Surveilled: Bajo espionaje

The film follows Ronan Farrow's investigation for the New Yorker into the Pegasus spy technology. It's a hot topic and something that interests me, so I decided to see it. However, I write this review with the feeling that my time would have been better spent if I had just read the article instead of watching the whole picture.

On the plus side, it does serve to recall some recent espionage scandals (albeit mostly just mentioned) and effectively raises the question 'Do you think it's posible to have a world where such a thing exists and it's used responsibly?' The Catalan example makes you ponder that.

On the downside, I think this piece lacks the virtues of a good didactic documentary. It is rather a TV product: it focuses on selling Ronan to the public and doesn't dig deep enough into the subject. I missed more information on how Elies or Citizen Lab manage to uncover the infiltrations and also more on other espionage cases. I was hesitating whether to give it a 5 or a 4. After reading other reviews I gave it a 4.

While much of the content of this film has already been in the public information stream for some time (see Nicole Perlroth's "This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race" from 2021), it couldn't be a more timely warning in the wake of the 2024 presidential election.

I give the movie 10 stars as a wake up call to all who care about privacy, transparency, democracy and our drift towards the Surveillance State. We can and we must talk about this ceaselessly.

I give it only 5 stars for not addressing the surveillance abuses in China and Russia.

While it mentions the ban on federal use of such "commercial" programs, the film doesn't address the abuses local law enforcement have and could wield in the name of public safety.

Finally, it's concerning that the movie's narrow focus on a singular program by a single company could lessen the impact of the message of this movie. Hopefully viewers will grasp that Pegasus is the "canary in the coal mine," so to speak. The US government may currently prohibit the purchase of commercial spy programs. But government-developed programs are still viable. And once those get into the wild, as they surely will, it will be impossible to close Pandora's Box.

As "Surveilled" (2024 release; 61 min) opens, we are in "Tel Aviv, March 2022" and investigative reporter Ronan Farrer is speaking with someone about Pegasus, the spyware made and owned by Israeli company NSO Group. Pegasus is the best known of the spywares out there and is completely intrusive. It can access any and all smart phone remotely and completely, with you ever knowing about it. At this point we are less than 10 minutes into the documentary.

Couple of comments: while the upsides of spywares are obvious (to combat terrorists and murderers), the downsides are even scarier (to track political opponents, etc.). And as this documentary shows, the latter is being done more and more (the Spanish government used it to track Catalan politicians in favor of splitting from Spain). All super interesting stuff. Alas, at just 60 minutes, it all flies by in no time. I wish that Ferrar and the film makers had spent a little more time digging around to show more examples of authorities abusing the spyware for political advantage. When asked how to curb a nefarious use of spyware like Pegasus, a talking head laments "you can't put the spyware genie back into the bottle, I'm afraid". In other words: it's going to get (a lot) worse before it'll get better...

"Surveilled" recently started showing on HBO and streaming on Max, where I caught it the other night. If you have an interest better understanding the potential (up and down) of spyware like Pegasus, this is a good starter (but the last word on this is surely yet to come). I'd readily suggest you check this out, and draw your own conclusion.

Unfortunately, this documentary is nowhere near as hard hitting as it makes out to be. The scope of the investigation is rather narrow. Especially given the accusations about countries in the Middle East and Africa abusing modern surveillance technology, none of this is actually substantiated. Instead the investigation focuses on one ology provider (who opened their doors willingly in a PR trust exercise), the US, and Spain. To make things worse, the style of the documentation is heavily focused on the author and narrator, Ronan Farrow, and therefore turns into a personality show about him, rather than the real subject matter. This leaves the viewer with a sense of a missed opportunity.

On the positive side, this documentary informs the public and it's a good thing imo that it is being done trough this more mainstream channel and spokesperson. So I give it high marks for effort and exposure.

However, as other reviewers point out. There are noteworthy omissions. First of all, the spyware is being developed in Israel. It is strange, in the context of the ongoing war in Gaza and the situation in the occupied West Bank, that there is no mention of Palestine at all. By now, we are informed, most notably through the excellent book The Palestine Laboratory by Antony Loewenstein, of how this type of software is being tested in the apartheid regime, on the Palestinian population. But I guess this can be excused because the documentary would probably get shunned by many outlets if this disgraceful chapter would be included. Also it would have been interesting to know more about which countries are using it.

Conclusion: the doc leaves me hungry for more in depth and elaborate information. But stimulating this appetite is a good thing, hence my 7 stars.