This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. The software known as Pegasus is probably the most

notorious spyware in the world. It allows users, law enforcement officials, or government authorities to hack into a

target's smartphone, and that gains them access to photos, videos, and messages. Pegasus can also remotely

control a phone's microphone and camera, all without your knowing it. The software is aimed at catching

the worst of the worst, terrorists

and other violent criminals, but once a surveillance tool is on the market, it can be very

difficult to control. Ronan Farrow has a new piece out on the New Yorker about Pegasus and the

company that makes it, an Israeli firm called NSO Group.

So one of the things that I think is distinctive about this story, against a backdrop of a lot

of good reporting from a lot of good outlets, about this kind of spyware,, I really got to spend time inside NSO group

and their offices in Tel Aviv, talking to their software engineers who take evident pride

in cracking encryption methods and opening up people's phones. And, you know, in the conversations

that I had with both the working level people at NSO

and their executives, what comes out is, I think at times a sincere belief that this is a tool

with a lot of power to assist law enforcement.

You know, critics, particularly in the human rights world, I think would say that that's a dog and pony show.

But I do emerge from the reporting seeing evidence that there are law enforcement agencies around the world

who perhaps otherwise would not have elaborate surveillance capabilities in-house.

I'm talking about, for instance, smaller European countries,

and who now have a tremendously powerful surveillance tool in their hands.

Now, do they have any banner headline crimes that this software has stopped?

...