On April 28, 2026, the International Federation of Journalists, the world’s largest organization of journalists, published a landmark research study titled “Global Surveillance of Journalists: Technical Mapping of Tools, Tactics and Threats“, which reveals how journalists around the world are subject to systematic control and monitoring through increasingly sophisticated digital surveillance technologies.
The study documents how practices once confined to individual businesses within a state have evolved into a global industry involving commercial spyware vendors, telecommunications infrastructure, and weak or even non-existent oversight. In particular, over the past decade, digital surveillance targeting journalists has transformed from fragmented, state-led monitoring to a fully-fledged commercial industry spanning multiple continents (in both democratic and authoritarian states).
The data was gathered primarily through interviews with cybersecurity experts, digital evidence analysts and journalists from different parts of the world, as well as through technical documentation and verified research between 2021 and 2025. The study shows that the use of sophisticated spyware such as Pegasus, Predator and Graphite, once intended for military intelligence, has become normalized and is now treated as “lawful intercept” technology as it is available from the market to governments around the world.
Modern spy tools now offer so-called “zero-click” or highly intrusive “one-click” capabilities, allowing devices to be compromised without any significant interaction with the user. These tools allow their operators to silently infiltrate smartphones and computers, read encrypted conversations, listen in on everything through the devices’ microphones, and extract data in real time.
In all the cases examined, the study identifies a similar pattern: the coexistence and co-operation of commercial spyware, state intelligence agencies, and weak institutional oversight. The report describes a world in which spyware exports are often unregulated, legal, parliamentary, and/or independent oversight is absent, and accountability for abuses is nearly impossible.
With technological advances, data collected by spyware is now being collected by cutting-edge artificial intelligence applications that correlate calls, messages, geolocation data and online activity, automating surveillance on a scale once unimaginable.
Specifically, it is reported that “in conflict zones, such as Gaza or Ukraine, artificial intelligence systems now combine telecommunications streams and drones to identify and track journalists, blurring the lines between observation and physical targeting.”
Most journalists do not realize they have been targeted until a digital forensics lab confirms the infection, often months after the targeting, when evidence has already been corrupted or lost. Only a few organizations worldwide – including Citizen Lab, Amnesty International’s Security Lab, and Access Now – have the expertise to conduct such analyses, and their resources are extremely limited.
In addition to spyware, the study also focuses on cases where telecom engineers have been bribed, coerced or pressured into providing access to call data, fake cell phone base stations have been used to track reporters during protests, and entire social media profiles have been mass-harvested to create behavioral maps of journalists before any direct attack is even carried out. The combined effect is a new Orwellian reality, in which surveillance is constant, completely invisible and increasingly normalized.
The study concludes with a series of recommendations to address the “systemic infrastructure of control” and the need for collective defense, including transparency in exports of spyware and accountability in its use, investment in regional forensic capacity, training journalists in cybersecurity, and ensuring encryption and anonymity as fundamental rights and extensions of press freedom.
One of the study’s lead authors, Samar Al Halal, makes the following very important points: “Surveillance is the weapon used to silently kill freedom of expression. When journalists are monitored, sources disappear, investigations stop, and self-censorship becomes normal. When sources know that journalists are being monitored, they stop speaking out. When journalists self-censor to stay safe, the public loses access to the truth.
“The public doesn’t just lose information, it loses the ability to hold power accountable. When surveillance becomes normal, democracy becomes a spectacle, it appears, yes, but it is no longer real.”
