about you, Elies?
What goes through your mind each time you see
a positive result pop up on that screen?
[Elies] I think about the gravity of the situation.
Especially these cases where
there are members of the European Parliament
'cause it affects, uh, 450 million people,
citizens, and the violation of their rights.
Um... Yeah, each time we discover one
is-is, um, similarly intense
in terms of realizing, uh,
the importance of it and the gravity of it.
Why do you think you were hacked?
[Jordi] Well, I've been hacked for sure because I am, uh,
pro-independence.
So I'm sure that there is the will here
to keep under control
politicians representing, uh, the will for independence
in Catalonia in several institutions.
Are you looking at any legal remedies?
Do you think that you'll bring suit in some way?
[Jordi] I'll defend my rights until the end.
[Ronan] Jordi wasn't alone.
Elies was steadily uncovering more and more infections
on the phones of activists and lawyers and politicians.
And it also wasn't just Pegasus.
These tests were turning up evidence
that the Catalans were also being targeted
with other forms of spyware from competing companies.
One day, Citizen Lab found evidence of something rare.
A local activist had a spyware infection
on his personal laptop
that was still live
and in the middle of its attack.
- Hello, Joan. - Hello. Hi.
It's great to finally meet in person.
Thank you for doing this.
[Ronan] Joan Matamala is an activist
connected to separatist politicians.
His laptop was infected by spyware
made by another Israeli company called Candiru.
Elies worked to try to exfiltrate the software
and study it before it self-destructed.
[in Catalan]
[in English] This is where you were, uh, sitting
when the, uh... when you learned about the hack?
[speaking in Catalan]
He was working over there when he received the call
that he currently had a live infection.
[Ronan] And what date and time was this?
[speaking in Catalan]
[Elies] February 2021.
[Joan in Catalan]
[Ronan] Tell me what you did from there.
[Joan speaking in Catalan]
[Elies] Yeah. So he took some time to get that aluminum foil.
He wrapped two computers.
[aluminum foil crinkling]
[Ronan] What's the goal of the tin foil wrapping?
You're creating what's called a Faraday cage, right?
By wrapping it and-and creating a Faraday cage,
uh, we're actually protecting the device
from receiving outside instructions
to have the software delete itself or self-destruct
in order to, uh, remove or potentially remove
the evidence of-- that software was there.
It's particularly important to be able to capture
the software live or active in the computer
so we can understand how it works, uh,
how it compromises the operating system.
So he was really doing something that's a service to researchers
on these kinds of technologies.
[Elies] Yeah, his action actually helped Microsoft
understand how this particular software,
Candiru, was affecting this operating system.
And a few months later,
Microsoft actually developed a patch
that, uh, resolved the vulnerability
that this, uh, software was actually exploiting.
[Ronan] It's surprising that just tin foil can work.
- Yeah, it's physics. [laughs] - Yeah, yeah. It makes sense.
A little tinfoil went a long way.
[tense music playing]
The proliferation of spyware around the world
has left governments scrambling to respond.
And that includes the United States.
Even though NSO claims that it blocks its spyware
from targeting American phone numbers,
U.S. government employees working overseas
have had their foreign phones hacked using Pegasus.
Apple is warning at least 11 United States diplomats
that their iPhones were hacked in the last several months.
The hackers reportedly used the spyware technology
called Pegasus.
[Ronan] But the U.S. government
is also a buyer of commercial spyware,
including Pegasus.
Internal documents obtained by the New York Times reveal
some FBI officials made a push to deploy
Israel's Pegasus hacking tool.
So I understand that you did purchase a program
and you tested it. Is that accurate?
We had a limited license for testing and evaluation.
We've tested and evaluated, and that's... that's over.
It hasn't been used in any investigation of anyone.
[Ronan] It's been reported that NSO also pitched
American police departments
on a Pegasus-like software
designed to be used on U.S. soil.
Lawmakers are grappling with both sides of this--
how to protect Americans against these attacks
and how to control America's use of this technology.
Jim Himes is the ranking member
of the House Intelligence Committee,
which oversees U.S. intelligence agencies,
including the FBI and the CIA.
- Hey, Ronan. - Hey.
