All language subtitles for PBS.FRONTLINE.2023.Global.Spyware.Scandal.Exposing.Pegasus.1.of.2.1080p.x265.AAC.MVGroup.Forum.[eng]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Pegasus... Pegasus...
Pegasus...

Pegasus, Which has been used
to monitor and track

journalists, human rights
activists, and dissidents

across the globe.

NARRATOR: In collaboration
with Forbidden Films,

a two-part investigation...

We immediately realized that
this story would be huge.

NSO was established with the
ambition

to make the world a
safer place...

NARRATOR: Into powerful
spyware...

It is a military weapon used
against civilians.

This is extremely serious for
democracies.

NARRATOR: Used around the
world...

There is no control over how
countries use it,

and they have been using it in
the worst way you could imagine.

NARRATOR: Now on "Frontline,"
part one

of "Global Spyware Scandal:
Exposing Pegasus."

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Our phones are not just
our phones.

We call them phones,
but they're not phones,

they're computers.

And they're like extensions
of our body.

They're with us all of the time.

And if they are turned into
a surveillance device,

I don't think it's
an exaggeration

to say this was something that
even George Orwell

in "1984" couldn't imagine.

♪ ♪

It's beyond science fiction.

♪ ♪

LAURENT RICHARD (in French):

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

(multiple international
journalists saying "Pegasus")

This technology,
it's so far ahead

of government regulation
and even of

public understanding of
what's happening out there.

♪ ♪

All of us suspected
that if NSO Group

was giving authoritarian
and repressive regimes

such a powerful instrument
of surveillance,

that it was pretty likely that
this technology would be abused.

But none of us had been able
to prove it on a systemic scale.

♪ ♪

De acuerdo con la pesquisa
acabada

por "The Washington Post,"
"The Guardian,"

"Le Monde" y otros medios...

A joint investigation
by 17 news outlets

and Forbidden Stories...

Activists, lawyers,
and journalists

are reportedly among those
who have been targeted by...

Phone numbers belonging
to some big name politicians.

(in Mandarin):

♪ ♪

The device that you have

in your pocket could be a spy

that is spying on your life.

♪ ♪

(car horn honks)

RICHARD (in French):

(indistinct chatter)

♪ ♪

The list doesn't have any names.

You have phone numbers,
area country code,

some timestamps as well.

And it's a list that is about
50,000 phone numbers

from 2016 to 2020.

We can't explain where the list
is coming from.

We can't, of course, reveal who
is our source.

Officially, the Pegasus
spyware is not working

on any plus one U.S. phone
numbers.

It's not possible.

The numbers, they are mostly in
ten countries

most of these governments are
known to be clients of NSO group

who make Pegasus.

Pegasus was designed
to infect

phones like iPhones or Androids.

And once in the phone

it can extract and access
everything from the device--

the phone books,

geolocation, the messages,
the photos,

even the encrypted messages
sent by signal WhatsApp.

It can even access

the mic or the camera
of your phone remotely.

♪ ♪

It's like a person
over your shoulder,

a person who will see
what you are seeing,

a person who would watch
what you are watching,

your emails, your encrypted
communication, everything.

So, once you are infected,
you're trapped.

♪ ♪

Hello? Can you hear me?
I can hear you.

I don't see you.

Hello.
Hello, Paul.

Hello, Laurent.
Hi, Dana.

(on laptop): Hi, how are you?

Hi, Dana.
Good, and you?

We decided to reach out
to some partners;

"The Washington Post,"
"The Guardian,"

and many other ones.

We wanted to tell you
about some information we have

and about a new project
we are starting.

We had no names attached
to the numbers.

We needed more journalists.

We needed reporters
on the ground

who could reach out
to some victims.

We need people with
tech expertise.

We still have to identify
numbers.

Many of them actually
haven't been identified yet.

So we'll need your help on this.

The moment they mentioned

the numbers of phone numbers
that they had,

the quantity of phone numbers,

tens of thousands,

I mean,
my jaw just hit the floor.

There is a lot that
concern India.

(on cellphone): Ah.

Some people in Mexico.

Information about Hungary.

Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan.

If Forbidden Stories have got

data that can identify

not just who the customers
of NSO are,

but potentially point
in the direction of

who the targets are as well,

this is a game changer.

