Transcripts For CSPAN3 Laurent 20240704

Laurent richard is a paris based Award Winning documentary filmmaker who was named the 2018 european journalist of the year at the prix europa in berlin. Hes a founder of forbidden stories, a network of investigative journalists devoted to continuing the unfinished work of of murdered report reporters to ensure the work they died for is not buried with them. Is the author of numerous investigations into the lives of the tobacco industry, the excesses of the financial sector, and the clandestine actions of an aside in the cia since its creation, forbidden stories has received numerous awards, including a prestigious european press. Two george polk awards and an rss impact prize for the Pegasus Project published originally in 2021. Since rego is a french investigative journalist as editor of forbidden stories since 2019, she coordinated the Award Winning Pegasus Projects and cartel project, an international of assassinated mexican journalists, before joining forbidden stories, she directed feature length documentaries for french television. She has reported from tanzania uzbekistan, lebanon, qatar and bangladesh and speaking with them this afternoon when at clemson is the Charles Eisendrath director of Wallace House of the night. Wallace fellowships for journalists and, the livingston awards for young journalists at the university of michigan. Shes a knight was along and came to the university from National Public radio, where she was senior director strategy and content initiatives developing and guiding projects across broadcast, digital and events. Her career in journalism, newspapers, magazines and audio across a range of platforms as a reporter, she was a washington based correspond and for the New York Times and newsweek written about politics, social issues and demographic prior to her domestic correspondent work, she was an International Correspondent for newsweek, based in hong kong. She covered the former british colonies, returned chinese rule. In 1997, she moved into Digital Strategy and leadership. In 2008, as founding managing editor of the website, the root. Com launched for the Washington Post company with Henry Louis Gates jr. Shes also the former director of content strategy at the pew center on states. Please join me in welcoming into your living rooms and Sandrine Rigaud, Laurent Richard and lynette clemetson. Thank john and thank you everyone for joining from your living rooms, from your offices for your lunch tables, wherever you are today. And this is such a pleasure to be able to talk with two people who i respect, admire and consider colleagues lauren rashad and, Sandrine Rigaud and before we get started, this book came on tuesday. You can order it now. A lot of i know have been waiting for the pub day for this. And so it is wonderful to be able to hold it in our hands and for me to be able to hold up here for you. Pegasus is how a spy in your pocket threatens the end of privacy, dignity and democracy. So very serious title and some exciting things that were going be talking about today. So john introduced us, but i do think because were journalists, we want to be transparent. I know laura and sandrine, forbidden stories as was created here am sitting at Wallace House here on in ann arbor and lauren was a 20 1617 night wallace fellow the very first sentence that became forbidden was crafted right here at my desk with with lauren and. And ive gotten to know as forbidden stories has grown. And as weve watched them win awards and save lives with work. So its such a pleasure to. Talk to you both today. Thank hearing it. Thank you. Its wonderful to be there connected to the what i was for for the rest of the life. Work so before we jump in, john said said it in the intro but i want to before we jump into pegasus, give people grounding in forbidden stories forbidden stories is an International Collaborative investigative News Organization that you created. Lauren finish the work of reporters who have been threatened, jailed or killed. Can you talk to us a little bit about how forbidden stories works . And just to give people some insight to scoop on the busy lives of journalists up until maybe 30 seconds before we started, you both were in a call with journalists around the world talking about something that youre working on now. And so the work of forbidden stories is urgent and involves countries around the world, which if you can just tell people about what one. Yeah. Why you created it. Yeah its true. Its correct. Say, there is always a kind of fusion in what we are. And basically the problem we are facing. And this we made, we are bringing forbidden stories. The problem is the killing of journalists and the solution we do have is continuing the work. Journalists assassinated under threat of jail and make sure people get access to those very crucial information. People have been killed and then once people, criminals would with start understanding that it doesnt make sense to kill reporters because you would have 17 other reporters who will continue the work will expose what you wanted to. Id then maybe we will start dissuading those brains to think about should we kill someone if we want to silence the stories, maybe if we kill that person, maybe we will expose much more than expected what we wanted initially to silence. So thats the dna of forbidden