“Exporting Censorship and Surveillance Technology
Author: fjansen
Western companies turn a healthy profit by exporting their surveillance technologies and equipment to repressive regimes. This is what Ben Wagner concludes in the Hivos-commissioned report “Exporting Censorship and Surveillance Technology”. Wagner interviewed dozens of people from Europe and North Africa and found that governments there have relied heavily on Western censorship technologies in an attempt to quell the civil unrest during the Arab Spring.
Earlier reports had already established that reputable companies such as Nokia Siemens and Sony Ericsson have in the past provided these tools of oppression to the governments of Iran and Belarus respectively. In these countries, surveillance technologies are used to delve into every aspect of citizens’ lives. From social networking to business services and from photo sharing to pornography, very few forms of on-line communication go unnoticed. Remarkably, these technologies even enable governments to spy on citizens who believe themselves to be working through encryption. In Tunisia, large companies employ surveillance tools to keep a close watch on their employees. Maintenance of these complex surveillance instruments is conducted by Western ‘technical consultants’, often from Germany and France.
It is cynical, as Wagner notes, that “the uprising period [i.e. the Arab Spring] seems to have been interpreted as a particularly effective sales period by the vendors of censorship and surveillance technologies.” Even more so because the knowledge that repressive regimes obtain using these tools is often used to locate, intimidate or arrest dissenting bloggers, journalists and activists. The fact that some companies have offered their services to governments that were flagrantly disregarding the human rights of their populace during recent uprisings, “goes far beyond corporate disregard [... and] suggests clear intent by the company involved that their product would be used for human rights violations.”
The internet has in the past been described as a “playground for political liberalization”. It has by now become clear just what a dangerous playground it can really be. Courtesy, at least in part, of Western corporations.
Ben Wagner is a Doctoral Researcher at the Department of Political and Social Sciences, European University Institute, Florence, Italy. His article, “Exporting Censorship and Surveillance Technology”, can be found on here”
(Quelle: Hivos.)