This could be transformative

in terms of our understanding of

the whole cyber surveillance
industry.

I specialize in
national security reporting.

So surveillance is part of
my beat, so to speak.

You could see patterns
starting to emerge

and you could almost like touch,
okay, that might be a story.

You know, here's something
that's happening

in Azerbaijan that might be
a story.

Okay, I see what the
Moroccan story might be.

It's like watching
a photo emerge in a darkroom.

We will shortly be arriving
at Elephant & Castle.

Change here for the Bakerloo
and Northern lines.

We at the "Guardian"
have been reporting about NSO

for a long time.

We thought it was
really important

to hold this company to account.

Israel has become a world leader
in this industry

and exports these tools
all over the world.

And, if you like, NSO Group
was in many ways, you know,

the jewel in the crown.

The NSO Group was
recently valued at $1 billion.

It is one of the
most successful companies

in Israel's start-up space.

NSO says they sell
the software

to governments around the world

for legitimate purposes--

fighting terrorism,
or violating local laws.

Here was a company founded by
three guys in 2010,

that claim to have 40 countries
around the world

buying its technology.

That made bold claims about
its technology being used

to solve serious crimes

and help facilitate
national security enquiries.

This was a big deal.

I can tell you on the last
ten years, we only found

three cases of misuse

and we took very serious action

that we are always taking.

And these serious actions meant

that we shut down the system
completely.

We only sell it to governments
or to entities that we know

or we want to believe that
they will not misuse the tools.

And this is how we check
the customer.

This is how we diligence them.

We have all the mechanism
to make sure that they are not

misusing the systems.

In the middle of Paris,

in the middle of this
big COVID crisis,

we got everyone together

Thank you. Sorry about that.

I'm Dana Priest at the
"Washington Post"

and this is Craig Timberg
who's joining me.

This is Carmen Aristegui
and Sebastién Barragán

from "Aristegui Noticias."

This is Paul Lewis
from the "Guardian."

And Steph,
many of you will know,

writes a lot about NSO.

This is the "Le Monde"
corner.

This is Martin, Christophe,
and I'm Damien.

Usually, we see

reporters at other news
organizations as our rivals.

We compete against them.

We never want to share
information with them because,

you know, we want to keep
our stories to ourselves.

And this is just
a different way of operating.

This seeing other journalists
as partners.

We are really one group.

One group with one goal--
publish those complex stories...

(voiceover): We worked with
more than 80 journalists.

And we set a publication date
of July 2021

that gave us about a year
to investigate the list.

The main task for us and for
all the partners was to identify

the names behind the
phone numbers.

That was crucial.

With phone numbers only
we can do nothing.

The data is the beginning
of the project.

We need to find sources.
We need to go on the field.

This project is about who is
spying on who in many countries,

and those countries,
most of them are very dangerous.

♪ ♪

We had a kaleidoscope
of potential victims.

We have the data,
but how do we prove

that Pegasus was on the phones?

And that was always going to be
the hardest thing

about this project,
which was we had data,

which is a very good indication

of who the persons of interest
were to these

government clients of NSO,
but we couldn't know

whether a phone had been hacked

unless we conducted forensics
on it.

♪ ♪

Claudio Guarnieri is the head

of Amnesty International's
Security Lab.

He worked on

creating a methodology,
a platform that we could use

during our investigation

to have phones analyzed.

He's a key element of
that investigation.

Without his expertise,
nobody in our team

would have been able to detect
traces of Pegasus in a phone.

It's a piece of code
that look very similarly

to all the others that you are
running on your phone,

and it's just designed to do
something that it shouldn't.

Pegasus access files
on the device,

access and records
on the device,

being from WhatsApp,
being from the SMS database

that you have on the phone,

or access on the GPS
of the device,

record the audio,
access the webcam.

These kinds of things.

Apple and companies like it
try to create as many layers

of complication as possible
for an attacker.

But the unfortunate reality is

that against capabilities
like those

that Pegasus customers have,

there's not much you can do

from a digital security
perspective.

You can't really stop them
meaningfully.

You can only try to make it
more complicated.

♪ ♪

(indistinct chatter)

At some point we discover

very crucial information;

an information that change
entirely the project.

For years we heard rumors about
the Pegasus spyware

might have been used against

Jamal Khashoggi,
who was killed in 2018

in the consulate
of the Saudis in Istanbul.