stories. Its its based on something that we believe strongly. Its collateral journalism. Its its its another kind of parody. Its we have been trained to become lone wolves people to we have been trained to not share the awards when we arrive on the stage, we have been trained to react to to work very as very alone in all this process of, making, writing of stories. And so we are doing that. We are questioning the work of of assassinated of the threat of treating reporters in a collaborative way. And then we have publishing all of that in the same time. And we do work with six News Organization, 150 reporters. We start years ago, we did several, including the pegasus, which was slightly different than the original mission because there were this story and this investigation we didnt start with with a crime against committed against a reporter, but it starts with a leak that. We were having access to a leak that were contained in 50,000 phone numbers of people around the planet potentially targeted by a spyware called pegasus and tied to the death of at least one journalist. If not, yeah. Im of the leak. Yeah, yeah. Maybe something you want to tell more that. Yeah as laurel said, the Pegasus Project starts with a leak of 50,000 phone numbers that were potentially targeted by pegasus and what was interesting when we started on those numbers and work was huge because we just had numbers. We didnt any names attached to to those numbers. So the first our first work as journalists was to try to find out who who potentially targeted and mean it took us weeks. We did that with the help of great tech experts from Amnesty International security lab claudio and unca. Are described in the book, but it took us months to know and to gather enough to have an idea of the profile of the targets. And we discovered that many dozens and actually hundreds. We discovered quite quickly of of those people on the list were, journalists, journalists working in very complicated countries, journalists and mexico, journalists in morocco a journalist in azerbaijan, lahore found the name of a friend of his candidates, moldova. We found we found names of journalists in in. And we also found the name of a of a journalist who who was killed a few days after appearing on the list. Of course, we cannot deduce from that. He was, a mexican journalist, that he was fired on to to be murdered. But this raised a number of question and we also had the case of of many relatives, jamal khashoggi, appearing on the list. And that was quite big because we what we discovered working on on huge list was that the fiancee and the wife of jamal khashoggi, khashoggi had been spied on before and after his death and that spying might have led probably to or at least its a its the hypothesis that the information the saudis found in the phone of those two women might have led to twist. So this is this, of course, those are very important stories we published with all our partners on july 20 in july 2021. And i want to just just do a little tone setting. I we we have several journalists, several night. Wallace fellows in joining us. And i want to share and lauren youll be very proud of me. I keep these on my desk all the time. So from this, somebody came into my yesterday from a film crew and i and i sent him out with three of these to put on his camera boxes. So these are now making their way around the world with one more person. But killing the journalist wont kill the story. And i think that this is important and is tied to the work of pegasus because when we you know, when you were crafting the idea for what forbidden stories would become, it was about sort of synthesizing the journalist the danger to journalist in a way that people could understand and and what the mission of your organization is, which is not a human rights organization. Its not a competency. Its protecting journalism by doing journalism. And and, you know, this thing which you mentioned that people often think they can squash a story or incriminating information about themselves, their their governments by killing the journalists and forbidden stories was a brilliant idea because youre saying to people, okay, well, if you kill that journalist, theyve already stored their information with us. And we will coordinate to have 18 other journalists in or 50 other journalists and 18 countries continue. And the story will be bigger, more people will know about your corruption. And so with pegasus, you know, i think when it when the story broke, it was so and i just want to out to people that the introduction for the book is written by Rachel Maddow and and theres something that she has the intro that i just want to read because think tonally it will set the the environment for people who just approaching this topic of Pegasus Software fresh so these Rachel Maddow his words not mine where is your phone now that little device in your pocket likely operate as your personal calendar, your map and atlas your post office, your telephone, your scratch pad, your camera, basically as your trusted matthew smith, a professor of moral and political philosophy, wrote in 2016, that a mobile phone is, quote, an extension of the mind, there is simply principal distinction between processes occurring in the midi glob in your cranium and. The processes occurring in the little silicon, metal and glass block that is your iphone, the