It’s happened to just about everyone who spends at least part of the day on their phone: that strange moment when you open a social media app and find yourself staring at a targeted ad for something you haven’t shopped for or even looked at. wanted, but mentioned in passing to a friend or partner. That’s strangeyou might think, and then (perhaps after ordering the item in question) you move on and choose not to grapple with the implications of this transaction. It’s just too chilling to think that the phones are listening.

Yet the new HBO documentary “Surveilled” tells us they are doing just that, and the consequences are far more serious than runaway online shopping. The directors are Matthew O’Neill and Perri Peltz; the producer and star is Ronan Farrow, who delved into the world of digital spyware for the ‘New Yorker’. The primary focus of his research was Pegasus, developed by Israeli private commercial spyware company NSO Group; they sell Pegasus mainly to governments, who in turn (according to his reporting) use the software to target journalists, activists, dissidents and politicians.

“It’s very powerful,” a former NSO Group employee tells Farrow. “It’s very intrusive.” Simply put, Pegasus can infect a user’s smartphone and access the apps (yes, even the encrypted ones) to exfiltrate GPS information, contacts, private photos, and other desired data. It can turn on the target’s camera and/or microphone and record audio or video without your permission or even your knowledge. “The cutting edge of surveillance is these digital tools,” Farrow explains, “and they are becoming more and more powerful.”

Farrow’s research is exhaustive, spanning two years and several continents. He travels to Tel Aviv and takes his cameras to the NSO Group headquarters, where he expresses his sensible moral concerns to several spokespersons, who give him carefully prepared responses about “all the good work” they are doing. He gets more useful information from that former employee, who left the company (along with many others) after the 2018 murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi – an ambush made possible by Pegasus software. In a phone conversation captured by the documentary crew, Farrow’s contact at NSO asks him to tell which of their former employees he spoke to. (He’s protecting his source, of course.)

At least 45 countries use Pegasus, we’re told, and it’s not just autocrats and dictators; Western democracies also use spyware, most of it under a veil of secrecy. “We live in a time of clear, well-documented democratic backsliding,” explains Ron Deibert of Toronto’s Citizen Lab, which does much of the research and debunking of this technology. “Authoritarian practices are spreading worldwide. I am convinced that the surveillance industry, as uncontrolled as it is, is one of the major factors contributing to these trends.”

And this is the structural masterstroke of ‘Surveilled’, because Farrow and directors O’Neill and Peltz understand that it is one thing if we shake our heads when we are targeted by journalists and activists in the UAE or even in Spain, but if the threat becomes direct to the viewer, as in the last twenty minutes, we sit up. It’s not just that US government employees working abroad have been hacked by Pegasus; The NSO Group pitched law enforcement agencies to Pegasus-like software before the company was placed on an export blacklist in 2021, and many such agencies were unsurprisingly receptive to the idea. In March 2023, the Biden administration issued an executive order banning government agencies from purchasing foreign spyware, “but it is not a blanket ban on the purchase of all spyware,” Farrow explains, noting that we joined just days later several other countries have signed a joint statement pledging to explore the use of this technology – but responsible.

Farrow talks to US Congressman Jim Himes, who insists they must “do the hard work to ensure law enforcement uses it in accordance with our civil liberties.” Who in the world trusts them too? That? Nathaniel Fick, the State Department’s ambassador-at-large for its cybersecurity division, tells Farrow that “the United States uses every instrument of national power in pursuit of interests rooted in our values,” and if that sounds sounds like a buzzword salad, you’re not alone.

Farrow is an ideal centerpiece for “Surveilled” because he is both a good reporter and a sharp communicator. He uses scary language on purpose, not just now to scare us (although he does), but for maximum clarity. This is a complicated story, clouded by technical jargon and talking points about evil criminals and terrorist activities, and a sentence like “the most advanced spyware can turn your phone into a spy in your pocket” cuts right through it. O’Neill and Peltz also make some documentaries about the practical details of an investigation like this; for example, he is not allowed to film his interview with the CEO of NSO, so they film him during the debriefing New Yorker editor about that interview.

Farrow may be a little too central – it sometimes feels like he’s almost as central as the story itself – but hey, when you have one of the last remaining famous journalists, it probably makes sense to have him as such. Its heavy presence and brisk running time (just an hour) make “Surveilled” it feels less like a documentary than a “Frontline” episode, albeit well-made and deeply frightening, whose conclusions are inevitably grim. “We can’t put the technology genie back in the bottle,” Ambassador Fick told Farrow. “Once they’re out in the world, we’ll probably see every nefarious use we can imagine.” In his final voiceover, Farrow shrugs, “The only path to privacy may be a life without our phones,” a conclusion I could only receive with a grim snort; To view the pre-screening of the report he was completing, I had to install an authentication app on my phone.