U.S. companies supply eavesdropping gear to Central Asian autocrats
American companies are supplying technology that the governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are using to spy on their citizens’ communications and clamp down on dissent, according to a new report from the U.K.-based advocacy group Privacy International.
Verint Systems, a manufacturer of surveillance systems headquartered in Melville, N.Y., has sold software and hardware to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan that is capable of mass interception of telephone, mobile, and Internet networks, the group alleged in its Nov. 20 report. It also provided the training and technical support needed to run them, the report said.
Verint, which claims customers in 180 nations, in turn sought decryption technology made by a firm in California, Netronome, as it helped the Uzbek government attempt to crack the encryption used by Gmail, Facebook, and other popular sites, according to the report.
The report’s overall message is that countries in Central Asia — including also Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan — regarded as among the world’s most autocratic are getting Western help to install, on a much smaller scale, some of the same advanced mass interception techniques that Edward Snowden revealed are used by the National Security Agency.
Those acquisitions have been facilitated in part by loose export controls over surveillance technology. To be subject to U.S. export restrictions, products must appear on a Commerce Department control list — and the key components of the surveillance products described in the Privacy International report do not appear to be on those lists, according to report co-author Edin Omanovic.
Products that can lay the foundation for mass surveillance are not restricted by special export controls if they are sold in an off-the-shelf, unaltered state, according to Eva Galperin, a global policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a non-profit digital rights foundation.
While many of the group’s sources are not listed in the report, and its claims therefore cannot all be confirmed, the report says that staff members interviewed activists in the region who recounted that transcripts of their private communications were used to convict and imprison them on charges of conspiracy.
There’s more to this story. Click here to read the rest at the Center for Public Integrity.
This story is part of Up in Arms. National security-related events, reports and findings that deserve more attention. Click here to read more stories in this blog.
Related stories
Interpol's Red Notices used by some to pursue political dissenters, opponents
Dozens of intelligence contractors have submitted false claims for federal funds
State attorneys general not leaping to embrace HIPAA enforcement
California lawmakers latest to consider limits for cops in schools
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity. This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C.