Solid State Drive storing photos in the phone are your memories in the same way that certain groups neurons storing images in your brain are your memories. Our minds extend beyond our heads and into our phones. Professor smith was making the case back then for a zone of privacy that extended to our mobile phone. If the state has no right to access the thoughts our head, why should it have right to access the pieces of . Our thoughts that we keep in our mobile phone . And i think thats such a powerful to think about, to get people sort of thinking about what you stumbled on this. A leak that included 50,000 numbers all the world tied to multiple governments, multiple state actors. And and what is i mean i think when i first read the story, when it broke theres a tendency to think, well, its terrible that these information is breached, but theyre in faraway places. When you think about as 50,000 numbers all over world, i think it becomes quite clear that this could be any us at any time. So can you talk about. When you first tell the story of how you first got the leak and how you realized that this was a huge, huge story . We were having access to that leak. So with both of organizations, forbidden stories and Amnesty International were granted access to that leak. And the day were summoned in. And i were starting understanding what was happening in front in front of eyes, watching, reading, thats list succession of phone numbers in many countries and at the same time understanding that those all those people were potentially by more than ten state Intelligence Units who were potentially or severely in head of state lawyers, human rights journalists, your neighbors, myself, everybody. Its the scale is was really scary for us. The scale just as scale and and the scale and the like. Okay we a lot of states using exactly the same spy world sold by one only one Company Private Companies Selling something to many state. Officially the narrative is we sell that to catch the bad guys to catch the terrorists and we are not antispyware journalist we not that we are just germany so thats what we were signing on attorneys the Global Global mission of that spyware against people who were having something in common, whether it was a journalist in mexico, a human rights lawyer in london, or someone as in rwanda, there, political opponents in rwanda, for instance, they were both representing danger to the poor, danger the guy the to a dictatorial to a tyrant. We find that tool the spyware pegasus as magic magic toy to expose the terror and to track the people and to collect information in a very efficient way. So, sandrine, i, i read was great interest the company that developed pegasus, an israeli company, nso, when it marketed pegasus as a lot of it was sort of using fear, peoples fear to, to sort of perpetrate or share the what they saw as the virtues of. So there was so much about well, with this spyware law enforced, it can catch the activity of pedophiles before they hurt children. And who wouldnt want to stop pedophiles and was how they talked about the use of the spyware. But in fact, as lauren said, wasnt really being used in that way. And it was being used by government leaders to surveil people who were a threat, government power. So how did you see how did you see as you learned about, Pegasus Software . How did you come to understand what was for and who it was for . You mentioned . The nso company. What was interesting when we started working on nso is that the founders, nso shalev were you and marina are quite talkative people. Theyre sort of you is a businessman, he is not. And he was not in the spyware. At the beginning, he created many startup and hes a hes good seller, hes a very good seller. So he always pretended present nso as a as the the best company. The company was the best practices in that that sells spyware. So he explains. Many times doing interviews that pegasus was sold to government not only to fight terrorists, to fight criminals adored, to give the example of el chapo, which, according to him was arrested thanks to pegasus. So i mean, that was the narrative and he was giving to to everybody and what was interesting when we started on that list is the the scale of the misuse. We discovered there had been some cases that had been documented before the Pegasus Project on some. Yeah misuse or in some case of a journalist who was infected. We knew that cameron there is a very famous mexican journalist, had been infected by pegasus, but nobody realized. I think we published the Pegasus Project that the scale of the the lies of the of nso group. You were speaking the moment we realized that what we were dealing with was big. I remember then one of the way we we could discover who was behind the numbers was to cross check our numbers for numbers the numbers of our of our colleagues with the list to see if we could find people in that list very randomly and when lauren did and when i did that, we discovered we we were in touch physically with. People who had been probably spied on, lauren discovered, the name of this journalist from azerbaijan, been working on gadgets moldova. And i discovered the name of horik carrasco. Hes a journalist from proceso, mexican. And at the time i saw his name. We were actually in contact working on the cartel project, mexican journalist who were assassinated. We were