by PRATAP CHATTERJEE
A German tech company is selling the ability to track “political opponents.” An Italian company promises to remotely seize control of smartphones and photograph their owners. A U.S. company allows security services to “see what they [the targets]see.” A South African company can store recordings of billions of phone calls, forever.
Welcome to the new covert world of surveillance contractors. Shining a light on this $5 billion (and growing) industry, Wikileaks today released “Spy Files”: hundreds of secret sales brochures. The companies involved hand this promotional material only to key contacts — often government agencies and police forces — at trade shows that are closed to the public and the press.
“The tools revealed in these brochures demonstrate the previously unfathomable power of mass surveillance. It makes phone-hacking look like a schoolboy’s game,” says Eric King of Privacy International. “Some of the most tyrannical regimes in the world are buying the power to monitor the behavior and communications of every single citizen — and the technology is so effective that they are able to accomplish this with minimal manpower.”
An analysis by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and Privacy International of the brochures shows that at least 160 companies in 25 countries from Brazil to Switzerland are selling an array of technologies so sophisticated that they often seem to have come of a Hollywood studio.
But what the “Spy Files” reveal is real. The documents add weight to campaigners’ claim that these proliferating technology companies constitute a new, unregulated arms industry. “What we are seeing is the militarization of cyber-space. It’s like having a tank in your front garden,” says Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks.
The industry brochures state that they only sell “lawful interception” gear to official authorities: the police, the military and intelligence agencies.
But the sales brochures also boast of vast powers of covert observation using off-the-shelf gear that, activists worry, repressive security forces and corrupt officials can easily abuse.
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