American voters have made a clear and undeniable choice. Donald Trump will be their 47th president come January. They have chosen him despite — or because of — his vows to go after his political adversaries and his deep-seated animosity towards the news media, which he labels as the "enemy of the people."
During Trump’s first administration, at least eight journalists from various outlets, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, had their records sought by the Justice Department. This was not entirely new: the Obama administration paved the way for this kind of abuse. However, given the intensity of Trump's attacks and the power Americans have given him by granting Republicans a majority in both chambers of Congress, working as a journalist is likely to become increasingly perilous in the United States, with surveillance risks reaching unprecedented levels. That was reinforced this month when a bipartisan bill called the PRESS Act (Protect Reporters from Exploitative State Spying Act) — which would have, among other things, limited the seizure of reporters’ data without their knowledge — failed in the U.S. Senate after unanimously passing in the House. Trump had railed against the legislation.
It is crucial for journalists to anticipate these risks by taking greater digital precautions to protect their sources. Most important, it is essential to remind Trump and his circle that the U.S. remains a democracy, and that democracies should never spy on journalists, even in the name of national security.
Here’s why.
The concept of "national security" is inherently broad. It can be easily exploited to encompass so wide a range of justifications for surveillance as to swallow the entire principle of press freedom. Most citizens lack the means to assess such justifications, as governments frequently operate without transparency. When a government claims to monitor a journalist for national security reasons, the public is often left in the dark about the true motives behind such actions.
In 2021 and 2022, Greek media uncovered several cases of spying on investigative journalists, in the name of national security, by the Greek National Security Agency, a body under the direct authority of the prime minister. Dubbed “PredatorGate” after the name of the spyware, the scandal prompted the government to controversially amend a law so as to deny individuals the right to know whether they have been the subject of surveillance for reasons of national security. Alarmingly, it was revealed that surveillance files on several journalists were destroyed on the same day a complaint was filed with the Supreme Court, making it difficult — if not impossible — to uncover the official reason for the surveillance.
In July 2021, the “Pegasus Project,” a global investigation I supervised as editor in chief of Forbidden Stories, revealed that more than 200 journalists had been selected for targeting by their governments using Pegasus, a sophisticated spyware that can remotely infiltrate smartphones and access all its data — or even activate the device's camera and microphone. This wasn’t limited to authoritarian regimes like those in Azerbaijan and Bahrain; in Mexico, India, and Hungary — countries considered democratic — numerous journalists had been spied on for years by the authorities.
Governments generally denied the use of Pegasus, despite indisputable forensic evidence. Hungary eventually acknowledged its use in the surveillance of investigative journalist Szabolcs Panyi for “national security” reasons, but the specific justifications were never made public. The investigation into the incident by Hungary’s National Authority for Data Protection and Freedom of Information — whose head is appointed by the government — exonerated the Hungarian authorities, but its report is classified … until 2051.
Many of the journalists spied on by their governments were investigating corruption and abuses of power. In Mexico, a journalist probing political figures tied to the Panama Papers — a global investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists into the offshore finance industry — was targeted. In India, founders of a prominent investigative outlet exposing the Modi government’s wrongdoings were also surveilled for years. In Hungary, more than a dozen journalists working on sensitive issues, including Panyi, faced similar treatment.
It’s therefore not difficult to view Pegasus as a tool for intimidating and silencing those who dare to hold power to account. Journalists are targeted not because they pose a genuine threat to national security but because they are investigating issues or actions that powerful actors want to keep hidden. The elected governments that allow such surveillance are often corrupt, populist in nature, and in the process of sliding into authoritarianism.
Democracies must not only refrain from spying on their journalists in the name of national security, but must also refuse to sell cyber-surveillance tools to regimes that violate human rights and spy on journalists and rights activists. Yet they often give priority to business and realpolitik instead. Companies such as NSO in Israel, Nexa in France, and FinFisher in Germany have exported highly sophisticated spyware to some of the world's most repressive regimes, with the acquiescence of their governments.
It is imperative that democracies resist such practices and instead safeguard both journalists and free expression. This can be done by drawing up a blacklist of countries that ignore press freedom and lock up — or even kill — journalists, and prohibiting the sale of cyber-espionage tools to them. Some private companies pride themselves on having such lists, but what’s needed is government action. The Biden administration’s blacklisting of a number of cyber-espionage companies such as NSO and Candiru, another Israeli firm, has started to shift the landscape of this industry, compelling a few companies to reassess their practices.
Take, for instance, the blacklisting of the Canadian company Sandvine in February for supplying Egypt with technology that was used to facilitate censorship and the targeting of human rights defenders and journalists. Major companies like Microsoft and Zoom halted their partnerships with Sandvine, which, in turn, began a wave of layoffs as it grappled with the fallout. By September, Sandvine announced that it had ceased operations in 32 countries and was planning to exit another 24, citing an overwhelming “threat to digital rights” in those nations.
Democracy has never felt so fragile in so many parts of the world. The surveillance of journalists is both a tool and a symptom of this vulnerability. Leaders who aim to strengthen democratic principles globally must keep this in mind and reaffirm their commitment to press freedom. At its best, journalism can undermine and expose corrupt officials and regimes — which only serves to enhance the very national security they claim to value so highly.
