Book Review – Pegasus

Conspiracies theories? Chemtrails? You can keep all that.

This book is about conspiracy fact.

When we pull that switch over the laptop camera to physically cover it up after a call, many of us will be doing this half heartedly, not really believing that there is a company and governments around the world who are willing and able to install spyware on our technology without us even knowing.

Now granted, the spyware in question, Pegasus, is specifically for use on mobile phones, not laptops, but mobile phones that don’t come with a camera cover, or a physical switch to disconnect the power from the motherboard (how do you think that push and hold button works on the side of an iPhone? It’s never really off…) It’s also generally targeted at journalists, human rights campaigners, Nobel prize winners and other thorns in the sides of governments who want to tell you what’s really going on and wont toe the party line. However, if you are a politician, it doesn’t mean you can sleep easy; the book discusses evidence that heads of state including the French President had their phones infected as well.

So not the average Joe, but still worrying for the general public, at least because of the following.

It can be installed on your phone without you even knowing, via a process that does not involve you clicking on any link or accepting any invitations to save a deposed prince from Zimbabwe for 5% of several hundred million.

Just read that sentence again.

The book goes into great detail about the investigation carried out by French based, Forbidden Stories, in collaboration with many news partners around the world including Die Zeit, Le Monde and the Washington Post. Many further partners joined the project at a later stage, including the Guardian. The team were presented with a list of 50,000 mobile phone numbers from a source that alleged these were targets for the Pegasus spyware.

It reads a bit like a thriller, especially given the nature of the material and the compelling story that, many people are unaware that there is the capability for governments or nefarious organisations to monitor you anywhere, anytime using your own mobile phone. And, yes, that includes remotely activating your camera and microphone…

Essentially, we are now a society that has bugged ourselves and this book tells the story of how this was exposed and the technical evidence that was gathered by some very clever, very diligent IT professionals working with Amnesty International, along with the investigation into the human stories that accompany this and bring it to life.

I work in IT myself, and I’m very careful with unexpected text messages, emails etc. but this book demonstrates that some people have the ability to sidestep all of that, and this knocked me sideways to be honest. It’s one of the many hooks that kept me reading right from the chilling opening which challenges you:

“Where’s your phone right now?” and after a couple of paragraphs introducing the spyware and investigation concludes with, “Where did you say your phone is right now?”

During the narrative, which moves at pace, reflecting the reality of the investigation, it becomes clear that the organisation that supplies the spyware, NSO, may have become aware they are being investigated and are trying to wipe evidence before the very eyes of the team at Security Labs who are doing the technical work. This introduced a fear for some of the team and made it feel very real. That feeling is transmitted through the prose and really adds to the depth of the story.

The book is cowritten by Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud, the founder and editor of Forbidden Stories, respectively and as publication date approaches you can sense the stress and concern amongst the protagonists as they race to conclude gathering the stories that will make this real for the readers, not just an abstract description of a piece of intrusive, immoral and unlawful software.

These stories included Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, who was lured to his own death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul at the hands of his own government. There is evidence of Pegasus infections on the phones of some of those closest to him in the months leading up to his death, including his wife, Hanan Elatr.

Or how about the the Azerbaijani journalist, Khadija Ismayilova, who has led several investigations into the high level corruption in that oil rich country? Her phone showed evidence of several infections from 2018 – 2021 due to an iMessage vulnerability.

These, and many other real human stories are what kept me hooked and have also opened my eyes to the surveillance society we have all unwittingly signed up to.

So conspiracy theorists, you can forget your 5G/COVID theories or chemtrail/spraying; just pick up this book and read about how you, I or anyone has sleep walked into a real life version of 1984 where the telescreen really can monitor you and record your entire life, if you are not careful, and Big Brother really is watching.

George Orwell was ahead of his time and this book narrates the story of just how far down the path to that dystopian future we already are.