Sandrine Rigaud

Two observations. The two journalists borrow a temporal device from film; the scenes of them anxiously looking over their shoulders, suddenly ducking into narrow alleyways, leaving their surveillance phones in outer rooms before taking an important meeting; these attempts at nail biting suspense don't quite work. While tracking the mythical stallion Mortis—if they unknowingly were to step on a digital twig in the black forest . . . the book would either be nonexistent or pencil thin. But show more you're clutching a 300 page book, so the intrigue is at least heading in the direction of a nominally satisfying conclusion, although it doesn't quite get there.

They also end the book with a fatuity. They highlight a single tech wizard who could provide the same services as Mortis, but chooses (in spite of the naughty paycheck) for personal reasons not to be associated with a globally disgraced, criminal state. But they don't low-light a single person from the throng of numerical (disgr)aces who wouldn't lose any party time or sleep if a paying customer wanted to use their work product to find pesky human rights activists or snoopy reporters and make mincemeat out of them. show less

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Like any technology, spy tools can be used for good (catch terrorists during the planning phase before they've managed to kill anyone) or bad (oppressive regimes suppressing journalists). In the authors' worldview, the dangers of the latter far outweigh the potential benefits of the former. And they use their journalistic skillset to scour the world for the most egregious abuses in order to make their case.

They present the actions of medieval theocratic monarchies and secular brutal show more dictators as if they'd be benevolent progressive democracies if only the pesky Israelis hadn't sold them the spyware to eavesdrop on their citizens. Omitted from this narrative is that the exact same governments have been quite adequately spying on and quashing dissent for decades before cellphones existed, and without any outside help.

Despite the promises of the title, at least half the book is about the reporters themselves and their self-perceived heroic attempts to tell the story. They go into great detail to document who they spoke to, who did what and when, and stopped just short of describing what they ate for breakfast that day. Perhaps of interest to journalism students, but for everyone else this content adds nothing to the story, and feels incredibly self-congratulatory. show less

This was a very interesting book about the privately funded, built and internationally distributed modern wire-tapping software that found its niche when it comes to monitoring the mobile devices.

So first of all what this book is not about - it is not about the technical aspects of Pegasus as a software and how it was developed (even from the perspective of the third party involved say from the beginning of the software rollout). Reason is very simple - in my opinion software was not show more independently developed by private company, governments (starting from Israel and then others, most definitely US but any other Western ally) were involved and software is definitely in more modern/updated version still in use. So, no matter the investigative journalism approach, these things will not see the light of day until vetoed by powers to be.

What this book is about - about how group of journalists came across a list of phone numbers (context how this list got to them is absolutely unknown, book just starts with and-we-were-astounded-by-the-list) and then started investigation, identifying parts of the list (actual people) and finally finding out that ever present and very invasive spy software called Pegasus, sold by Israeli private company NSO, was installed in order to monitor various journalists, political activists and in general opposition in various countries around the world.

While above is interesting I have to admit that this was not what I was expecting. I was expecting some more technical commentary, and no this does not include and-he-watched-the-screen-extremely-worried parts of the book depicting Amnesty International technical team (two truly good engineers) as they work through the analysis of the phones looking for the Pegasus infestation. This is good for TV show or novel but in non-fiction account looks kinda silly (I could imagine 24-like multiple frames and clock ticking while techies mumble and talk to themselves - I had to laugh out loud when one paragraph described one of the engineers pointing to the black multi-colored screen (most probably command line prompt output) and saying to the journalist around how this section means this-and-that; you would have problems explaining that to a colleague from the same area of expertise, let alone somebody who definitely does not comprehend what is going on, but ok, this was in for a dramatic effect).

Authors (and journalists) have managed to give a picture of how very dangerous and invasive surveillance piece of software got purchased by international community. Of course we are only given glimpses of states that have issues so to speak, and where authors' colleagues and friends found themselves under surveillance (Mexico, Azerbaijan, India, Hungary to name the few). It is mentioned that software was sold to other parties in Europe and world-wide but these do not get mentioned (I guess because authors' are not interested in these areas, and because these are "democracies" (I will get back to this)). Same as is case with standard weapon proliferation and sales this is shady world and possibility of these new cyber-weapons/surveillance tools to be misused is very high (even for it to fall into hands of criminal organizations like Mexico cartels). All in all very very disturbing picture.