following and pursuing the work and he did on the murder of the friend of of of his Regina Martinez and we basically discovered that we were in touch on the very sensitive investigation with somebody who might have been spied on. So at that moment, you really realize how big this is, how close is to you and that to touching something very dangerous. Yeah. And how so how did you in those moments when you realized that that lauren you with khadija and sandrine you with her. Hey that you had been exposed to this Pegasus Software through your connections what did it make you feel about the phone, your hand that you were using to communicate with all of these journalists . The world on the most sensitive of stories, the thing is that we decided to use any more funds to investigate for this specific investigation, and we can not reveal what of devices we were using, but we had to be. So we were able for Amnesty International security secrets in our they set up some protocols, highly encrypted to a platform devices that we can not talk about. So we can be safe and in the meantime, coordinate a large group of journalists, aide to journalists from all around the world, but true that the only thing you dont want is to be the next on the list. If you if we were in fact that would have been the end of the project. The danger for sources for team members, for so for source protection reasons for the the sake of the project, we need to to set up and to i extremely highly encrypted media to to communicate. The other thing i wanted to say is when we were frequently in that situation, we were telling some people, including friends or colleagues, that they have been targeted and that we found traces of infection on their device. And that moment is not easy its of course, way more difficult them than for us to who were telling that bad news to them. But you realize by by that how all of this this is a traumatic experience and how its difficult for them because now know thats your life and secrets and. All your conversation with your friend, all your intimacy is already into the hands of someone who is surveilling you for some years, maybe some months, some. And will one day use that information you. So yeah and thats something i think what is really new with it because this project that so far a lot of investigation about was civilians were very impressive but mostly about the metadata like surveilling the communication from people around the globe but the pegasus is is a very different thing. Its a military weapons use against civilians and that is and its extremely expensive. I want to make sure people people heard that clearly because i do think its important. Explain what the extent of what it means to find Pegasus Software on your phone you said its a military weapon used against civilians and so for the people who had pegasus on their phones what would that mean what did the software have access. So once in your phone that software has access to Everything Everything that is in your phone and this means your emails your personal photos is your location your Google Search history. Everything i mean, when you start thinking of what youre putting in your phone, it means your is is the place where you keep your secrets things that nobody else even in your family know about you. So, i mean, this extremely invasive and. The worst thing thats true is you dont have to click on anything to to to be infected in the order of pegasus needed you to click on the link and i mean at least this could look for for some of the people or you could have the feeling you did something wrong but with the new versions of pegasus and what we the zero click attacks because basically you dont have to click anything to to get hacked you dont have to i mean you do nothing wrong and might be infected so i mean this is what pegasus its its its a very totally invisible spyware that gives access to to all the content of your life to the people who want to spy on you. So thats the worst that could happen to anybody. And where are you . You are an investigative journalist working in a in a authoritarian regime, having no sources who you need to protect. This is of a catastrophe. How long did it take you to from receiving the leaked information, the 50,000 phone numbers to publishing the story around one year, around one year, the first part of the work was down within the newsroom of forbidden stories with padma, cecile and, many of journalists who were staff of forbidden stories. We were investigating the leak, trying to identify who is behind those, those phone numbers, then working closely with the the team of Amnesty International, then starting to talk to some partners to explain, do we have that . We were in the middle of the covid crisis so very to travel and in the meantime we so we did some Conference Call on platform to to pitch that the Washington Post to the guardian and order to explain we really have to meet because we really have Something Big into our hands we dont want to be alone that we want to investigate that this with you and we cannot tell you more than that line. So we should travel and visit you. And we should we should meet all of us in paris soon. So during that project, during that. Sure. That involves a lot of journalists. We we managed to meet in person with all the journalists in paris despite the travel restrictions. And that was