♪ ♪

The minute we found out
about this list,

the first thing we all did
was to check

for any numbers related to
Jamal Khashoggi

or anyone we knew
who was associated with him.

And right away,
we found two numbers

associated with the two women
closest to him in his life.

Jamal Khashoggi's murder,

really in the history of
the "Post," stands out.

He was an opinion writer
for the "Washington Post."

Very gentle, soft-spoken man.

His voice became very important

because he was the single most
important dissident

writing about the Saudi regime.

Jamal, let me start with you.

You've compared
your crown prince to Putin,

to Iran's supreme leader.

You've said he's creating,

"an interesting form
of dictatorship."

How so?

I still see him as a reformer
but he is gathering all power

within his hand.

As we speak today,

there are Saudi intellectuals
and journalists jailed.

His murder was so
cold blooded.

And we, we still don't have
the whole story.

Jamal went to the consulate
in Istanbul

and then he disappeared.

Senior Turkish officials

have reported that he is in fact
in the building

and he is still here.

His close friends and family
are still trying to figure out

what this situation is.

They're waiting on
an official statement.

I spoke to his fiancée
who was also here who told us

that they came here to issue
a number of documents

so they could marry.

They dispatched
an assassination team

that landed in a plane in the,
in the airport,

and came in cars

with tools to hack him up,

hack his bones,
and carry him out

in a suitcase or suitcases.

(scoffs)

♪ ♪

Pretty soon after his murder,
people started asking,

was Pegasus used against Jamal?

The word is that

you sold Pegasus to them

and then they turned it around
to get Kashoggi.

Khashoggi's murder
is horrible.

Really horrible.

And therefore when I first
heard the accusations

that our technology had been
used on Jamal Khashoggi

or on his relatives, I started
an immediate check about it.

And I can tell you, very clear,

we had nothing to do
with this horrible murder.

♪ ♪

I'm hoping that Hatice,
Kashoggi's fiancée,

who we'd all gotten to know
on television

because she was outside
the consulate

when he didn't reappear,

I'm hoping that Hatice
will let us do forensics

on her phone to see for certain

whether she was targeted,
and maybe if we get lucky,

whether we can see what
they took out of her phone.

♪ ♪

They killed my future.

They killed my life.

I felt inside me
something changed and broke.

Do you feel like your phone
is doing anything strange?

Do you think it could be hacked?

We can test it

so we could do that if,
if you wanted to do it?

We...
Okay, you can do that.

Okay, that'd be great.

We just need to plug your phone
into our computer.

Okay.
So maybe we do that.

Great.

(birds twittering)

(on speakerphone): Hello?

Claudio?

All right.

It's Dana.

Hi. How are you?

I don't know, you tell me.

So I checked both
the uploads.

The new one seems clean.

The old one, however,
has some traces

on the 6th of October 2018

seems to have been
a first compromise.

Which was followed by some
additional traces on the ninth.

And then on the 12th.

There is also
an additional record

in June of 2019.

But that seems to be
probably a failed attempt

and I don't see anything
following that.

Okay.

The analysis proved
that the phone belonging

to Jamal Kashoggi's fiancée
had been infected with Pegasus.

Then we find out the date,

which is four days
after his murder,

when she's still trying
to figure out what's happening.

And it just seemed like such a
ballsy move

to surveil the person

who has become the public face
of his disappearance.

♪ ♪

We learned that Jamal
had a complicated personal life.

Hanan Atr is probably

the least known character
in Jamal Khashoggi's life.

She's actually his wife.

And most people have not
heard of her.

He had secretly married
in the United States

in an Islamic ceremony.

What I discovered is Hanan
is living in hiding

in the United States

while she waits for
her political asylum case.

She was a flight attendant
for Emirate Airlines,

and so she flew
all over the world,

and she was communicating
with him on foreign phones.

♪ ♪

He was so happy
and I was so happy as well.

This is in his birthday
in the restaurant in Washington,

and his friend Maggie behind us,

is the one she made
the birthday party.

This all of his friends
around us.

This last birthday in his life.

He was careful,
but he didn't realize

maybe my device is
much dangerous,

and I didn't know as well.

He suspect, but he's not sure,
and I am not sure as well.

