Hacked by Hungary
The Europeans | European news, politics and culture
Katy Lee and Dominic Kraemer
4.8 • 162 Ratings
🗓️ 13 October 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What does it feel like to know that your government has been able to access every single message on your phone? Last year, the Hungarian investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi found out that he'd been hacked using Pegasus spyware. This week we hear about his latest investigation, which looks at how the Orbán government managed to get hold of this incredibly powerful surveillance tool in the first place. We're also talking about last weekend's mysterious German train sabotage and growing European protests against World Cup hosts Qatar.
You can follow Szabolcs on Twitter here and read the inside story of how Pegasus was brought to Hungary here via Direkt36. A background read on the spyware scandal currently rocking Greece can be found here.
Thanks for listening! If you enjoy our podcast and would like to help us keep making it, we'd love it if you'd consider chipping in a few bucks a month at patreon.com/europeanspodcast (many currencies are available). You can also help new listeners find the show by leaving us a review or giving us five stars on Spotify.
This week's Isolation Inspiration:
The latest visual episode in This Is What A Generation Sounds Like, our series with Are We Europe: Denisa
Scottish crime drama Karen Pirie
'Les années' (The Years) by Annie Ernaux
00:22 Welcome!
02:49 Bad Week: The Great German Train Sabotage Mystery
10:22 Good Week: Europe's growing World Cup protest movement
24:39 Interview: Szabolcs Panyi on being hacked by the Hungarian government
36:06 Isolation Inspiration: 'Denisa', 'Karen Pirie', and 'The Years' by Annie Ernaux
40:39 Happy Ending: Waxworms, gross but good
Producers: Katy Lee and Wojciech Oleksiak
Music: Jim Barne and Mariska Martina
This podcast is part of the Are We Europe family. Find more like-minded European podcasts at areweeurope.com/audio-family.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I feel like this week was actually a really good example of the EU doing something that gets noticed by normal people. |
| 0:30.1 | Are you talking about the new universal charging cable thing? |
| 0:34.6 | I am talking about the new universal charging cable. |
| 0:38.4 | We are going with the USBC as the socket of Europe. |
| 0:43.1 | We're going to use it for everything. |
| 0:44.6 | As of 2024, it's very exciting, Dominic. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm so excited. |
| 0:48.2 | Now, I actually do think it's a really good idea. |
| 0:50.2 | It was so annoying how many different charges I've bought over the past decade. |
| 0:55.1 | I do also think it's the nicest of the USB shapes. |
| 0:58.0 | Why? |
| 0:58.5 | It's very sort of chubby and pleasing looking. |
| 1:01.5 | I'm sure that's not why they chose it. |
| 1:03.4 | But it does seem like, yeah, very good news. |
| 1:06.0 | I saw one viral tweet that described this news as the sexiest technological development of the past |
| 1:12.1 | decade. So we have the EU to thank for that. I'd like to give the EU one other job, and that |
| 1:19.3 | would be to insist the smartphones keep having normal headphone sockets. Yes. Because I don't want my headphone wire to have to be a USBC. I find |
| 1:32.0 | that really annoying. We also had some headphone issues in our interview this week. That's true. |
| 1:37.2 | Bluetooth headphones are to blame for the sound quality of this week's call. Who is that call with Dominic? |
| 1:42.1 | Well, this week we're going to be talking about spyware, |
| 1:44.7 | which is something that was at the top of the headlines for a while back in the summer of |
| 1:48.7 | 2021 when I'm sure you will have all heard about the Pegasus Project, this huge international |
... |
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