so. Monica, how many people did you pull together around 18 journalists. Zero . Yeah, 88 zero. And so we did we did work. And that was possible. So because we met person and thats the key question, the ball thats kind of in collaborative investigative investigation, you need to trust the person but to trust the person you need to meet the person you can do many zoom calls or the duty calls or things like that but its not that easy to to run such a project so you need to know well the person divide the work to spread the work to organize this and to publish at the same time. Yeah. And its to mention that the, one of the strategies of forbidden stories is that when you do a collaborative youre, very intentionally selecting partners in large News Organizations, Different Countries and the agreement of all of the partners is to publish on the same day so that no one organization is scooping organization but the information is being made public globally on large. At the same time, is that correct . Yeah. And i think actually not very difficult to get them agree on that. Its in the interest of everyone to to to have that. So of course there are quite a difficult conversation discussions before publications to get to agree on the specific date a specific hour because we were working with journalists in india but also in us and the time difference is quite huge. So you have all those details to to organize which is which is the case in any investigation we are coordinating in that specific case. Of course all was more complicated given the the security protocol we had. I mean we, couldnt speak with our phones in a room. We couldnt use our profession of computers. So we had a specific different system to communicate. You can imagine how at some this becomes very complicated manage but had to be very creative. Um, at the beginning when when we started as the host said contacting people we wanted work with, including people whom we knew were on the list because this was also the case we were telling in the book the story seven spanish, hungarian journalists from direct 36 who was doing an amazing work in hungary and denouncing corruption, denouncing a criminal organizations, denouncing yeah, corrupt politician and and so he he was appearing on list we knew him and wanted to include him because thought that the story was huge in hungary and we needed people on the ground to work it. But how do you contact somebody who might be spied on themselves in the audience spied on . Yeah. And to ask you to help you investigate. Exactly. We had to go through bastien obermeyer and frederico obermeyer from suddeutsche zeitung. Who knew him. Very well. Who managed to convince him to meet in hungary and then him to meet without a phone. And so yeah at that point you start becoming a bit paranoid and describes it very well in the book we did an interview of him. But yeah, i mean coordination and collaboration are complicated, but in that specific case it was it was a very very specific scheme and it required a lot of creativity. But we, we had the help and this is important underline of a secure the security lab of Amnesty International, which set up this very sophisticated security. We were using. What what happened after the story was published, what did you hope would happen and what actually in response . No we knew that is going to be it was supposed to be big, but we didnt expect such a tsunami of of i dont know the right answer. A few seconds, the communication. Edward snowden say thats going to be the story of the year. 5 minutes later we were receiving maybe ten or 20 requests from people say, can you tell me if my number is on your list and . Two days later we were having hundreds of that kind of free press, not only us, but all our partners around the world and and then we were having some requests from policemen, Intelligence Services were asking were waze that list, would you be okay to at least to for so we can inform the victims. So we say no, we just from that is we want to give you any documents or is what we are printing and and thats it. And, and so the pressure was high because. We were in the meantime in the last before the publication and in communication with lawyers of the nso group. So it was extremely intense. Todays not only be full of big asian but right after because was not only a one day publication, it was a it was almost like two or three or four days with a revelation of head of states and the phone numbers were appearing on the list as well. And, and the other thing is that we publishing stories on outside of forbidden stories and with the partners but Amnesty International did something quite i it was really a kind of revolution in the how to defeat cyber surveillance attack they were making public and available their methodology to let any citizens of the world to check their phones were infected by pegasus. And so what we saw immediately that most the guys from Intelligence Services from western countries were using the Technology Invented by those to young geek in germany who were yeah big brains creating that magic tool and yeah that was a huge impact the french president was asking the minister of defense for israel to visit, to come immediately to after that the us authorities decided put the nso group on a blacklist at the Supreme Court in india decided to start investigation same at the european level