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toptal | 4 years ago

So, PBS seems to have done a documentary on this, which was just released an hour ago: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=a2BIYWHdfTE

Did all of the media outlets organize together for months in advance to be able to release everything today? The content and production quality makes it seem like this release was planned months in advance.

Also, assuming they did, what’s the process all of these news organizations go through in order to plan such a release on the same exact day? The planning of the release in such a coordinated way is almost questionable itself, though it would be good to get insight into this.

discuss

order

alex_duf|4 years ago

Hey, former software engineer at the Guardian here. Yes the news outlets are collaborating on stories too big for a single one.

The last I can remember was the Panama papers, which followed a very similar process. I seem to remember they all synchronized through the ICIJ [1], and more or less each journalist would cover their own territory / domain. Then they agreed on a reasonable date to release the news.

They shared more than just information, but also technical infrastructure to do the investigation.

[1]: https://www.icij.org/

toptal|4 years ago

So, if the ICIJ coordinated the last one, then who coordinated this one? It seems like Forbidden Stories is the main organizer though they also make it seem like “The Pegasus Project” is the organizer as well, which seems rather confusing.

commoner|4 years ago

> The investigation by the Guardian and 16 other media organisations suggests widespread and continuing abuse of NSO’s hacking spyware, Pegasus, which the company insists is only intended for use against criminals and terrorists.

Usually, joint investigations between multiple media outlets are released in a planned fashion. It's rare to see 17 news outlets collaborate on one story, but when "more than 180 journalists" have been targeted with Pegasus, it may be that the targeted journalists worked together on this investigation, using their exploited devices as evidence.

WarOnPrivacy|4 years ago

In the US, journalists were long reluctant to discuss Gov surveillance abuses in any meaningful way - even when they were targeted.

Snowden basically dragged news orgs into reporting it. After that initial rush tho, reporting was largely muted. Most DoJ and other abuses were minimally covered if at all.

That improved somewhat during the next administration but authoritarian deference still seemed in play to me.

eXpl0it3r|4 years ago

The case around Jamal Khashoggi is also documented quite well in the documentary: "The Dissident"

It was that movie/documentary where I first heard of Pegasus and how it had been used by the Saudi government.