The Spy in Your Pocket
The Documentary Podcast
BBC
4.3 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 25 July 2019
⏱️ 26 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Anti-obesity campaigners in Mexico, human rights advocates in London, and friends of the murdered journalist Jamal Khashoggi all claim they’ve been targeted by surveillance software normally used by law enforcement to track drug-dealers and terrorists. Assignment reveals compelling evidence that software is being used to track the work of journalists, activists and lawyers around the world. Paul Kenyon investigates the multi-billion pound “lawful surveillance” industry. Sophisticated software can allow hackers to remotely install spyware on their targets’ phones. This gives them access to everything on the devices – including encrypted messages – and even allows them to control the microphone and camera. So what are the options for those who are targeted and is there any way to control the development and use of commercially available software? Presenter: Paul Kenyon Producer: Joe Kent
(Image: Electronic eye. Photo credit Valery Brozhinsky\Getty)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello I'm Paul Kenyon and this is assignment on the BBC World Service. |
| 0:05.4 | Today the Spyth, 2015. The scene is Mexico's most notorious maximum security jail. An inmate is pacing his cage cell, every move tracked by security cameras. |
| 0:28.0 | There's a shower with a waist-high wall to protect his modesty. The prisoners name is |
| 0:34.7 | Wachim Guzman, better known as L Chappo, a drug lord with a multi-billion dollar |
| 0:40.7 | empire. At 852 that evening he walks into the shower and |
| 0:45.7 | crouches out of view. A minute goes by. Then two, then 15. |
| 0:55.0 | El Chappo has gone. |
| 0:58.0 | He's escaped for a mile long tunnel on a motor bike. |
| 1:10.0 | El Chappo flitted between fortified villas, vanished into networks of tunnels, always on the move, protected by his own personal army. |
| 1:17.0 | Law enforcement didn't seem to stand a chance. |
| 1:20.0 | He only communicated through encrypted phones that were supposedly impossible to hack. |
| 1:25.0 | Then in January 2016 a breakthrough. |
| 1:34.0 | Marines stormed a coastal villa in northern Mexico and met huge resistance. |
| 1:44.8 | El Chappo was inside. |
| 1:50.8 | Later that evening he was caught. |
| 1:53.0 | So how did the Mexicans finally outwit him? |
| 1:58.0 | Let roll the clock back to the previous summer. |
| 2:02.0 | El Chappo at that point still in hiding, |
| 2:05.0 | had agreed to meet a famous Mexican actress, |
| 2:08.0 | Kate Del Castillo, who wanted to make a film about his life. |
| 2:12.0 | He said to have given her one of his unacacable phones |
| 2:16.0 | so they could communicate freely. But what he didn't know was that Mexican authorities |
... |
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