So Ed, could you just give us your initial reaction to the findings of the Pegasus project?
This is everywhere, this is an industry that should not exist.
We're seeing what the NSO Group – which is
sort of one of the most famous of these guys guys – is up to, but the NSO group is only one company of many and
if one company smells this bad what's happening with all the others?
I mean, when I look at this,
what the Pegasus project has revealed is a sector where their only product
are infection vectors, right? They don't ... they're not security products,
they are not providing any kind of protection, any kind of prophylactic, they don't make vaccines,
the only thing they sell is the virus and I think saying that they only sell this to government
doesn't make that better when you look at who the targets are that have just been revealed.
There's been a number of surveillance leaks and disclosures over the years,
no doubt the most significant was yours. How do you think this one compares?
This is certainly one of the most important,
you know, and these are major newspapers,
major institutions that we rely on.
This is peeling back a curtain that we have never seen
done before, this level of granularity.
In the past, you've called smartphones a spy in your pocket.
Do you think this confirms that?
I think it's actually worse.
When I said they are a spy in your pocket,
it's the potential, it's the capability, it's the fact that, you know,
these things are talking to the mobile phone network and tracking your locations, you've got, you know,
Facebook spying on you, but these are largely commercial programs for commercial purposes.
What we see now are people creating an industry to hack those phones and go beyond the level of spying
that already previously we knew existed and now they're actually taking control of that phone
fully and turning it against the people who bought and paid for it but no longer truly own it
and the thing is these phones are clones, when we're talking about something like an iPhone,
they're all running the same software around the world so if they find a way to hack one iPhone,
they've found a way to hack all of them and they are doing that and they are selling that.
And that is a knowing intentional wilful attack on critical infrastructure that every one of us rely on.
It doesn't matter what flag you live under, it doesn't matter what language you speak,
we all have skin in this game.
What needs to happen now?
We have to stop this. Inaction is no longer an option.
If you don't do anything to stop the sale of this technology, it's not just going to be 50,000 targets,
it's going to be 50 million targets and it's going to happen much more quickly than any of us expect.
The way we do that is to halt the trade around this technology, it doesn't matter
who you are, it doesn't matter what you do, your position isn't going to protect you.
If you're a minister, prime minister, guess what? You are on the list.
You're a supreme court justice, you are on the list.
If you're an ordinary person, guess what? You are on the list too.
All you have to do is come to the
attention of somebody with money to pay any one of these companies
for the tools to break into your phone.
For people reading these stories and watching this interview, the answer to
the question of what can they do personally to protect themselves and their own phone
seems like it's nothing.
The solution here for ordinary people
is to work collectively.
This is not a problem that we want to try and solve individually because
it's you v a billion dollar company.
What can you do to protect yourself from Google?
A little but you can't solve the problem.
It's the same when we're talking about the NSO Group.
You can make yourself safer, right, but we will not be safe until we change the game.
Thank you very much. – Thank you.