Exposing Pegasus: FRONTLINE Begins 2023 With Gripping Docuseries Chronicling a Global Spyware Scandal

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus Tues., Jan. 3, 2023 & Tues., Jan. 10, 2023 Streaming at 7/6c at pbs.org/frontline & in the PBS Video App Airing at 10/9c on PBS and on YouTube www.facebook.com/frontline | Twitter: @frontlinepbs Instagram: @frontlinepbs | YouTube: youtube.com/frontline

In 2020, the journalism nonprofit Forbidden Stories and Amnesty International gained access to a leaked list of more than 50,000 phone numbers. They suspected it contained numbers selected for potential surveillance with Pegasus, a powerful spyware sold to governments around the world by the Israeli company NSO Group.

Sixteen media organizations, including FRONTLINE, joined forces with Forbidden Stories to investigate who the numbers belonged to and, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab, whether they’d been infected with the Pegasus hacking tool. A year later, the Pegasus Project reporting consortium published its stunning findings: Pegasus had been used on journalists, human rights activists, the wife and fiancée of the murdered Saudi columnist Jamal Khashoggi, and others.

Now, in a special, two-part docuseries called Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus, FRONTLINE and Forbidden Films, the documentary arm of Forbidden Stories, reveal the inside story of the investigation that prompted probes by governments and institutions around the world and sparked calls for an international treaty to govern the largely unregulated spyware industry.

“Pegasus is 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,” says Laurent Richard, founder of Forbidden Stories and Forbidden Films and one of the producers of the films.  

Unfolding over two nights on Jan. 3, 2023, and Jan. 10, 2023, Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus follows journalists across the world as they race to piece together who has been targeted with the software — and the implications.

“We know through the Pegasus Project that there is no control over how countries use it, and they have been using it in the worst way you could imagine,” says Dana Priest, a reporter at The Washington Post and a consultant on the docuseries.

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus shows how, with technical support from Amnesty International’s Security Lab and additional assistance from Citizen Lab, Pegasus Project reporters confirmed the presence of the spyware on the smartphones of a number of people whose numbers were on the leaked list — including a journalist working to expose government corruption in Azerbaijan, a former French government minister, a human rights activist and lawyer who founded a campaign to free Dubai’s Princess Latifa, and Jamal Khashoggi’s wife and fiancée.

NSO, which has disputed some of the Pegasus Project’s reporting, says that its technology was not associated in any way with Khashoggi’s murder and that it sells Pegasus to vetted governments for “the sole purpose of preventing and investigating terror and serious crime.” The company has publicly insisted that it “has no insight” into how the governments it sells to use Pegasus spyware but says it investigates credible claims of misuse and has terminated contracts.  

“We only sell it to governments or to entities that we know or we want to believe that they will not misuse the tools,” Shalev Hulio, founder and then-CEO of NSO Group, said in 2020. “We have all the mechanism[s] to make sure that they are not misusing the systems.”

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus explores how, despite the outcry that resulted when the Pegasus Project published its findings, the spyware industry as a whole remains largely unregulated and unreformed.

“Nobody regulates these companies,” says Dana Priest. “That’s the bottom line. Technology is just so far ahead of government regulation.”

It’s a reality that poses a threat across the world, according to Forbidden Stories’ Laurent Richard.

Surveillance technologies like Pegasus are “a military weapon used against civilians, and the civilians, they don’t have any mechanism to help them in seeking justice,” he says.

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus premieres Tues., Jan. 3, and Tues., Jan. 10, 2023. Each episode will be available to watch in full at pbs.org/frontline and in the PBS Video App starting at 7/6c on its premiere night, and on PBS stations (check local listings) and FRONTLINE’s YouTube channel starting at 10/9c.

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Credits

Global Spyware Scandal: Exposing Pegasus is a FRONTLINE production with Forbidden Films. It is a film by Anne Poiret and Arthur Bouvart. The director is Anne Poiret. The producers are Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud. The senior producers are Eamonn Matthews and Dan Edge. The editor-in-chief and executive producer of FRONTLINE is Raney Aronson-Rath. 

About FRONTLINE FRONTLINE, U.S. television’s longest running investigative documentary series, explores the issues of our times through powerful storytelling. FRONTLINE has won every major journalism and broadcasting award, including 104 Emmy Awards and 28 Peabody Awards. Visit pbs.org/frontline and follow us on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and YouTube to learn more. FRONTLINE is produced at GBH in Boston and is broadcast nationwide on PBS. Funding for FRONTLINE is provided through the support of PBS viewers and by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Additional support for FRONTLINE is provided by the Abrams Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Park Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, and the FRONTLINE Journalism Fund, with major support from Jon and Jo Ann Hagler on behalf of the Jon L. Hagler Foundation, and additional support from Laura DeBonis.

About Forbidden Films Forbidden Films is an award winning documentary production company founded in 2019 by Laurent Richard and belongs to the international nonprofit organization Forbidden Stories, a global consortium of investigative journalists whose mission is to continue the work of assassinated, threatened or jailed journalists. Forbidden Films produces investigative and character driven documentaries for channels or platforms such as Arte, France Television, BBC and FRONTLINE (PBS). Forbidden Films documentaries have received a number of awards, including the Best European Documentary Series for Green Blood at the Prix Europa and the Documentary Award Special Mention at the Palm Springs Film Festival for Caviar Connection.

About the Pegasus Project This award-winning collaborative investigation was coordinated by Forbidden Stories with the technical support of Amnesty International’s Security Lab. 80 reporters from around the world and 16 media outlets were on board, including FRONTLINE (PBS), The Guardian, Le Monde, The Washington Post, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Die Zeit, Aristegui Noticias, Radio France, Proceso, OCCRP, Knack, Le Soir, Haaretz/TheMarker, The Wire, Daraj and Direkt36.

Contacts Anne Husted, Manager, Public Relations and Communications, FRONTLINE (PBS) 617-300-5312 frontlinemedia@wgbh.org

Forbidden Films media@freedomvoicesnetwork.org