In the HBO documentary “Surveilled,” Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow travels across the globe to investigate and expose the dark underbelly of the multi-billion-dollar advanced spyware industry. The film reveals that repressive regimes aren’t alone in using spyware to hack into citizens’ cell phones and computers clandestinely; democratic governments are also guilty of spying on unknowing individuals.
“In recent years, we have seen a succession of Western democracies, where people really thought, “It can’t happen here” have these scandals where the use of commercial spyware technology spirals out of control despite constitutions in place that should prevent it,” says Farrow, whose most recent article for the New Yorker details how the Trump administration could expand the use of commercial spyware in the U.S.
The article examines the Department of Homeland Security’s recently signed two-million-dollar contract with the Israeli spyware company Paragon.
“A number of experts told me that the Department of Homeland Security acquiring this technology doesn’t necessarily mean, even if it’s intended for ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), that it will only be used by ICE for immigration purposes,” says Farrow. “Not that we should lack concern about ICE marrying up Donald Trump‘s promise of mass deportation with advanced spyware technology. But a lot of the privacy law experts that I spoke with told me that we should all really be concerned even if you don’t think of yourself as being in a vulnerable category. Even if you are not a politician, an activist, or a journalist, you are still looking at a situation where you might not know that you are being targeted until after the fact, and that’s another reason why it was important to me in this documentary, to tell the stories of innocent bystanders who are apolitical, who get caught up in these dragnets.”
Farrow began reporting on the spyware industry after he was the target of cyber surveillance during his investigation into Harvey Weinstein that would help launch the 2017 #MeToo movement.
“I came to (this subject) quite naturally in the course of being surveilled in various ways myself while reporting on tricky stories that pissed people off,” says Farrow. “It was personally frightening and devastating. It’s not just information gathering; there is a dimension of intimidation to it and, maybe even more consequentially, it shrinks the space for us to do our work as journalists.”
Directed by Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, “Surveilled” takes viewers inside the secretive industry while also illuminating how the digital spy business is reshaping contemporary concepts of privacy and power. The docu, which made its world debut at DOC NYC this month, examines ethical dilemmas that citizens and governments must now navigate in the brave new world of cyberespionage.
Variety spoke to Farrow about Trump, the future of the #MeToo movement, and how to fend off being hacked.
How could ICE use spyware to carry out Trump’s plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants?
Farrow: I try to stay away from speculation other than talking about the capacities we have right now, the promises being made, and how those could collide in scary ways. We don’t know what will happen, but I do know that an array of serious privacy law experts are in a state of high alarm now looking at the fact that Donald Trump is making this promise of mass deportation. Also, the threats he is making to subject political enemies to tribunals and the idea he has conveyed that journalists who protect sources should go to jail have put privacy law experts in a high state of alarm (because) those promises become a lot scarier when married up with this kind of (spy) technology that his administration will have at its fingertips.
In the docu you interviewed people who help protect people and companies from cyberespionage. Since spyware is so prevalent now, do you think that news outlets will have to hire security teams to protect their journalists from being hacked?
It’s a huge concern. If we want freedom of expression and freedom of information, then we need to have privacy rights and devices that can’t be so easily compromised. We need to have checks and balances on these (spy) tools, and one of the big casualties when those checks and balances go away and when these devices are just a public space, and there is no room for private conversations, is journalism. I don’t want to see a reality in which the Trump administration makes good on what he’s saying about imprisoning people in our profession who protect their sources. Unfortunately, that reality becomes a lot more likely to transpire if this tech is used in an unfettered way.
How does the average citizen protect themselves against being hacked?
Write to your representatives and call them to say that you want accountability on this issue. While there are few complete defenses against advanced hacking technology, a daily reboot of your phone is something multiple tech experts have advised in the course of my reporting.
Trump was found liable of sexually abusing and defaming the writer E. Jean Carroll. Some of the men he has selected to join his Cabinet – Pete Hegseth and Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Matt Gaetz before he dropped out – have been accused of sexual misconduct. What do you think this means for the future of #MeToo – a movement against sexual violence? Are we going backwards?
I can’t give a satisfying answer to the question because the important part of my relationship with that reporting is that I really was just acting not as an activist but as an investigative reporter. The separate issue that you raised about Trump’s appointments, I think, is just linked to this wider pattern that we are seeing with those appointments, which has been described by very credible journalists in recent days as a trolling operation. Having people who have disregarded and flouted the very thing that the agency they are going to be running is designed to protect that’s happening over and over again. So, while it has a dimension of perhaps nose-thumbing at standards of consent and accountability around sexual violence, it is really just part and parcel with a moment in which this administration is coming in with a lot of evidence of a lot of different types of disregard for the rule of law.
“Surveilled” is currently streaming on Max.
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