and so on. Yeah. So the impact huge and i guess the question i had as soon as i went i was following every turn of this story and there was so much scrutiny and attention on the nso group. I wondered the whole time, you know, okay so theyre in the spotlight and theyre on the and what other software is that we dont know about from the that we dont know about yet and how are the people who run the nso group who are their connections and where is their money and you know its like you you you managed to stop one point but it seems and widespread what whats saying is extremely true i mean from Many Companies what was happening to so might have have been perceived as a business opportunity. I mean it was creating new markets probably and we heard some other companies trying to pitch to some of the countries nsa was selling to so i mean and theres so is not in a very good position like right now the and the ceo shalev who is not anymore in place many people have left the company and the the situation is really bad. They are not the only one on the market. There are. Other Companies Selling the same type of spyware, probably less sophisticated until now. But we know that technology is is is moving very quickly. I dont know how much time they need to reach the level of sophistication of of nso. But weve heard for example the summer of journalist greek journalist who was who was spied on and hacked by another spyware called predator. There are many of others, as we know, that probably that the states some some of the big china, russia have similar software. So its its of course very complex to to control and we cannot i mean the the end of nso if it happened is not going to solve the problem for sure. Yeah. So i want to encourage people to put their, their questions, their questions in, the chat and i will are entering their questions. I want to ask how do you. Or how do you arrive at a place for yourselves as journalists and editors and organs of collaborative investigations. When a story this is done and thats problem with the investigations never and sometimes this is when you when you publish the first story because you will have news coming to you. New information then and and and so this is also the advice we gave or the discussion we have partners is that sometimes we have to anticipate and to preserve some space the end some pages in the newspapers because we will have a lot of follow up reaction and maybe new whistleblowers will come new information in that case, its a never the story that because project in that case we learned for instance from another newspaper as was outside the consortium that major parts now that the government of france were running some forensic analysis on their side and find traces of infection on for current members of ministers of the government and so that was additional confirmation of of all the traces of infection on a high level political in france. So and then so its its an its a never ending story the so thats i mean at some point we to to decide whats reducing the resources that we assigned to one one project thats our goal is is always designed with a timeframe we we want to investigate then we open to the partners then we run we coordinate to the investigation and then we synchronize all the communication with the distribution, with a plan of distribution. And then there is some follow up. And then as an organization of forbidden stories, we need as well move to all the cases. We are here to continue the work of associated reporters. So in the meantime, we need to go back to our main mission as well and to and to do our work. But i would imagine that pegasus reporting is something thats always in the back of your mind with i mean every time because by the very nature of the of forbidden stories means that every you start an investigation and it is around Sensitive Information involving who are in danger and people enemies and so how are you constantly thinking about the of your communications and how to both pursue your work that is meant to keep safe without endanger during them because theres been some infiltration even of of of your network of confidences. Yeah as as investigative journalists. I think both of us were already aware that could be a risk. But, of course, working pegasus, that risk very concrete. So we had to change habits. We had to be extremely careful on the way we communicate, not only on that project, but but even on a, on a personal level and, we knew that the the consequences could be huge only for us, but mainly for the people we were in touch with in in countries where freedom of expression is, is, is not. So we were extremely careful. And i think we we kept those habits after the Pegasus Project. We have we have other devices we can speak on when when things are very sensitive and we all whatever the investigation is, i think we always that we could be some point spied on. So this is really something take into account in every investigation. So we have a couple of questions want to say because we do have some journalist many journalists listening that one of the things that i appreciate the book is for those of us who are really interested in process. The book is great and walking through what is process of coordinating an investigation that is this with so many, with so much mystery and secrecy and insidiousness attached it and so youve done a great job