Head to the Outer Hebrides. Buy a bunker. Go hide out in the hills. But whatever your preferred survival plan (we all have one by now, yes? Good, good), make sure you leave your phone behind. And don’t use it to research your options beforehand. Or talk about them on it. Or even in front of it. Just buy paper, a pen and a pigeon. If that seems over the top to you now, I assure you it won’t by the time you finish Ronan Farrow’s tight hour of terror-documentary, Surveilled.
Do you want the short version or the long version? The short version is: we’re done for as private and therefore free citizens. The longer version is: it’s because of the spyware that is already here and being used and abused by countries without too much in the way of traditional democracy or regulation and which is hurtling towards the rest of us in the not too distant future. Unless that too is already here, of course. The point is that you won’t know until it’s too late.
Farrow (who probably needs no introduction but, just in case, is a journalist with the New Yorker) became interested in digital surveillance when he found himself the subject of it. This was as a result of his investigations into sexual assault allegations against various high-profile figures, including the then US supreme court nominee Brett Kavanaugh (who denies all allegations), the CEO of CBS Leslie Moonves (who denies all allegations but resigned soon after Farrow’s piece appeared) and charges against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.
The digital surveillance industry is large, lucrative and growing. There are multiple vendors and many clients. The most willing of the former to speak to Farrow is the Israeli company NSO Group, who are the developers of Pegasus, spyware capable of being secretly and remotely installed and operated by anyone who wants to roam around in any phone’s content, access the microphone and listen in on conversations and record whatever they want. It has been implicated in good things, such as the capture of Mexican drug trafficker El Chapo after the authorities gained access to his communications, and many more bad things – such as the assassination of journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi in 2018. Representatives of the company assure Farrow that robust compliance features are in place, with every customer fully vetted and every sale approved by the Israeli ministry of defence.
It is fair to say that an air of scepticism hangs over proceedings. Farrow – who does not fade into the background during this documentary, but when you’ve got the last remaining respected and telegenic reporter to hand, you’re going to want to use him – interviews anonymous former employees of the company, talks to the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab researchers who track and trace malware on the devices of people who suspect they have been targeted, and grills legislators on the regulatory protections they are planning to put in place.
There is ample evidence that governments who have bought Pegasus and similar software have extended its use beyond the stated one of infiltrating organised crime and terrorist cells and found it almost as useful – perhaps even more so – in surveilling people going about their lawful but governmentally frowned-upon business. Journalists, dissidents and human rights activists have all been found to have been spied upon – and not just in countries that already have appalling records on the matter. The Citizen Lab uncovered use of spyware by the Spanish government to target about 70 supporters of Catalan independence – the largest domestic operation found yet.
It’s a dense hour but it is probably best to cram all your evidence into as short a timeframe as possible, before the gibbering fear it engenders can take over the viewer entirely and leave them incapable of absorbing the rest. The last part of the film looks at Joe Biden’s executive order restricting US government agencies from using Pegasus et al unless it’s really, really necessary. I paraphrase, but not by much. Farrow speaks to US officials who provide reassurances remarkable in their slightness. Head of the house intelligence committee Jim Himes says he is not aware of any deliberate targeting of Americans on US soil “but I have no confidence that it hasn’t happened”. Thanks Jim! “Any nefarious uses we can imagine, we’re probably going to see,” says Nathaniel Fick, ambassador for the newly created Bureau of Cyberspace and Digital Policy. “So we would be well served to think forward in time and anticipate that kind of thing.” And thank you Nat! I’m off to throw my phone in the river as I wend my way to the Scottish archipelago. See you in South Uist.
• Surveilled aired on Sky Documentaries and is on Now in the UK, and is available to stream on Binge in Australia.
