we were able to find some thanks to the brilliant work of amnesty international security lab, that isf people who are able to set up a methodology and protocol to go into the device and find out if there were some traces of infection. so that is really what, asjournalists, we need when we are publishing such important stories and this is why we, during all the past months, were able to approach some people telling them that we have good reasons to believe they were surveilled and convincing them to agree to do a forensic investigation into the device and then we were able to find some traces a lot of times. paul, amnesty international did play this crucial role in analysing some of the actual phones that you obtained from people on the list. as i understand it, they were able to detect traces of the pegasus software on 37 phones and you got hold of 67 to test, which is quite a high hit rate. i wonder paul, though, amnesty is a campaigning charity. it is rather unusual, isn't it, for a journalist to be outsourcing this forensic work to a third party? did you feel they were impartial en

amnesty international security lab is run by one of the world experts in cyber security.ke an important point, andrea, that we were reliant on the work they were doing and that is why we got both their methodology and the sample of their forensics on devices peer reviewed by citizen lab, which is a research group very well respected at the university of toronto and they concluded that their methods were sound. i mean, were you concerned yourselves, paul, as you were dealing with this, that your own phones were being hacked? how do you even go about talking to people if you feel their phones have been compromised? i just wonder what are the nuts and bolts of that conversation? how do you actually reach out to somebody when you think that their phone has been hacked? it is incredibly hard. you have to have a face—to—face meeting and doing that in the midst of a pandemic is even more difficult. logistically speaking, i think this is probably the hardest project that i have ever been involved in. when talking to colleagues, when talking to editors here at the guardian, when s

the when she was using at the time of khashoggi's murder, dana priest sent them to amnesty international's security labalysis. a few hours later, while on the way back to the airport, she received a call with the results. >> i guess pretty bad news. i checked both the uploads. the new one -- the auld one has some traces. on the sixth of octob, 2018 -- followed by some additional traces on the ninth and the 12th, which as you know, pretty timely. >> yeah. wow. she has already been infected so it is great you are finding it. >> there was no proof that pegasus had been used to target one of the people closest to jamal khashoi aroundhe time of his death. in a statement, nso oup said its technology was t associated i anyway -- in any way with khashoggi's murder. in addition, frontline forbidden stories and the partner news outlets are investigating cases of journalists, human rights activists, politicians, and others in more than 50 countries who may have been targeted for surveillance. amy: that video report is part of an upcoming frontline documentary produced with forbidden stories to air on pbs. that re

least 65 business executives, 85 human rights activists, and several heads of state. amnesty international security lab found that 2 women close to slain, saudi columnists, dramatic shogi, were also targeted by the spyware, including his fiance. soon after his death in 2018, edward snowden re start up at the end, a so group may have also been used by shogi killers. how did they know what his plans and intentions were? how do they decide that he was someone they needed to ask again, who is worth the risk? and the reality is the head bugs, one of his few friends and contacts using software created by israeli company. and you know, we don't know the chain of consequence because this company will never comment on this. as in the can show you case. the recent report says, authoritarian governments are months of those who abuse the software, which is sold by n s o. while the report did not list clients, it said many were clustered in 10 countries, including as or by shan, bahrain hungry india, context on mexico, morocco, rolanda, saudi arabia, and the united arab emirates, amnesty international and forbidden

i would like to thank amnesty international and the security lab and the guardian who contacted me, withiew to ask me to submit my phone to the investigation. i was lucky this time. there was a feeling of vulnerability. i always expected the saudi regime to hack my phone. they try to 2014 to hack my twitter account and they were successful. but after 2018 and the murder of the murder -- journalist, all saudi exiles felt vulnerable. we heard for the first time about nso, when in exile in canada, through citizen lab, and thank you for citizen lab to alerting us to the fact his phone was hacked. i took my own precautions. i paid a lot of money to protect my phone. but there was no guarantee. i even went on a course to teach me how to protect my devices. obviously, there's no protection against powerful and malicious programs. it was expected. it was only a matter of time. there was a feeling of vulnerability, intrusion. anger. but also, i was lucky, according to the evidence, the attempt was not successful. however, it was expected, and all of us in exile as saudi's who work on human rights