She allowed me
to download her phone

to send a copy to Claudio and
to Bill Marczak at Citizen Lab,

who also conducts
forensic analysis.

What I did is I analyzed

all the available data
on two Android phones

and, and one laptop belonging
to Hanan.

On one of the phones,
it appears that there were

two separate links
to the Pegasus spyware

that were actually opened.

Before Jamal's murder,
Hanan had been detained and

interrogated in the United Arab
Emirates, which is of course

a close ally of Saudi Arabia.

They took me to a office
in the airport.

Then they took me to my house.

They searched the whole house.

They take my devices,
my family devices.

They have the password.

I was in investigation
for 17 hours,

until I got tired,
I slept on the floor.

What Bill discovered

was when she was detained
at the U.A.E. airport,

somebody who took her phone

then opened a browser
on her phone,

and then typed in a URL

that then directed the phone to
a website known to Citizen Lab

as being a Pegasus website
that activates the infection.

The link to Pegasus
was actually typed into

the web browser,
character by character.

They made a couple of typos
actually while they were

doing it which tells me
it was done manually.

We have the smoking gun
from Hanan's phone

which is the traces of
the spyware.

You know, almost certainly
the spyware was installed

and exfiltrated information
from, from her phone.

So she was, in my view,
monitored.

He was telling me
what he's doing,

and what his connection,
what his movement,

what is his state of mind.

So you were communicating
with him.

A lot.

They tracked my husband
through me, a long time back,

before they kill him

because he was telling me,
only me, everything.

♪ ♪

I didn't know this much
they track him through me

all the time.

Mm-hmm.
Yeah.

Why is this all come in
my life?

They did track Jamal,
and to kill him through me,

long time back.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

Getting evidence
on the device of Hanan,

on the device of Hatice,

all of that was breaking

the narrative of the C.E.O.
of NSO Group

who told to the press
that that spyware

were never used against the...
Jamal or the relatives of Jamal.

♪ ♪

In the list,

we saw more than
15,000 Mexican numbers.

Mexico was among
the very first customers

of the NSO Group.

One of Mexico's best-known
journalists is Carmen Aristegui

and she was part of
our investigation.

♪ ♪

She has maybe more followers

than the president of Mexico.

And we needed to understand

who those phone numbers in
Mexico belongs to.

(phone chiming)

CARMEN: Hola.

Hola, Carmen, es Arthuro
de "Forbidden Stories."

¿Cómo estás?

CARMEN: ¿Cómo estás?
Qué gusto.

Forbidden tuvo un universo de
más de 50,000 números,

pero había que saber de quién
eran esos números.

Se tenía que investigar
uno por uno.

ARTHUR: Y, Carmen, hay muchos
contactos de tu teléfono

en nuestra lista.

CARMEN: Uf. Okey.

ARTHUR: Lo que, lo que
podemos hacer ahora

es que puedes entrar los números
en tu teléfono

para decirme a
quién pertenecen los números.

CARMEN: Así lo vamos
a hacer.

(muttering)

Tengo un directorio nutrido

y entonces ese directorio
lo cruzamos

con los números de Forbidden
y los números de mi directorio.

El tercero es, Sandra Nogales

que por muchos años fue
mi asistente.

!¡¡Ah, caray!
Tengo aquí una sorpresa.

El séptimo número corresponde
a Karina Maciel.

Karina Maciel es la productora
de mi programa

en la cadena de
televisión CNN en México.

Otro colega periodista

de la revista Processo,
Alejadro Caballero.

Al cruzar, empezaron a salir
nombres, nombres, nombres,

nombres, nombres
y nosotros decíamos:

¿hasta dónde va
a terminar esto?

Ah, caray, el que sigue es
Alejandro Encinas,

es un muy importante
político de la izquierda.

Y estaban ahí políticos,
diplomáticos, abogados,

periodistas, activistas,
defensores de derechos humanos.

Ah, caray.
(laughs)

Bueno, aquí te puedo decir que
está mi hermana.

Aquí aparece mi hermana,
Teresa Aristegui Flores.

Es mi hermana,
pero no está relacionada

con ninguna
actividad pública.

Yo intuyo que aquí
nadie se salva,

Si hicieron esto, imagínate,
ya perdieron el pudor.

ÓÓsea, pudieron haber espiado
a su gato, ¿no?

