Ronan Farrow on surveillance spyware: ‘It threatens democracy and freedom’

The investigative journalist takes on the shadowy world of invasive surveillance technology in frightening new documentary Surveilled

In 2017, while reporting a story on Harvey Weinstein that would, along with a New York Times report, kick off the #MeToo movement, the investigative journalist Ronan Farrow found himself the target of covert surveillance.

The efforts to suppress investigations into Weinstein’s history of sexual abuse, for which the Hollywood mogul paid the Israeli private intelligence firm Black Cube, were mostly old-school: front companies and false identities, hired subcontractors staking out buildings or tailing targets, gumshoes eavesdropping on meetings. Black Cube was able to obtain some of Farrow’s geolocation data from his phone, thus tracking his movements, but the majority of its operations were contained to the analog world of traditional surveillance.