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posted by n1 on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:13AM   Printer-friendly
from the repressive-regimes-are-people-too dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

British multinational BAE Systems has sold sophisticated surveillance technology to many repressive governments in the Middle East and Africa, an investigation by BBC Arabic and Danish newspaper Dagbladet has revealed.

The technology in question is called Evident, and enables governments to conduct mass surveillance of their citizens’ communications. According to a former employee, the system is capable of intercepting traffic, pinpointing device location, traffic cryptanalysis (i.e. decryption), and voice recognition.

Evident was created by Danish cyber and intelligence company ETI, which was acquired by BAE Systems in 2011. The sales, which were effected through ETI, are technically legal as the export authorization for the technology was given by the Danish government, through the Danish Business Authority.

The export licenses were granted even though the UK government has expressed concern about the sale of the Evident technology to the United Arab Emirates, and has noted that it would “refuse a licence to export this cryptanalysis software from the UK” because of national security concerns.

They were apparently worried that the system’s capabilities could be used to tap communications in the UK and Europe, if the equipment is set up in UAE embassies.

The Evident system has also been sold to the Tunisian government (before the Arab Spring protests and successful ousting of longtime president Ben Ali in 2011), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Morocco and Algeria, whose governments have questionable human rights records.

Source: Help Net Security


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:28AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:28AM (#526788)

    The Evident system has also been sold to the Tunisian government (before the Arab Spring protests and successful ousting of longtime president Ben Ali in 2011), Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, Morocco and Algeria, whose governments have questionable human rights records.

    Shit, don't we all.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by TheGratefulNet on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:31AM (5 children)

    by TheGratefulNet (659) on Saturday June 17 2017, @03:31AM (#526790)

    no company thinks about what is RIGHT anymore. they gave up caring and figured its just time to cash in on the mass surveillance bullshit.

    been that way for decades, in fact; maybe longer.

    but the point is: we have stopped expecting our leaders to CARE about people and rights and even quality of life. its about CONTROL and power and repression. with every country, more or less; none want to be absent from the surveillance parade.

    quite depressing. and quite telling about what humanity is really about, deep down.

    --
    "It is now safe to switch off your computer."
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:14AM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:14AM (#526807)

      Humanity is a complex organism and there is no "really deep down" fundamental aspect. We embody a lot of values, it speaks more about the culture we've allowed to develop. We still have learning and growth to do, I'm trying to remain hopeful that we've laid a good ideological foundation with our constitutions and can remake our systems without the violent revolution part.

      I guess at this point it requires the people holding all the power to realize it is in everyone's best interests to achieve a better society and willingly give up some of the power. I know, fat chance, but that is where we're at.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:36PM

        by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:36PM (#527489)

        Politicians can be forced to limit their own powers, but it usually comes after they realize how that power can be used against them by the opposition party. And it usually is a lesson learned the hard way.

    • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:25AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:25AM (#526814)

      quite telling about what humanity is really about, deep down.

      Not necessarily. I think it's telling what the sociopaths who rise to the top in our system really care about. It's telling what our system rewards those sociopaths for behaving like. Of course, only a sociopath could be capable of minmaxing what the system rewards in ways that would be unthinkable to the majority of people who have empathy (yes even our conservatives here; conservatives often have very deep convictions even if their approach to ethics is different from a liberal's approach to ethics), thus rising to the top by the system's own design.

      The trouble the majority of humans have is that they're not willing to stand up to those sociopaths. They've allowed themselves to be convinced that sociopaths deserve the rewards they reap with the circular logic that they wouldn't have gotten those rewards if they didn't deserve them. (The "just world" hypothesis, the result of our own instincts working against us in an insidious way.)

      The way forward may be for the majority of humans to decide that such a system is not a system they want.

      I'm not talking about small businesses, which are the backbone of our economy. However, small businesses aren't the single unified voice for buying up legislators and the executive branch that megacorps speak with.

      We need some way to enfranchise the masses, but only the masses can enfranchise themselves. It's clear that the act of "voting" in a first-past-the-post political system is not an effective form of enfranchisement. If we could come together and decide that whatever our differences of viewpoints are, we need to make our political system work for us and not for the handful of unified voices of megacorps, this would be a problem that we could solve.

      Before it's too late. Things are not headed in that direction at all. Sociopaths speak, and our own voices are not heard. We're thrown table scraps of enfranchisement on distraction issues like abortion or what the best way to fork over more wealth to the military industrial complex or healthcare insurance complex might be. The end result is always the same. The larger issues we all care about are never addressed in any meaningful way. We've been tricked into wasting valuable time bickering about partisan distractions instead of doing what we should have been doing.

      The pages fly off the calendar like how those old cartoons would illustrate the passage of time. We could choose the easy way. Make election reform a litmus test before voting for any politician. Be prepared to vote for parties that "can't win" like Libertarians and Greens. There is another way, but that way is much, much harder. Reality is a very patient and persistent tutor. If the easy way of learning the lesson we need to learn is not working, then reality will try the hard way. It will keep trying to educate us, over and over again.

      If we don't keep a spare gas can for when the car runs out of fuel on the side of the road, the long walk to the gas station will be for our own good.

      Unless

    • (Score: 2) by lx on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:50AM

      by lx (1915) on Saturday June 17 2017, @07:50AM (#526866)

      While you are right, BAE Systems are arms manufacturers. They have no qualms in selling fighter jets etc. to known human rights abusers, so it doesn't really come as a shock that they would sell them surveillance equipment.

      What is sickening is that some western governments not only allow this to happen but actively encourage it.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:33PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @03:33PM (#527487)

      The companies only care about money, and point to the politicians for laws to force them to behave.

      The politicians only care about getting elected and getting money from the companies.

      Voters only care about punishing the opposition party.

      So, while the politicians can be made to dance, they just ride out most short-term fiascos, and take money from the companies, which are no longer held accountable for anything. Occasionally, they steal rights from the voters when they think nobody's looking, and blame terrorism. And what causes terrorism? Why anger at all the corruption, of course.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:10PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 17 2017, @04:10PM (#527029)

    Is anyone surprised at all?

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