Last week, EFF gave its recommendations to EU parliament on what steps to take to combat a growing and dangerous civil liberties concern: Western companies marketing and selling mass surveillance technology to authoritarian regimes. This technology has been linked to harassment, arrests, and even torture of journalists, human rights advocates, and democratic activists in many Middle East countries over the past year...
Privacy International recently released a mapping of companies and countries that have attended the notorious I.S.S. World trade shows, where this technology is bought and sold...
Example: Gamma International and its subsidiary FinFisher first made headlines after the fall of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt last year, when activists found the company’s records in an abandoned state security building, along with troves of surveillance files. The documents on Gamma and FinFisher showed how they provided Mubarak with a five-month trial of their sophisticated spying technology, most notably FinSpy, which can wiretap encrypted Skype phone calls and instant messages—a service once mistakenly trusted by activists for secure communications. (more)