- How are ya? - Thanks so much for doing this.
Yeah. Good to see you in person. I know we talked on the phone,
but I don't think we've ever met in person.
What is your feeling on how much ability
the U.S. government should have to purchase this kind of tech?
First of all, it would be a very serious mistake
to simply prohibit the purchase of the technology.
We need our experts to know what is out there.
I have no objection to the FBI
purchasing the technology to understand it.
Then comes the more complicated question of,
"Do we want the FBI to be able to use it?"
Do you think the answer is
a ban on the operational use
of foreign commercial spyware by the U.S. government?
[Himes] No.
No, abs-absolutely not.
The answer is,
do the hard work of assuring
that law enforcement uses it
consistent with our civil liberties.
We're using a lot of abstractions here right now.
I have two daughters.
What if one of my daughters were kidnapped?
I want that tool. I want that tool.
And it would be profoundly irresponsible of me to say,
"There's this amazing tool out there
that could fall into the hands of the Iranians,
the North Koreans, the Chinese...
and we're not gonna let the FBI use it."
We're going to let the FBI use it.
We're going to make sure that they use it in the context
of our civil liberties, and, well, will it be perfect?
No, it will not.
It will, from time to time, be abused.
But the notion that, for the first time in our history,
we're gonna say we're gonna let all the bad guys have technology
that we're not going to use, um, that's a novel concept.
And-And when you really think it through, uh,
a little bit of a scary concept.
A lot would have to change for it to be transparent
and have an approvals process that-that meets that threshold.
That's not the space we're operating in now
when this technology is used by the U.S. government.
That's correct. And this is why I say
one of the urgent things we would need-- we should do,
we should be doing, is building the protections
around how U.S. law enforcement might use this technology.
In terms of the hacking of American officials,
are American officials abroad, and maybe in general,
subject to more attacks using this kind of technology
than the public is aware of?
Yes.
- And-- - Significantly more.
Significantly more.
And are you aware of infections of this type
that have played out on U.S. soil?
Maybe the best way to answer that is that this technology
knows no borders.
I don't happen to know of the deliberate targeting
of Americans on U.S. soil.
I'm also...
I have no confidence that it hasn't happened.
[soft, tense music playing]
[Ronan] The White House told me they were still investigating
how spyware affects national security.
And then they told me something I'd be making public
for the first time--
that the Biden administration was planning
an executive order banning government agencies
from buying or using
at least some types of foreign spyware.
I'd been reporting on this for a few years,
and I really hadn't found any governments
that provide meaningful transparency
about how they use these tools.
[soft, dramatic music playing]
[phone chimes]
Uh, this is-- this is Ariella,
the comms person at NSO,
sending me a thumbs up that she is going to get me a...
I'm gonna say, "Much appreciated."
She's gonna get me a last statement that they have.
There's a dozen countries that are mentioned in this piece
and each of them had to be approached for comment.
Some of them wanted to comment, some didn't.
Some wanted to only comment in secret,
but not on the record.
There's just a lot to juggle with this one,
and I've got to hustle and redline the rest of this piece.
Avey, are we in here?
- We're in here. - We're in here. Okay.
Yeah.
- Good to see you. - You too.
- Hello. - We're ready? Okay, good.
- Yes. - All right.
Avey. Great.
[Remnick] Um...
All right.
- Thanks a lot. - Thank you.
[Remnick] Okay.
- Are you all closed up? - Mmm...
Yes, but, like, checkers still laying in odds and ends.
[Remnick] It's Thursday, and the magazine closes today.
- Yeah. - Like completement.
- [laughing] - Yeah.
- That's it. - Yeah.
- That's it. - Okay.
[Ronan] I think it's-- it reads really well.
Okay, so we're just gonna power through this pretty standard.
You know what you're doing. Here we go.
In your reporting, you've narrowed in
on a series of Pegasus attacks on people involved
in the Catalan independence movement in Spain.
Were you able to confirm these hacks with NSO
or the Spanish government?
[Ronan] NSO Group CEO, Shalev Hulio,
did very clearly talk about some of the countries
that we now know use his technology, including Spain.
And in that case, he said, you know,
Spain is a democracy.
