83 days

Helen A.S. Popkin

Report: These companies sell tech to dictators 

In an ongoing series profiling both United States and European companies that sell spy tech to authoritarian regimes, the Electronic Frontier Foundation calls out companies whose customers included Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad and former Tunisia president Ben Ali, among others.

"As long as these companies believe that it is okay to sell this technology to dictators, democracy activists, human rights activists, bloggers, and journalists around the world will continue to suffer," the EFF writes. By calling out these companies, the advocacy continues to urge the United States and European Union to adopt "know your customer" standards, which would prevent Western companies in selling to governments known for violating human rights. 

Area SpA's overtime in Syria
During the height of Syria's violent crackdown on democratic protesters in March 2011, Area SpA employees were flown into Damascus, the country's capitol, to finish a project that would allow the government “to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every email that flows through the country,” Bloomberg reported.

Following protests outside of Area SpA's Italian office, the company announced it would no longer honor the contract with the Syrian government, stating that it was Area SpA was “against all forms of repression and disapproves of any use of technology for violating human rights.” The equipment used in the government's escalating crackdown was already in place however. And as the EFF notes, y the time "Area SpA claimed it would exit the country in November, the civilian death toll in Syria already stood at more than 3,000."

Trovicor and the Arab Spring trifecta
The EFF describes Germany-based Trovicor as "perhaps the most prolific of the mass surveillance companies, having sold spy technology to a dozen countries in the Middle East and North Africa." 

The former Nokia-Siemens subsidiary counts the governments of Iran, Bahrain and Tunisia as its customers, three countries active in the Arab Spring uprisings.  

Nokia Siemens divested from Trovicor after it was revealed the company sold spy tech to the Iranian government following the post-election uprisings in 2009. 

In Bahrain, Trovicor still maintains the monitoring centers it originally installed that helped surveil emails, text messages and phone calls. "Almost two-dozen former political prisoners recently testified to the England and Wales lawyers association that they were beaten and subsequently interrogated while being shown transcripts of emails and text messages," the EFF notes. "There have been at least 140 documented allegations of torture in Bahrain in the past last year."

Trovicor is also among the companies that sold spy tech to former president Ben Ali, and the EFF calls out Bloomberg's report on Trovicor’s dangerous capabilities:

[Trovicor’s] toolbox allows more than the interception of phone calls, e-mails, text messages and Voice Over Internet Protocol calls such as those made using Skype. Some products can also secretly activate laptop webcams or microphones on mobile devices. They can change the contents of written communications in mid-transmission, use voice recognition to scan phone networks, and pinpoint people’s locations through their mobile phones. The monitoring systems can scan communications for key words or recognize voices and then feed the data and recordings to operators at government agencies.

In the coming weeks, the EFF will continue to profile the dozens of companies in the U.S. and the European Union that supply equipment to countries known for human rights violations, promising to continue until "Congress and the EU countries act to prevent more of this dangerous technology from falling into the wrong hands."

Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about privacy and then asks you to join her on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+. Because that's how she rolls.