Behind the Explosive Investigation into Pegasus Spyware

The FRONTLINE Dispatch

GBH

News

4.6 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 19 January 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

When a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers came to the attention of Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud of the journalism non-profit Forbidden Stories, along with Amnesty International, they suspected the list contained phone numbers potentially targeted for surveillance using the powerful spyware known as Pegasus, which gives its operators access to targets’ mobile devices.

Richard and Rigaud teamed up with journalists from sixteen other outlets, including FRONTLINE, to investigate. What the reporting consortium found, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, was explosive: Pegasus had been used on journalists, human rights activists, the wife and fiancée of the murdered Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and others around the world.

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is the new, two-part series from FRONTLINE and Forbidden Films that goes behind the scenes of the investigation, and chronicles the responses from governments and institutions seeking to govern the largely unregulated spyware industry.

Richard and Rigaud, two of the series’ producers, joined FRONTLINE’s Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss the investigation, what’s happened since, and the threat spyware like Pegasus poses.

Pegasus is “like a person over your shoulder who will read everything that you are reading, even your encrypted messages,” Richard says. “It's a military weapon used against civilians.”

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is now streaming at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE's YouTube channel.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	The device that you have in your pocket could be a spy that is spying on your life.
0:09.3	In 2020, the Journalism Nonprofit for Bidden Stories along with Amnesty International got
0:15.5	access to a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers.
0:19.5	They suspected the list contained numbers selected for potential surveillance with a powerful
0:24.2	spyware called Pegasus. Pegasus designed to infect phones like iPhones or Android's.
0:31.4	They were right. Together with journalists from 16 other newsrooms around the world, including
0:38.8	frontline, Bidden Stories began a year-long investigation into the spyware.
0:43.9	This could be transformative in terms of our understanding of the whole cyber surveillance
0:48.6	industry. They uncovered how Pegasus had been used on journalists, human rights activists,
0:53.9	the wife and fiance of the murder, Saudi colonists, Jamal Khashoggi, and others.
0:59.8	Global spyware scandal exposing Pegasus is the new two-part series from frontline and
1:04.8	forbidden films that goes behind the scenes of the investigation, and it chronicles
1:09.1	the responses from governments and institutions seeking to govern the largely unregulated
1:14.5	spyware industry.
1:16.7	I'm joined by LaRontre Shah, founder and executive director of forbidden stories, and
1:21.7	since then, during we go, the organization's editor-in-chief.
1:25.6	I'm Rainy Ernst and Roth, editor-in-chief and executive producer of frontline, and this
1:30.1	is the frontline dispatch.
1:33.8	The frontline dispatch is made possible by the Abrams Foundation, committed to excellence
1:38.4	in journalism, and by the frontline journalism fund, with major support from John and Joanne
1:43.8	Hagler.
1:45.1	Support for frontline dispatch comes from the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center, dedicated to providing
	...

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