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
Whistle-blower Edward Snowden
Henrique Casinhas/SOPA Images/ZUMA Wire/Alamy
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 …
