Ronan Farrow Says Covert Surveillance Was ‘Emotionally Devastating’ Experience

Ronan Farrow is responsible for much of the reporting that ultimately led to Harvey Weinstein’s conviction on sexual assault and rape charges in 2020.

Weinstein launched a concerted effort to track and surveil Farrow after the journalist began his research in 2017. In an interview with the Guardian published Saturday, Farrow described being surveilled as “emotionally devastating and intrusive.”

Weinstein’s surveillance of Farrow is the subject of the new one-hour HBO documentary, “Surveilled.” Directed by Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, the documentary walks viewers through a complex web of traditional surveillance technique and modern commercial spyware — the combination of tactics deployed by the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube under Weinstein’s request.

The movie also serves as a visual companion to Farrow’s 2022 report for The New Yorker about how democratic countries use the same tools to monitor and surveil their citizens. The chief focus is on Pegasus, one of the most powerful pieces of spyware ever created, a product of the Israeli NSO Group.

Pegasus often enters personal devices through third-party apps and can assume full control of microphones, cameras, and dig through your data. The Guardian noted that it is “very possible, and now documented, to be hacked by Pegasus and not even know it.”

In “Surveilled,” Farrow tracks the roots of Pegasus to its birthplace in Tel Aviv, “where NSO executives toe the party line that the group only sells to governments for law enforcement purposes and has no knowledge of its abuses.” He also visits Silicon Valley, Canada, and Barcelona.

Though the NSO Group repeatedly claims to be unaware of various ways Pegasus has been used against groups of people — including Catalans, the rivals of a Greek prime minister, and Dubai’s Sheikh Mohammed — Farrow tells the outlet, “The data activists and watchdog groups that monitor this see the data as moving through the company’s infrastructure in a way where it would be pretty hard to have no knowledge [of misuse].”

The individual countries and people who opt to use Pegasus ultimately determine who they track, the Guardian pointed out, and the company’s “tentacles in surveillance beyond the scope of counter-terrorism, not to mention Israel’s longstanding use of Palestine as a laboratory for surveillance, evinces the need for more transparency.”

“These companies need to be subject to the same kind of international regulation and legal infrastructure that arms dealers are,” Farrow said. “That’s just the reality. It’s dangerous tech. It threatens democracy and freedom. It leads to violence. The data tells us this now. That doesn’t mean that there are no law enforcement applications for it, which also makes it very similar to weapons of mass destruction.”

You can read the full interview with Ronan Farrow at the Guardian.

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