Pegasus, Laurent Richard
Pegasus, Laurent Richard
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Pegasus
How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy

Author: Laurent Richard, Sandrine Rigaud, Rachel Maddow

Narrator: Andrew Wehrlen, Rachel Maddow, Rachel Perry

Unabridged: 12 hr 31 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/17/2023


Synopsis

Featuring an introduction written and narrated by Rachel Maddow, Pegasus: How a Spy in Our Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy is the story of the one of the most sophisticated and invasive surveillance weapons ever created, used by governments around the world

Laurent Richard and Sandrine Rigaud's Pegasus: How a Spy in Our Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy is the story of the one of the most sophisticated and invasive surveillance weapons ever created, used by governments around the world.

Pegasus is widely regarded as the most effective and sought-after cyber-surveillance system on the market. The system’s creator, the NSO Group, a private corporation headquartered in Israel, is not shy about proclaiming its ability to thwart terrorists and criminals. “Thousands of people in Europe owe their lives to hundreds of our company employees,” NSO’s cofounder declared in 2019. This bold assertion may be true, at least in part, but it’s by no means the whole story.

NSO’s Pegasus system has not been limited to catching bad guys. It’s also been used to spy on hundreds, and maybe thousands, of innocent people around the world: heads of state, diplomats, human rights defenders, political opponents, and journalists.

This spyware is as insidious as it is invasive, capable of infecting a private cell phone without alerting the owner, and of doing its work in the background, in silence, virtually undetectable. Pegasus can track a person’s daily movement in real time, gain control of the device’s microphones and cameras at will, and capture all videos, photos, emails, texts, and passwords—encrypted or not. This data can be exfiltrated, stored on outside servers, and then leveraged to blackmail, intimidate, and silence the victims. Its full reach is not yet known. “If they’ve found a way to hack one iPhone,” says Edward Snowden, “they’ve found a way to hack all iPhones.”

Pegasus is a look inside the monthslong worldwide investigation, triggered by a single spectacular leak of data, and a look at how an international consortium of reporters and editors revealed that cyber intrusion and cyber surveillance are happening with exponentially increasing frequency across the globe, at a scale that astounds.

Meticulously reported and masterfully written, Pegasus shines a light on the lives that have been turned upside down by this unprecedented threat and exposes the chilling new ways authoritarian regimes are eroding key pillars of democracy: privacy, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

About Laurent Richard

Laurent Richard is a Paris-based award-winning documentary filmmaker who was named the 2018 European Journalist of the Year at the Prix Europa in Berlin. He is the founder of Forbidden Stories, a network of investigative journalists devoted continuing the unfinished work of murdered reporters to ensure the work they died for is not buried with them.For more than twenty years Laurent Richard has been conducting major stories for television. He is the author of numerous investigations into the lies of the tobacco industry, the excesses of the financial sector, and the clandestine actions of Mossad and the CIA.Since its creation, Forbidden Stories has received numerous awards, including a prestigious European Press Prize, two George Polk Awards, and a RSF Impact Prize for the Pegasus Project, published in 2021.

About Sandrine Rigaud

Sandrine Rigaud is a French investigative journalist. As editor of Forbidden Stories since 2019, she coordinated the award-winning Pegasus Project and the Cartel Project, an international investigation of assassinated Mexican journalists. Before joining Forbidden Stories, she directed feature-length documentaries for French television. She has reported from Tanzania, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, Qatar, and Bangladesh.


Reviews

I love nonfiction books, especially when they’re covering political matters, secret operations and so forth. So after the first quarter of this book I was really disappointed to realize that it wasn’t hooking me. While the deep dive into what Pegasus is, who created it and how it was being used is i......more

Goodreads review by Yukari

I'm just grateful that these journalists like Richard and Rigaud exist. Without these journalists who risk their lives to investigate and tell the truth, our democracy would not survive. My Japanese review: [URL not allowed]......more

Goodreads review by Ula

The Pegasus project led to one of the most important breaking stories of 2021. The whole world learned about this malicious surveillance tool and how it was exploited by many supposedly democratic governments. Nobody could feel safe anymore, as the following publications vividly have shown - among t......more

Goodreads review by A.J.

I thought this was going to be a technical, computer science-y kind of book about Pegasus: the world's most dangerous spyware. But no. This book was more like "journalists: how we developed and released the story about a spyware called Pegasus". It was not really about the spyware. It was all about jo......more

“Pegasus” is advertised (on the cover) as an investigative journalism product, exploration of a sophisticated software product designed for cyber surveillance, and this is why I bought the book. However, it is worth noting that the book leans away from an in-depth examination of the software itself,......more


Quotes

Pegasus is an alarming and urgent bookan engrossing thriller about cybersurveillance software so sly and powerful that it can take over your cell phone without your knowledge. This is terrifying stuff. Richard and Rigaud reveal how authoritarian regimes can use Pegasus software to spy on dissidents, human rights activists, journalistsand virtually anyone with a mobile phone.”
—David Zucchino, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Wilmington’s Lie

“Paced like a thriller, Pegasus reveals a manifested dystopia where repressive governments purchase digital bolt-cutters to break into the phones of their critics and adversaries. But it also details the power of investigative journalists to expose a 21st-century arms market whose wares are aimed at civil society.”
—Spencer Ackerman, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of Reign of Terror