EXCLUSIVE: Here’s something to be frightened about: your cell phone being used to spy on you, without your knowledge.
That disturbing scenario, made reality through software developed by an Israeli cyber-intelligence firm, is investigated by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ronan Farrow in the new HBO documentary Surveilled. The film directed and produced by Emmy winners Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz premieres on HBO on Monday, Nov. 20 and will be available for streaming on Max. We have your first look at the documentary in the trailer above, ahead of its world premiere this Friday at DOC NYC.
Farrow became the target of cyber surveillance himself when he was reporting the story that eventually brought down Harvey Weinstein. The journalist’s new investigation takes him from New York to Israel, home base of NSO Group, the company that created Pegasus spyware.
“Commercial spyware, capable of taking full control of cell phones without the owners’ knowledge, and long billed as a tool purchased by governments to fight terrorism, is now appearing on the phones of activists, journalists, politicians, and ordinary people,” notes a release about the documentary. “Surveilled takes us inside the secretive industry and into the offices of the Israeli spyware company NSO Group, gaining rare access to the engineers and executives behind the controversial spyware Pegasus.”
The release continues, “As Farrow exposes the complex relationship between the spyware-makers and the big tech companies dedicated to preventing security breaches of their platforms, Surveilled illuminates a clandestine business reshaping contemporary concepts of privacy and power and reveals the ethical dilemmas that citizens and governments must now navigate in the brave new world of cyberespionage. As Farrow follows a reporting trail to Barcelona, Spain, and the largest documented mass-hack using commercial spyware, the film reflects on the human consequences for communities caught in the crossfire of 21st century cyberwarfare.”
HBO Documentary Films
Among the key participants in the film are Farrow, who writes for The New Yorker; fellow, Citizen Lab, Elies Campo; director, Citizen Lab, Ron Deibert; Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn), an intelligence expert who just won re-election to Congress; The New Yorker editor David Remnick; former executive editor, The New Yorker, David Rohde; director, Cyberspace and Digital Policy, Nathaniel Fick; former engineering manager, WhatsApp, Claudiu Dan Gheorghe; head of Whatsapp, Will Cathcart; former member of the European Parliament, Jordi Solé Ferrando; NSO Group’s Leoz Michaelson, Omer Len, Shmuel Sunray, Yochany Manoff, Ellynoy Baron, and Tal Agam; journalist at Haaretz, Chaim Levinson; Spanish senator, Laura Castel Fort; activist and former spyware engineer, Joan Matamala; as well as former Israeli Knesset Member Sami Abu Shehadeh.
HBO Documentary Films presents Surveilled, produced and directed by Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz, and produced by Ronan Farrow, Beth Morrissey, and Unjin Lee. The film is written by Ronan Farrow, Matthew O’Neill, and Perri Peltz, and edited by David Meneses. Original music is by Mac Quayle. For HBO, executive producers are Nancy Abraham, Lisa Heller, and Sara Rodriguez.
O’Neill and Peltz’s credits include HBO’s Axios and Alternate Endings: Six New Ways to Die in America. Farrow served as host and executive producer of the 2021 HBO documentary series Catch and Kill: The Podcast Tapes, directed by Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, and executive produced the 2022 HBO documentary Endangered, directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.
Watch the trailer for Surveilled above.