A su perro, al canario.

(laughs) ÓÓsea...

¿Estás de acuerdo?
A su propia familia.

We knew

from a previous investigation
that Carmen's phone

was heavily targeted with
Pegasus in 2015 and 2016.

So from that date,
she is still investigating

NSO Group, the Pegasus spyware

or the agents and operators who
are using that in Mexico.

CARMEN: Durante los años que
fui espiada,

estuvimos realizando
investigaciones

periodísticas importantes
para México

relacionadas con la Casa Blanca

del presidente
Enrique Peña Nieto.

Una casa en un barrio muy lujoso
de la Ciudad de México,

en posesión del presidente de
México, de Enrique Peña Nieto,

y de su familia,
que no podían explicar.

Que desde luego no podía haber
obtenido el presidente

con los ingresos
que el presidente

pudo haber tenido como
presidente, como gobernador

o como hijo de una familia
de clase media.

♪ ♪

Es que yo sospecho
que mi teléfono está intervenido

y el teléfono de mi hijo Emilio
está intervenido

es cuando Emilio, un chico menor
de edad, me pregunta:

"¿Oye, mamá, eh,
tú sabes por qué recibo

estos mensajes tan extraños?"

Y yo le digo: "Yo también estoy
recibiendo mensajes extraños."

♪ ♪

(chattering indistinctly)

Que hicieras clic
para ver algún problema

de tu visa en Estados Unidos.

Claro, claro, claro, ¿qué
puede estar mal con tu visa, no?

CARMEN: Sí, pero era
imposible que no hicieras clic.

A ver,
yo veía mi visa y decía,

pues que vigencia tiene...
tiene.

Fuera de la vigencia,
¿qué problema puede tener?

Pero, sabe, es algo que
es inevitable,

que hagas un clic.
Que les piques.

Sabemos que Pegasus se vendió
a la Procuraduría General

de la República, se vendió
Pegasus al Ejército,

se vendió Pegasus al CISEN, al
Sistema de Inteligencia,

se vendió Pegasus a algunas
instancias de caracter publico.

SOURCE (voice distorted):
No puedo decirles mi nombre.

No puedo referir con exactitud
la institución

en la cual me desempeñé.

Y puede resultar peligroso
para mí la identificación

y el conocimiento de que
yo tengo o tuve acceso

a cierta información.

El sistema Pegasus, pues era
toda una novedad para nosotros.

El procedimiento era tener
el número objetivo,

hacer lo que se denominaba
la ingeniería social,

que es búsqueda de información
en fuentes abiertas

del objetivo con la finalidad
de elaborar mensajes de texto

que pudieran ser enviados
al dispositivo móvil.

Debiera ser uno o dos
intentos muy precisos

con información que le resultara
útil al objetivo

y que este pudiera dar clic.

Si lográbamos el éxito de que
diera clic en el mensaje,

eso automáticamente instalaba
el software en el equipo móvil,

y a partir de ahí, ya podíamos
tener acceso al teléfono,

a toda la información.

Los resultados, pues,
eran increíbles

porque una vez que se lograba

instalar infectar
el dispositivo,

se tenía acceso pleno
al equipo móvil.

Era una pantalla negra.

En la parte superior izquierda
teníamos

la visualización principal

y en la parte del lado
derecho y abajo

estaban, digamos, módulos
o pestañas en donde se tenía

cada una de las aplicaciones de
las que se extraía información.

Por ejemplo, teníamos el cuadro
de la aplicación

de WhatsApp, Telegram.

Abajo teníamos los micrófonos,
el micrófono, las cámaras,

la geolocalización y dependiendo
de lo que nos interesara,

le dábamos clic y era
lo que se proyectaba

en la visualización principal.

A partir de la infección
cualquier información

que sea eliminad podemos
verla nosotros.

Y a sea en fotos
o conversaciones.

Pero podemos seguir viéndolas.

CARMEN: Cuando empiezas
a saber qué cosa es Pegasus,

te vas de espaldas.

Quedas desnudo frente a un poder

que no sabes quién detenta.

Quedas vulnerable frente
a alguien

que está observándote
bajo una lupa.

Pueden estar contigo
en la oficina, en la regadera,

en la cocina con un amigo,
con una fuente.

