SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
Our cellphones are partners in our lives. We use them to speak to others and to find each other. They tell us where to go. We look into them. We touch them. We rely on them. We keep them in our pockets and close to our hearts. What do we really know about them?
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SURVEILLED")
RONAN FARROW: Why should people around the world care about the hacking that you're documenting here in Catalonia?
UNIDENTIFIED JOURNALIST: This is going to 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 society.
SIMON: Ronan Farrow, in the new HBO documentary "Surveilled," investigates the increasing use cyber technology to spy on people, whether we know it or not, and raises questions about freedom, privacy, how this technology can be used to frustrate lawful dissent in democracies. Ronan Farrow, the Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist joins us now from New York. Thank you so much for being with us.
FARROW: Thank you for having me.
SIMON: Your interest begins with the fact that you became aware of this kind of spyware because it was being used against you.
FARROW: Well, I should point out in fine-grain detail I've been targeted by both old-school human surveillance, you know, hired gumshoes staking out my apartment and following me around, and by some high-tech surveillance mechanisms like the apparent hijacking of my phone's geolocation data that enabled some hired spies to chase me around.
SIMON: Now, this was following some of your reporting, we should...
FARROW: Following some of my reporting that, you know, pissed people off with the capacity to do that. And thankfully, there were whistleblowers who were involved with following me around who then became sources, and I was able to get, you know, the contracts documenting the deals to do that and show that it was happening. The kind of spyware that is documented in this documentary, "Surveilled," is actually much more advanced than any of that. We're talking about technologies like Pegasus, which is made by this Israeli company NSO Group, and can essentially turn your phone into a listening device, into a video recording device, disgorge everything on your phone, your most intimate photos, texts, messages, listen in on your calls, all without being detected, and then just disappear without a trace.
SIMON: Tell us about what is inevitably called, I guess, Catalangate in Spain because a lot of this film is about that.
FARROW: Yes. So in the film, I am motivated by having come face-to-face with surveillance and understanding how intrusive that is, how devastating it can be personally and invasive, but also, more consequentially, how much it shrinks the space for the free flow of information and the expression of dissent. And I go and I get cameras into the offices of NSO Group, where Pegasus is being coded. And the interesting thing is that they and other spyware companies I've talked to very often compare their work to the work of arms dealers. And they'll say, like, yeah, sure, this is powerful technology, can be used in destructive ways, but it's not our fault that there's no equivalent of the Geneva Conventions for this tech, yet. You know, we're just playing by the rules, and there aren't enough rules. It is such an unregulated space. That's one reason why I felt this film was important. And the other reason is the human cost. So then I go, as you alluded to, to Spain, Catalonia. And I work with and follow along as this watchdog group, Citizen Lab, which has been responsible for a lot of the documentation of this hacking, tests the phones of politicians in this region.
(SOUNDBITE OF DOCUMENTARY, "SURVEILLED")
FARROW: When does it look like you were infected?
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: I have to check the date, but around that day, I was appointed member of the European Parliament.
FARROW: This is a region that has demanded autonomy, and two things happened - one, violent police crackdowns during some elections, a vote on a referendum; and two, one of the largest clusters of hackings of people's phones. We're talking dozens and dozens and dozens of just politicians, activists, journalists, people just expressing themselves.
SIMON: Well, let me phrase the dilemma to you that I think Representative Jim Himes of Connecticut did. How do you keep and even improve this technology to help rescue kidnapped children and to track down cruel drug lords but prevent it from being used against lawful dissidents?
FARROW: Well, I think the comparison that these companies themselves are inclined to draw is actually the right one. This is a weapon of mass destruction. Surveillance is not just information gathering, it is intimidation, and it inevitably shrinks the space for free expression and dissent. So it's a tool that has to be deployed carefully and with checks and balances and limitations. And I think the answer is what they referred to, a kind of equivalent of a Geneva Conventions within countries that are using this tech inside their borders, legislation and regulation that can make sure it's not a free-for-all and that there is an intensive process to get a warrant for this kind of activity, and that you don't have the situation that you see over and over again, where they're providing a thin rationale and saying, oh, there's a national security basis. But in fact, what they're doing is they're going after political enemies.
And in the film, I talk a bit about how the United States actually has purchased this tech. They purchased through the FBI Pegasus. And what Chris Wray, the FBI director, said at the time was, well, we only purchased it to test it and see how our enemies are using. But The New York Times, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit later found all this documentation that showed quite the contrary. There was a big push to operationalize this. So we've come very close. There have been other examples since. Just this fall, the Department of Homeland Security had to deal with another Israeli private spyware company that makes a very powerful technology. You know, you look at this landscape of one Western democracy after another overusing this technology, and then you look at an incoming administration that is promising explicitly not just mass deportations, but also retaliation against political enemies.
SIMON: I have to point out, wasn't it the Obama administration that actually increased the powers of surveillance?
FARROW: Oh, absolutely, and I've written about that, too. This is a bipartisan problem. I think we just now have a sui generis administration and political moment where there is a particular erosion of the rule of law around these kinds of protections.
SIMON: This is going to sound awfully naive, but what if we all just put down our phones?
FARROW: And I have a line to that effect in this film. I think that that actually, jokes aside, is part of the solution. I think journalists like you and I are going to have to start meeting with sources in garages more often. And I do some of that. And some of it has to be a physical...
SIMON: There's a distinguished history of that effort.
FARROW: There is, indeed, of course. That's what I'm referring to. And, you know, it's a classic for a reason.
SIMON: Ronan Farrow, his new documentary on HBO, "Surveilled," is now screaming on Max. Thank you so much for being with us.
FARROW: Thank you, Scott. I really appreciate the conversation.
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