As I said book concentrates on the journalistic investigation, preparing the story and finally launching the story while keeping everyone under full isolation to prevent the opposition (NSO and supporting governments) from meddling and possibly disrupting the story. Here and there we are given portraits of some of the journalists that authors are good friends with that have found themselves on watch lists of their country governments because .... well, obvious animosity they have against those governments. In some states (like Azerbaijan or Mexico) this brings in some very real life-threatening aspects into play.

So in that aspect very interesting and informative book.

What I did not like is the following...

Authors are not just journalists but political activists. While work they did here is excellent and they truly exposed a very dangerous mechanism of surveillance, they are political activists (while I am very very wary of Soros and his various NGOs, that sponsor good part of the journalists involved here including the authors, it shows that sometimes people he stipends do a very good investigative job). This means that every so often there is this emotional aspect in the narration that just makes me puke to be honest - Washington "reeling" from the January demonstration in the Capitol [with even mentioning how senators were assaulted by the demonstrators!?!?] and constant mention of "biggest democracy in the world" when talking about India and Mexico and their use of Pegasus software. For the former, it reminds me of Mrs Clinton statement how she found herself and husband under sniper fire when she came with husband to Bosnia and Herzegovina AFTER the war - this was such a slap to the face of US Army securing the area they immediately published a response that there was no sniper fire at all - but "heroic" deeds remained, dramatic elements installed.

For the latter what are we talking about here? If anything epidemic forced people to install monitoring and surveillance software onto their phones to be able to move around in the first place (remember those French police officers going through streets and requesting phone inspection to see if software is installed and records are in order, or Australian police arresting people for comments on Facebook?). What democracy are we talking about when Canada declared protesters to be only second to terrorists and froze their financial means and sent fully armed SWAT teams to break the protests up while constantly talking about the violence (although reports clearly showed no violence at all - blockade yes, demonstration yes but no fire-bombs and destruction as was case with [I guess, OK'd] demonstrations little bit south of Canada that were left to rampage through).

Unfortunately epidemic showed that government is not so democratic, nor so for-the-people-by-the-people, more like for-the-security-of-institutions, which makes sense and is understandable, people come and go, politicians and administration remain and are constant.

So, when it comes to politics, authors' could do without it (it did not age well).

I have a feeling that book should have come with the links to various new websites involved because these actually contain the true story, but since these are almost all behind paywall and require subscription, that would be deemed as free ad, so authors decided against it.

As it is, lots of questions remain open - who was targeted (especially when it comes to governments), what was found about the possible motives for targeting (again, for authors' journalist friends it is clear, but what about others?) - all of this remains unsaid. And again, it is clear why - first, to move forward subscribe to some of the newspapers in question and dig on your own, second - I don't think book would be published because of ties and relations, especially between governments.

To sum it up - book feels like a digested version of events without the actual story, teaser of sorts. Considering the current world events I think full details will never be known.

Recommended to anyone interested in surveillance (and worldwide spread and effect of Pegasus, one of the many "crawling" around - for this alone book value is great) but caveat emptor as they say, you will learn more about various independent journalist groups than actual spyware in question. show less

The book probes an incredibly timely and alarming theme — an issue that should concern all of us. Richard and Rigaud serve up a wealth of information about the danger technology poses to our privacy, freedoms and governments. As a journalist, I was intrigued by a number of the backstories. But even many diehard journalists and tech geeks might find some of the narrative to be excessively detailed and filled with too many drawn-out geopolitical subplots. To describe a large chunk of show more “Pegasus” as being “in the weeds” would be an understatement. This is particularly true in the first half of the book – the primary reason why I almost called it quits. That said, I learned a lot about a complex topic and was glad I soldiered on to the end. show less