Todo el tiempo.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

All the time during this
investigation,

we tried every day to identify

the person behind
that phone number.

(indistinct phone chatter)

This is what all the partners

in Forbidden's team were
doing most of the time.

Basically, the consortium had
access

to a list of potential targets.

Exactly.

To be sure that you was indeed
infected or surveilled,

we would have to run forensic
analysis.

(gently):
Of course, of course.

(sighs)

I saw one number in the
list that belonged to a friend,

a journalist in Azerbaijan.

Her name is Khadija
Ismayilova.

She's an award-winning
investigative reporter

and an outspoken critic
of the government,

renowned for her exposés

of corruption at the hands of
the country's president.

Azerbaijan, you have
a lot of oil and gas.

It's a dictatorship.

And the dictator's name
is Ilham Aliyev.

And this person and this state

is extremely violent

against dissidents, political
opponents, journalists.

I first met Khadija
Ismayilova in Azerbaijan

in about 2006, 2007.

Khadija Ismayilova relentlessly
kept on exposing

the wrongdoing and the
corruption of the Aliyev regime.

She showed how, you know,

they were having their hands

into a big chunk of the
Azerbaijani economy.

She was showing how they were,
you know, taking money

in a covert way,

how they were stealing money,
basically, from the people.

(speaking Azerbaijani):

(shouting)

She kept on doing what
she was doing.

And she got arrested.

She got thrown behind bars.

After all this investigating
reporting,

Khadija became a
prime target

for the government
in Baku and for the Aliyevs.

I don't know how to, to
proceed with Khadija,

because I don't want us
to put Khadija in danger.

The thing that is quite
difficult is how

to get in touch with Khadija

without communicating on
electronic device.

This is very sensitive,
right? Yeah.

This is very, very
sensitive, especially for her,

because she's basically on
probation.

That's gonna be a risk anyway.

We learned that Khadija was
about to go to Turkey

for some personal reasons, and
so we set up immediately a team

who went to Turkey
to meet Khadija

once she landed in the airport.

♪ ♪

Now, I'm nervous.
(chuckles)

I'm nervous too.

I cannot stand still.

(sighs)

There she is.
Khadija!

(laughs)

So many years!

(indistinct chatter)

(indistinct chatter)

It's a good size.

We can take these off, right?

So we have about 1,000
numbers from Azerbaijan

and you're among them.
Oh!

And then we also have

some people who are your
friends.

Okay, and what does that
program do?

So what the program does is,
it basically,

without you knowing, um,

it installs things on your
phone. (bleep)

And then it allows...

Even if I didn't click
on anything?

Yes, so the secrecy of
this, it's called Pegasus,

and the secrecy of it is that

you don't actually see
or you don't do anything.

So before, you had to click on
something, to be infected.

In this case, it all happens
in the background,

and you have no
idea that you are infected.

(bleep)
And when you're infected,

it's transmitting your messages

your images, everything that's
happening on your phone,

including on signal, because
they have the phone itself.

And it's legal to sell it?

Yes, so what we know
is that most likely,

sometimes in 2018,
the government got it.

Okay.
And we have a lot of data

from 2019.

And, you know, that was
a big year of protest.

You were on a hunger strike
with other people.

Yeah, yeah.

You guys had a woman march.
Yeah.

You were leading the march.

(quietly):
(bleep)

(laughs)

It's... kind of the most,
like, in the country.

So one way for us to verify
that, you know,

what exactly, you know,
was done in your case

would be to do forensic
on your phone.

Yes, why not?

Is there any way to avoid
this surveillance?

Yes, we will set you up
with a new device

that you will be able to use.

And a phone.
Is there a balcony?

...be some way, you know,
to do it like...

There are other ways to
communicate.

Yeah.

It's like...

It makes you to want

to live in the bubble.

But then, like, so no one can
enter.

Like, in some sort of...

Like living, like living inside
the condom.

But then you cannot reproduce.

♪ ♪

That's her phone.

You don't need any cables?

Nope.
Okay.

Do you know if she still has
a backup of the phone?

Yes, she does. Yes, she does.
Okay.

Well, right now I'm trying
to jailbreak the phone.

(phone chimes)

Hopefully, it works.

So right now, I am...

navigating through the phone.

So I'm looking for things

that might have executed network
activity

that is connectable
to the company,

any leftovers of malicious
executions.

