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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Entertainment
Lucy Mangan

Surveilled review – throw away your phone right now!

We’re done for … Ronan Farrow in Surveilled.
We’re done for … Ronan Farrow in Surveilled. Photograph: HBO

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.

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