Pegasus review: Terrifying exposé of the world’s most powerful spyware

From French president Emmanuel Macron to ordinary whistle-blowers, the surveillance software Pegasus has been used to target thousands of people. Investigative journalists Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud tell its story and explain why no one is safe



Technology



1 February 2023

Whistle-blower Edward Snowden

Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/ZUMA Wire/Alamy

Pegasus

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud (Macmillan)

EDWARD SNOWDEN’s 2013 leaks from the US National Security Agency triggered a global debate around state surveillance – but even he couldn’t quite believe the scale of the story described to him in the summer of 2021.

Whistle-blowers had handed French investigative journalists Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud a list of 50,000 phone numbers. These belonged to people flagged for attack by a cybersurveillance software package called Pegasus.

The investigation that followed is the subject of Pegasus: The story of the …

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