Um, accounts that we know of--
anything,

essentially, that tells me
the history of this phone.

That's interesting, that's not
something I've seen before.

We see processes

that we know
are connected to Pegasus,

We see some iMessage accounts

that are connected
to the attacks.

Because this might indicate
what was the entry point.

Oh, it was Apple Music,
what the (bleep)?

Oh, really?

That's, that's weird.

So they might have started
using Apple Music to exploit it?

Um...

I have to do some more digging
on this,

because I need to look at

what specifically these
applications are.

She's definitely among
the ones most targeted.

♪ ♪

It's important

to rectify this story,
which is that

these technologies
are exclusively used

for good purposes and
for fighting evil

and for fighting crime
and terrorism and all that.

(dog barking)

Okay, so-- no,
Khadija is coming.

(chuckles)

Hi, Claudio.

(on phone): Hi.

So now tell me how bad it is.

(on phone): Okay, there are
definitely some records

that, that indicate various
points

where the phone seemed to have
been compromised.

Mm-hmm.

(voiceover):
So I started feeling like

a plague doctor in the 1300s.

I'm basically kind of
just keeping the death count.

I'm contributing to creating a
trauma here,

and I can see it in many cases,
like I can see it, that they are

right now, they're going through
a dramatic moment,

and I'm like that person in the
room that is breaking it.

(on phone): There are also
some more recent records

from even as recent as early May
of this year,

so until a couple of weeks ago.

But all in all, it seems like

this probably extended
between 2019 and 2020.

2020 at the very least.

I've been told that you will
not know

what exactly had been monitored
or recorded.

Yeah, with this kinds of...
kind of monitoring technology,

the point where they have that
level of access to the device,

virtually
everything is possible, so...

Yeah, thank you.

Have a good day, bye-bye.

Bye.

That's not great news.
Yeah.

All night I've been thinking
about

what did I do with my phone?

And I feel guilty.

I feel guilty to...
for the messages I've sent.

I feel guilty for the
information sources that,

that... who send me,
thinking that

some encrypted messaging ways
are secure.

They did it and they didn't
know that my phone is infected.

I mean, my family members
are also victimized.

The...

the sources are
victimized, everyone.

I mean, people I've been
working with,

people who told me their private
secrets are victimized.

Everyone, I mean,
it's not just me.

I, I put so many people
in danger.

And...

And I'm angry.

Again, I'm angry, I'm angry
with the government,

I'm angry with the companies
that produce all these tools

and sell it to the bad guys,

like Aliyev's regime.

It, it's...

it's really... it's despicable.

It's heinous.

Khadija is not a terrorist,
Khadija is not a criminal.

She's a journalist that is
taking a lot of risk

to write some stories to make
sure people will get access

to independent information.

So that was one more evidence

of the global misuse
of that spyware.

♪ ♪

Powerful governments manage

to retain their power by seeing
off threats

from people who are
campaigning for democracy

or holding them to account,
telling the truth.

And, you know, here's a company

that gave them a tool to do
that.

It's a military weapon used
against civilians.

And the civilians,
they don't have

any mechanism to help them
in seeking justice,

any mechanism to find
some traces,

any mechanisms to know that at
least they are the target.

You got a real sense

that it was free for all.

That there is no control over
how countries use it,

and they have been using it in
the worst way you could imagine.

Even after months of
investigating

we kept discovering
new things

new names from the list--

politicians, heads of state,
and even a princess.

Hello, my name is
Latifa al-Maktoum.

And I'm making this video

because it could be the last
video I make, yeah.

(sighs)

♪ ♪

(music ends)

Go to pbs.org/frontline for a
Q&A with the journalists

at Forbidden Stories who led the
Pegasus investigation.

And once on the phone
it can extract

and access everything from the
device.

Everything, so once you are
infected, you're trapped.

And an archive of stories
with our reporting partners

on the Pegasus project.

Connect with "Frontline" on
Facebook, Instagram and Twitter,

and stream anytime on
the PBS app, YouTube,

or pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪

For more on this and other
"Frontline" programs,

visit our website at
pbs.org/frontline.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

"Frontline's" "Global Spyware
Scandal: Exposing Pegasus"

is available on
Amazon Prime Video.

♪ ♪