July 23, 2021

Filmtip: The Spy in Your Phone

Filmtip: The Spy in Your Phone

Fraudstorytelling | Weekly filmtips | 23 July 2021

Title: The Spy in Your Phone
Duration: 47 minutes
Year: 2021
Producer: Al Jazeera
Link: https://www.fraudstorytelling.com/movies/the-spy-in-your-phone/
Tagging: #espionage, #cybercrime, #ITindustry

In mid-2020, a mobile phone belonging to an Al Jazeera Arabic investigative team was hacked. Over the next few months, reporter Tamer Almisshal and the Canadian research group Citizen Lab investigated Pegasus, the sophisticated spyware used. Pegasus is manufactured by an Israeli technology company called the NSO Group and is among the most advanced spyware in the world. It can access and infiltrate a smartphone without the owner clicking a link, opening an email or even answering their phone – meaning it can go undetected. This investigation exposes how Pegasus works, how governments like Saudi Arabia and the UAE have bought the hugely expensive spyware and how it has been used beyond the stated intentions of the NSO Group of “developing technology to prevent and investigate terror and crime” – including to target journalists.

Recently it was revealed that the Israeli company NSO Group probably sells their software to dubious regimes, who have used it several times to track unwittingly journalists and activists, among others. Earlier this year, Al Jazeera already released an interesting documentary about these cyber practices, in which they show how the software works and can be used, or misused.

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