Surveilled tracks Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow as he investigates the growing business of commercial spyware, following the story from New York City to Tel Aviv, Israel, a center of espionage cybertechnology. Once a target of covert surveillance himself, Farrow explores the multi-billion-dollar industry, addressing the contradictory uses and implications of phone hacking – the ability to monitor criminal activity and the attendant threats to civil liberties.
Commercial spyware, capable of taking full control of cell phones without the owners’ knowledge, and long billed as a tool purchased by governments to fight terrorism, is now appearing on the phones of activists, journalists, politicians, and ordinary people. Surveilled takes us inside the secretive industry and into the offices of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, gaining rare access to the engineers and executives behind the controversial spyware Pegasus. As Farrow exposes the complex relationship between the spyware-makers and the big tech companies dedicated to preventing security breaches of their platforms, Surveilled illuminates a clandestine business reshaping contemporary concepts of privacy and power and reveals the ethical dilemmas that citizens and governments must now navigate in the brave new world of cyberespionage. As Farrow follows a reporting trail to Barcelona, Spain, and the largest documented mass-hack using commercial spyware, the film reflects on the human consequences for communities caught in the crossfire of 21st century cyberwarfare.
Featured Participants: Journalist at The New Yorker, Ronan Farrow; fellow, Citizen Lab, Elies Campo; director, Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert; U.S. congressman, Jim Himes; editor, The New Yorker, David Remnick; former executive editor, The New Yorker, David Rohde; director, Cyberspace and Digital Policy, Nathaniel Fick; former engineering manager, WhatsApp, Claudiu Dan Gheorghe; head of Whatsapp, Will Cathcart; former member of the European Parliament, Jordi Solé Ferrando; NSO Group’s Leoz Michaelson, Omer Len, Shmuel Sunray, Yochany Manoff, Ellynoy Baron, and Tal Agam; journalist at Haaretz, Chaim Levinson; Spanish senator, Laura Castel Fort; activist and former spyware engineer, Joan Matamala; former Knesset Member Sami Abu Shehadeh.
