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Ronan Farrow’s Surveilled documentary on HBO and Max delves into the complex world of commercial spyware, giving the audience a glimpse of the world behind our screens. Directed by Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz, the one-hour film was released on November 20, 2024, and raises significant questions about data privacy and its impact on civil liberties and human rights.
Reflecting on his own experiences while investigating Harvey Weinstein, Farrow's work highlights the global implications of spyware. It explores the reach of technologies like Pegasus in the ordinary man's life, like how it turns a simple smartphone into spyware.
Read along to learn why the Surveilled documentary is a must-watch.
Ronan Farrow’s Surveilled documentary exposes spyware’s chilling threat to democracy and privacy
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Ronan Farrow's Surveilled is an extensive guide into the world of modern commercial spyware, and its intrusions and reach into our lives. Focusing on the Israeli NSO Group’s Pegasus, the documentary details how spyware takes surveillance to unprecedented levels.
Pegasus doesn’t just monitor—it completely hijacks digital devices, like the camera or the recorder. With minimal or no action required by the target, spyware can access personal data through these applications, and even monitor encrypted messaging apps.
Through the documentary, Farrow investigates a few global hotspots of Pegasus:
- Tel Aviv, where Black Cube was based, NSO Group denied the misuse of Pegasus and claimed it aids the government
- Silicon Valley, where social media sites like WhatsApp battle spyware infiltration
- Canada, where the Citizen Lab uncovers the origins and ownership of Pegasus
- Barcelona, where Catalan independence activists were secretly targeted by Pegasus, was later confirmed to be orchestrated by the Spanish government
Farrow talked to The Guardian about spyware being used as a tool of intimidation, saying:
“it is emotionally devastating and intrusive and it makes you feel unsafe,” but the new commercial spyware tools are, as laid out in a new documentary, “a whole other game, a whole other level of sophistication”.
What is the story behind Surveilled?
The official synopsis of Surveilled says,
"Directed by Emmy-winning filmmakers Matthew O'Neill and Perri Peltz (HBO's Axios), this eye-opening documentary tracks Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Ronan Farrow as he investigates the growing business of commercial spyware."
Ronan Farrow is an investigative journalist known for his reporting on s*xual abuse allegations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, published in The New Yorker magazine. When Farrow started his research in 2017, Weinstein deployed multiple methods to spy on Farrow's investigation.
Black Cube, an Israeli private intelligence firm was hired by Weinstein to gain information on Farrow through stakeouts, false identities, and phone tracking. They also tracked Farrow's geolocation data, but mostly stuck to analog methods.
In his article published in The New Yorker in 2019, Farrow went into detail about the entire operation,
"Attached was an extensive record of Black Cube’s work for Weinstein. The documents included their first contract, signed in late October, 2016, and a revision from July 11, 2017, which extended Black Cube’s work for Weinstein through November of 2017. "
He continued,
"The later contract directed the spies to “provide intelligence which will help the Client’s efforts to completely stop the publication of a new negative article in a leading NY Newspaper,” a reference to reporting on Weinstein by the Times."
The discovery of Farrow's investigation led to the publication of his three-part article in The New Yorker, titled The Black Cube Chronicles. The 2024 documentary Surveilled explores it further, with a special focus on the unchecked rise of commercial spyware technology.
How does Surveilled highlight the need for spyware regulation?
One of the documentary’s key arguments is the urgent need for international regulation of commercial spyware. Farrow argues that unregulated spyware is similar to weapons of mass destruction and requires similar control measures. As the companies producing the spyware usually operate through loopholes in the system, they avoid accountability for the abuse of the software.
Farrow recently reported that the Department of Homeland Security has signed a new $2m contract with an Israeli firm called Paragon for their Graphite spyware, capable of infiltrating services like Signal or Telegram.
Farrow elaborated on this in the interview with The Guardian saying,
“There’s not transparency. There’s not accountability,” . “And it is very possible that with even thin types of law enforcement rationales, this could start to be deployed against people the administration just doesn’t like, as we’ve seen in a lot of these other democracies.
He added,
"All of the privacy law experts that I’m talking to are very, very afraid right now, this tech is just increasingly everywhere, and I think we have to contend with the inevitability that this is not just going to be this path of private companies selling to governments.”
Farrow's documentary also raises serious ethical questions regarding NSO's complicity in extracting information from targeted devices, as indicated by an ongoing U.S. lawsuit between NSO and WhatsApp.
Catch Surveilled on HBO and Max.