in the book of making it feel a spy novel only its only its a real only its a real story. Maria ressa, whos a Knight Wallace fellow, asks, you mentioned that you work with big outlets as partners. Whats the space in forbidden stories for newsrooms or freelancers who might want to collaborate with you . We do work with small newsroom with we dont only work with the large one. And i think thats the diversity of the newsroom is really something that we that is extremely for us so we do work with a small newsroom in hungary same people were infected with by pegasus but we do work with the western which is a very large newsroom. So its important to to collaborate. The most important for us is to collaborate. People who believe collaborative journalism and knows how to practice and to do that, which is not that. And make sure not only the journalists will, but the editor and the leadership of the management of the newspaper will understand and will give enough resources and time to germanys to collaborate to such intense and time consuming project about. We usually dont work with freelancers because its its a difficult process we have to maintain confidentiality and we have be the one pitching the project to the newspapers and and the newspapers can ask freelancer to join the project. So could be a possible way but the other way is not possible because have to maintain we have to we always ask people to send nda before any kind of conversation and we send the nda not only with a with a journalist but with the organization itself. So and, and, and the thing as well about the, the Business Model of the collaboration that we, we want to make sure that the of the management of News Organization will give enough time and means for the person to travel. So all offers and all the rest of the group can share resources and take and take advantage that so we can have for the for the benefit of the of the reader strong, powerful stories where you have a people who were checking any single sentence. And i there are two more question is here are two questions that are more broadly about forbidden stories. But i want to ask this thats specific to the pegasus. You mentioned Amnesty International several times during your talk. It seems like their role was crucial in your investigation. How do you navigate the boundary is between activism, which is what amnesty does and journalism, which is what you do. Concerning amnesty, we didnt work Amnesty International itself. We worked with the security lab of amnesty, and they provided us only technical supports. So that was the boundary didnt have any word and on the editorial of the investigation and so their work was technical but it was crucial we dont have as journalists the expertise they had. So clearly we would not have been able to work and reveal what we did without technical help because they were the only one almost. And citizen lab does the same thing as well. But i think beside amnesty and citizen that nobody has this level of expertise they were the only one who could see traces of pegasus in the film because. They had to work on that for so long. I mean, Claudio Guarnieri from the security lab has worked and on pegasus since 2016. So and the first time they discovered pegasus quite randomly trying to understand what was happening in the phone in an activist and and discovering traces. So the more phones they had the more traces they found. It was it was like a puzzle. They were building a tool, compiling all the traces of pegasus they have found in all the phones they have analyzed so far and they were and so it was an evolving tool. But thanks to that specific methodology, we we were able to find traces of pegasus. Otherwise it, it, it was quite impossible and it was crucial in our investigation because. We had to prove that the people appearing on the lists had actually had actually been hacked, because otherwise its just a list of phone numbers you have. You the evidence and they were bringing the evidence. And of course, we also to further review their methods to buy another organization which which is what we did before publication contacting citizen lab, who confirmed everything amnesty, security lab found. So i think its a very good question because there should be a boundary, but in the case of the Pegasus Project, it was a very very clear boundary from the beginning. And i think its an interesting model because as News Organizations try to figure how to Cover Technology security as it relates to National Security and privacy issues. Increasingly, News Organizations to partner with people who are technology, who may not be based in newsrooms too, and to be able to make those partnerships to cover bad actors. And so its a very complex hearted, complicated process all the way around. Laurel, there are some questions, forbidden stories and one comes from a knight. Wallace fellow who asks if could talk more broadly about forbidden stories, about the journey, the motivation behind creating it, and what you learned in the last few years since the fellowship while running it. How does it differ from the work at a regular outlet. It was a long journey and still looks to me like it was already so. We are five years old now, but actually its i wasnt the in the house where you are not. I learned six years ago starting from from scratch probably done stories with this idea that i