and by the frontline journalism fund with major support from jon and jo ann hagler.nd additional support from laura debonis. ♪ ♪ (sirens blaring in distance) >> when you have your hands on a technology like this, the power must be quite intoxicating. you can get into the phone of most people in the world. and no one's looking over your shoulder. (distant sirenlaring) >> laurent (speaking french): ♪ ♪ (multiple international journalists saying "pegasus") >> it's like a pern over your shoulder, a person who will see what you are seeing, a person who will watch what you are watching, your emails, your encrypted communication, everything. so once you are infected, you're trapped. ♪ ♪ >> it was against so many people in civil society who clearly were not terrorists or criminals. and you got a real sense that it was a free-for-all. >> de acuerdo con la pesquisa acabada por "the washington post," "the guardian," "le monde" y otros medios... >> a joint investigation by 17 news outlets and forbidden stories... >> activists, lawyers and journalists are reportedly among those w

and by the frontline journalism fund with major support from jon and jo ann hagler.nd additional support from laura debonis. ♪ ♪ >> our phones are not just our phones. we call them phones, but they're not phones, they're computers. and they're like extensions of our body. they're with us all of the time. and if they are turned into a surveillance device, i don't think it's an exaggeration to say this was something that even george orwell in "1984" couldn't imagine. ♪ ♪ it's beyond science fiction. ♪ ♪ >> laurent richard (in french): ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ (multiple international journalists saying "pegasus") >> this technology, it's so far ahead of government regulation and even of public understanding of what's happening out there. ♪ ♪ >> all of us suspected that if nso group was giving authoritarian and repressive regimes such a powerful instrument of surveillance, that it was pretty likely that this technology would be abused. but none of us had been able to prove it on a systemic scale. ♪ ♪ >> de acuerdo con la pesquisa acabada por "the washington post," "the guardian," "le mon