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A review by rereinis
Pegasus: How a Spy in Your Pocket Threatens the End of Privacy, Dignity, and Democracy by Sandrine Rigaud, Laurent Richard
2.0
Unfocused and self-centered
A title of a book should at least be an indicator of what it is about and its main focus. However, here, it seems the authors were more interested in their experiences and the path of exposing the "scoop" than what the title suggests the topic would be. The book mainly talks about the journalistic process and the behind the scenes characters of getting an article out. Mired in descriptions of rather mundane meetings without a clear goal and backstories of people that are seemingly in the book just to pad the page count. Even this is a bit unfocused and it is hard to understand what kind of a story the book is trying to tell. Descriptions of people talking about how one of them has sent an e-mail and the other one not receiving it only to receive it 5 minutes later without an issue (who was this even for!?) do not help either. This book could have used a critical eye of an editor.
The worst thing though is that what gets left out is actually Pegasus itself. While there are some descriptions of the company behind Pegasus and its odious man in charge, the technology itself is barely explained and its workings seemingly incomprehensible to the authors. They do not seem to be particularly tech-savvy and as such, maybe they were not the right people to write a book with this title. The book is about journalism and as such it is fine, but at the end of the day it is not about Pegasus. And this was very disappointing.
A title of a book should at least be an indicator of what it is about and its main focus. However, here, it seems the authors were more interested in their experiences and the path of exposing the "scoop" than what the title suggests the topic would be. The book mainly talks about the journalistic process and the behind the scenes characters of getting an article out. Mired in descriptions of rather mundane meetings without a clear goal and backstories of people that are seemingly in the book just to pad the page count. Even this is a bit unfocused and it is hard to understand what kind of a story the book is trying to tell. Descriptions of people talking about how one of them has sent an e-mail and the other one not receiving it only to receive it 5 minutes later without an issue (who was this even for!?) do not help either. This book could have used a critical eye of an editor.
The worst thing though is that what gets left out is actually Pegasus itself. While there are some descriptions of the company behind Pegasus and its odious man in charge, the technology itself is barely explained and its workings seemingly incomprehensible to the authors. They do not seem to be particularly tech-savvy and as such, maybe they were not the right people to write a book with this title. The book is about journalism and as such it is fine, but at the end of the day it is not about Pegasus. And this was very disappointing.