55 min listen
Behind the Explosive Investigation into Pegasus Spyware
Behind the Explosive Investigation into Pegasus Spyware
ratings:
Length:
22 minutes
Released:
Jan 19, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
When a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers came to the attention of Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud of the journalism non-profit Forbidden Stories, along with Amnesty International, they suspected the list contained phone numbers potentially targeted for surveillance using the powerful spyware known as Pegasus, which gives its operators access to targets’ mobile devices.
Richard and Rigaud teamed up with journalists from sixteen other outlets, including FRONTLINE, to investigate. What the reporting consortium found, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, was explosive: Pegasus had been used on journalists, human rights activists, the wife and fiancée of the murdered Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and others around the world.
Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is the new, two-part series from FRONTLINE and Forbidden Films that goes behind the scenes of the investigation, and chronicles the responses from governments and institutions seeking to govern the largely unregulated spyware industry.
Richard and Rigaud, two of the series’ producers, joined FRONTLINE’s Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss the investigation, what’s happened since, and the threat spyware like Pegasus poses.
Pegasus is “like a person over your shoulder who will read everything that you are reading, even your encrypted messages,” Richard says. “It's a military weapon used against civilians.”
Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is now streaming at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE's YouTube channel.
Want to be notified every time a new podcast episode drops? Sign up for The FRONTLINE Dispatch newsletter.
Richard and Rigaud teamed up with journalists from sixteen other outlets, including FRONTLINE, to investigate. What the reporting consortium found, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, was explosive: Pegasus had been used on journalists, human rights activists, the wife and fiancée of the murdered Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and others around the world.
Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is the new, two-part series from FRONTLINE and Forbidden Films that goes behind the scenes of the investigation, and chronicles the responses from governments and institutions seeking to govern the largely unregulated spyware industry.
Richard and Rigaud, two of the series’ producers, joined FRONTLINE’s Raney Aronson-Rath to discuss the investigation, what’s happened since, and the threat spyware like Pegasus poses.
Pegasus is “like a person over your shoulder who will read everything that you are reading, even your encrypted messages,” Richard says. “It's a military weapon used against civilians.”
Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is now streaming at pbs.org/frontline, in the PBS App and on FRONTLINE's YouTube channel.
Want to be notified every time a new podcast episode drops? Sign up for The FRONTLINE Dispatch newsletter.
Released:
Jan 19, 2023
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
A Life Sentence: Victims, Offenders, Justice And My Mother: There are more than 2,000 people in prisons around the country who were convicted of murder as juveniles and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. But recent Supreme Court decisions have found these sentences unconstitutional and set in motion a process for re-evaluating these “juvenile lifers.” To close out the first season of The FRONTLINE Dispatch, we have three stories about juvenile lifers. This first is the story of a violent crime committed by a juvenile lifer whose second chance went horribly wrong. It is an intensely personal documentary, but it carries far-reaching implications that extend into public life and into the heart of our political and correctional systems.This piece was produced by Samantha Broun and Jay Allison. It was originally made in 2016 for the public radio website Transom.org. Listen to it here: https://transom.org/2016/a-life-sentence-victims-offenders-justice-and-my-mother/. We are by The FRONTLINE Dispatch