The Pegasus project part 5: the fightback against private spyware begins

After a week of stories about the abuse of private spyware by governments around the world, Michael Safi rounds off our mini-series by looking at the global impact of the Pegasus project and what could change as a result

All this week Guardian journalists across the world have been reporting on a massive data leak: more than 50,000 phone numbers that, it is believed, have been identified as those of people of interest by clients of the spyware company NSO Group.

The leak has made people realise that without us really noticing, the world changed. There are now 3.8bn smartphones globally. They hear our most intimate conversations, hold our deepest secrets - each one can be a microphone and a camera, waiting to be switched on.