Uh, if they decide to use these tools...
- That's on them. - That's on them!
And the Spanish government, for their part,
didn't respond to our requests for comment about it.
Do you think it's possible to have a world
where such a thing exists and it's used responsibly?
[Ronan] Well, we're watching the fights
that will dictate the answer to that question
play out right now.
And one of the things that we break
for the first time in this story is-is that the White House
is actively pursuing a U.S.-government-wide ban
on purchasing this kind of commercial spyware.
Because they have their own?
Well, certainly certain U.S. agencies have their own.
But, you know, in the past,
other U.S. government offices
have also purchased these kinds of tools.
And I think there's an increasing understanding
that this is both, uh, technology that has
an incredibly destructive footprint in the world,
and we've just got to hope
that some of these regulatory efforts
can rein in the most destructive effects of it.
In his latest investigation, the journalist Ronan Farrow
has dug into the spyware industry.
In explosive new reporting in The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow
details the two years he spent digging
into the vast spyware industry.
Ronan, my friend, this is scary stuff! Um,
first of all, just break down, for those who are unaware
of what it is, what is Pegasus and who makes it?
The fundamental is, it can crack a phone.
It feels like the cat's out of the bag, isn't it?
How do you control this?
To your point, once data has been exfiltrated,
the damage has, in a sense, been done.
The article is called "How Democracies Spy
on Their Citizens" by Ronan Farrow.
Ronan, thanks so much for joining us.
- [chanting, clapping] - [whistle blowing with chants]
[Ronan] The article in The New Yorker and the results
of the Citizen Lab investigation led by Elies
had enormous repercussions in Spain
and finally helped shed light on who was behind all this.
After initially denying the report,
the Spanish government in Madrid
acknowledged spying on some of the Catalans.
The head of Spain's intelligence agency
was fired amidst the controversy.
[chanting]
[Ronan] The scandal became known
as "CatalanGate."
[in Catalan]
[Ronan] On the list of targeted individuals
was Elies's own family.
Is your family okay?
Yeah, my family is okay. They were surprised.
Surprised that they got hacked too?
Yeah. So I was having a dinner with my parents,
uh, just a few weeks before publication.
I told my father, "We're gonna publish this report.
It's probably gonna have some impact
in Spain because it's pretty serious."
And so we checked his phone,
and, a few hours later, we got the results back
and, um, we got a confirmation.
The next day, we tested my mom
and, uh, we found that she had also been targeted.
So they were following you and trying
to get your communications through your parents.
Presumably they failed in targeting my device,
because I have an American, uh, phone number,
and they targeted my family
in-in order to try to get to the information
that they were looking for.
What do your parents do for a living?
They specialized in, uh, in pathology
and, uh, vascular diseases,
and they work at the University of Barcelona
and the hospitals of Barcelona, the research centers.
So, whoever had access to those devices,
they actually had access to, uh, potentially,
hundreds of conversations or hundreds of data points
of emails, messages, photographs,
of patients all around the world.
[Ronan] Not only did they have access
to his parents' patients' records,
they also potentially had the ability to record
audio or video of Elies
whenever he was in the room with his parents' phones.
So, Elies started testing
the rest of his family members' phones,
including his sister's.
[soft, solemn music playing]
[in Catalan]
[sister in Catalan]
[Elies in Catalan]
[sister in Catalan]
[Elies in Catalan]
[sister in Catalan]
[soft, somber music playing]
[tense music playing]
[Ronan] Including Elies's family,
Citizen Lab found that around 70 people in Catalonia
were targeted with spyware.
Since the publication of those findings in Spain,
Citizen Lab has documented Pegasus being used
against government officials in the United Kingdom,
activists in Armenia,
journalists in Mexico,
and pro-democracy demonstrators in Thailand.
In the summer of 2022,
Shalev Hulio stepped down
as CEO of NSO Group.
He went on to establish a new start-up
in the cybersecurity space.
Meanwhile, in March of 2023,
the White House followed through
on the plans they'd revealed in my New Yorker article.
Just a few hours ago,
President Biden issued an executive order
that, for the first time,
will prohibit our government's use
of commercial spyware that poses a risk to our national security
or that's been misused by foreign actors
to enable human rights abuses overseas.