sent in my application and the title of my application was defeating censorship. Censorship with collaborative and in that, in that application was also describing the saved books network. We should have something where we should propose to do it. Its at risk to protect the Ongoing Investigation and in case something happened we continue their work and they can let the public know that they already protect their own Ongoing Investigation and i learned so not only during the fellowship during the fellowship i learned about how start a company were to register or how to raise funds how to become an entrepreneur and i was just a journalist. I was an editor so false i was used to manage some teams for 4 to 10 years before joining the fellowship. But i really learned how become an entrepreneur taking all the day so and be still being a journalist sometimes be a bit sad not be on the field, but still that vibe of and that passion for journalism is still driving me. But i really learned. I think honestly like five or six different job in the past six years and and its not that easy and its so two things, two trends for the question, it was easier than expecting that. I was expecting about convincing newspapers to be part of that. When we started daphne project as as i we discussed with the guardian, with reuters, with other they were all on board immediate because the concept is simple because i think as well i was having 20 years of experience in and we were teaming up with the good person were adding some experience in collaborative journalism. What was difficult and what is always difficult is that as an entrepreneur you need raise funds, you need to take decision, you spend your day taking between either 10 to 20 decisions or and and make sure that we have a we have 18 full time employees and we do work with 150 reporters. So we were so and its a nonprofit. Its not a for profit. Its a nonprofit and the Business Model is to raise funds from philanthropic funds. So my job is to read to raise funds. So to manage the team to make sure that we we have progressing from one project to another project we are managing that will we are and and our journalism need to match with a very high standards to to make it possible so so so what i learn as well is that the concept is good, the team is important. And so so you need to to team up day after day with brilliant people to make it possible we will have different skills and you try to build that dream team with someone and other will love all of them will be very different. But we are all aligned the mission and with vision and what we are who are who we are not. We are not an advocacy group. We are just journalists. So this is the boundary were talking about. What kind of investigation are doing . We are not a stage are just forbidden stories. We are only the work of us as reporters in which way we are doing that. So. So yeah. Its all we we are growing up and and and and yeah and thats a fantastic journey to become an entrepreneur. Sometimes its stressful, but its worth it. I love that right at the end here is we have to close your say in the sentence are growing up youve grown so fast forbidden stories doing life changing work. There is a question here about how the average news can support the work of forbidden stories. So maybe should drop the website link in the chat here for people who want to learn more forbidden stories and john has put information in for how people can buy the pegasus book. Yeah, which a really great read. I mean i talk to you all the time lauren what . I dont know. When you had time to write book, but it is its a really good one and im so happy that literally our local bookseller is carrying it. I wish you both well in continuation of your work. It is not an exaggeration in any way to say that the work you do is vital to the lives of journalists. Its such important and the mission is so crisp and clear and i wish you continued and im so proud to be connected to forbidden stories and look forward to continuing Work Together and well turn it back over to you just want to to john and to and to to thank you so much for that. Thank you so much for editing. Austin promoting the book of work. Whats forbidden stories is an thats so crucial. So yeah and i went to the literati bookstore many times i how unique this place is and thats just fantastic to be connected even if we are now in france and new in the us. But for that very important element and i and and all the team of forbidden stories i hope i could one day. Thank you very much for. Thank you thank you all and more. Im truly humbled your words. Were very lucky as a as a small Midwestern College town bookstore to have such ability to to highlight such Pivotal International work as represented by this and your book. People can find more about forbidden stories in the chat. Theres a link to forbidden stories dot org. Theres also links to purchased pegasus from from literati lawrence and jean hope to have both in literati bookstore in the not too distant future, but we wish you well. And lynnette, thank you so for joining us. Were so pleased to partner Wallace House in all facets and. To all of our viewers, thank you so much for taking time out of your lunch hour to join us or whatever time it is, wherever youre tuning in. And we look forward to seeing you, our next event. Take care. Have a great and go to blu