[Ronan] The executive order banned federal agencies
from buying spyware that's been abused by other governments,
used to target Americans,
or otherwise threatened national security.
But it's not a blanket ban
on the purchase of all spyware.
And in fact, just days later,
the United States and 36 other countries,
including Spain,
released a statement outlining
how they believe governments can use commercial spyware
and still respect human rights.
I went back to DC to press Biden administration officials
about this.
Nathaniel Fick is the first Ambassador
for the newly created
Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy.
What do you wish
this executive order contained that it doesn't?
What do you think the soft point is in it?
I think part of the reality is we don't know that yet. Right?
You-You-You craft something
and you throw it out in the world.
And the world is a dynamic place.
Our adversaries are innovative and smart and well-resourced.
So we'll adjust as required.
I'm struck by the fact that it contains so little
about what we do do with spyware.
There's no suggestion of,
once a spyware vendor passes muster
through the lens of this executive order,
what does that look like?
What can we then do with that technology?
Why?
The United States uses every tool of national power
in pursuit of our interests,
uh, grounded in our values.
And so, we do believe, and openly acknowledge,
that there are legitimate law enforcement
and national security uses of these technologies.
There were a number of joint statements circulating around...
Spain signed on to one of these statements.
Obviously, the administration in Madrid has been implicated
in one of the largest spying operations domestically
in their country, in the world.
Uh, how do you feel about them being a signatory?
I think that getting countries
to publicly align with the principles
is always a good thing.
Even if it's hypocritical?
And then we have to continue to hold
their feet to the fire, just as we do ourselves,
to make sure that we're living up to the implementation.
I've had conversations with foreign officials who say,
"Well, you want us to have more transparency about this.
You want us to have clearer routes for judicial oversight
for-for these-these kinds of tools.
Uh, where is that from the United States?"
I think the Executive Order is a statement that
everything that came before was not adequate.
And-And this is a very strong attempt
to put those guardrails in place.
My perception, digging into this issue, has been that
inevitably we're gonna have the first big scandal
where this is used to scale on American soil.
Do you think it's headed down a path of more domestic impact?
I think we can't put
the technology genie back in the bottle.
That's kind of an unfortunate reality of these things.
So once they're out there in the world, um,
any nefarious use that we can imagine,
we're probably going to see.
And so we would be well-served
to think forward in time,
um, and anticipate that kind of thing.
[soft music playing]
[Ronan] Spyware is here to stay.
The industry is still growing.
It's gonna keep getting more sophisticated,
more intrusive,
and easier to hide,
especially as we witness the dawning of a new era
of artificial intelligence.
This is still a largely unregulated category
of technology,
one that will always be seductively useful
for law enforcement
and always pose a threat to democracy
and human rights.
Technology is reorganizing the life of the world.
President Biden likes to say that, in many ways,
we're at an inflection point,
where the decisions that we're making now
and in the next few years
are likely to shape the next decades.
[dramatic music playing]
[Ronan] Commercial spyware is going to continue
to shape conflicts around the world.
Questions remain about the role these surveillance tools
have played in the Israel-Gaza war.
Since Hamas's attack on October 7th, 2023,
sources close to NSO have claimed
the Israeli government is using Pegasus
to try and track down hostages.
And additional investigations have been opened in Poland
and in Jordan.
Governments and legislators
will be struggling to catch up to this technology.
Tech companies are gonna have to fight harder
to defend themselves
against a teeming international landscape
of unseen adversaries.
The message is that unchecked spyware
is a national security risk
for free societies.
[Ronan] More ordinary civilians are being ensnared,
their most private data stolen
and potentially exploited.
[in Catalan]
[Ronan] There will be more families and communities
upended by this.
There will be more urgent need
for the work of activists and researchers
bringing this out of the shadows.
This is an important issue.
I think things are gonna get worse before they get better.
In spite of the measures that have been taken,
the industry is only going to continue to grow.
[Ronan] Otherwise, the only path towards privacy
might be living without our phones.
- [camera phones clicking] - [indistinct chatter]
[dramatic music continues]
- [phone camera clicks] - [music ends]
[pensive electronic music playing]