{"id":50547,"date":"2014-12-01T12:00:16","date_gmt":"2014-12-01T12:00:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=50547"},"modified":"2015-05-05T21:27:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-05T20:27:15","slug":"u-s-companies-supply-eavesdropping-gear-to-central-asian-autocrats","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2014\/12\/u-s-companies-supply-eavesdropping-gear-to-central-asian-autocrats\/","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Companies Supply Eavesdropping Gear to Central Asian Autocrats"},"content":{"rendered":"

Surveillance gear generally falls outside U.S. export controls<\/em><\/p>\n

21 Nov 2014 – <\/em>American companies are supplying technology that the governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are using to spy on their citizens\u2019 communications and clamp down on dissent, according to a new report<\/a> from the U.K.-based advocacy group Privacy International.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The report\u2019s overall message is that countries in Central Asia \u2014 including also Turkmenistan and Kyrgyzstan \u2014 regarded as among the world\u2019s most autocratic are\u00a0getting Western help\u00a0to 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.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

While many of the group\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Recent U.S. State Department reports for Kazakhstan<\/a> and Uzbekistan<\/a> describe a pattern of state-sponsored torture, inhumane treatment of prisoners, arbitrary arrest, and limited civil liberties in both countries. The State Department\u2019s report on Uzbekistan specifically accused authorities there of detaining and prosecuting activists and journalists for politically motivated reasons. In the Kazakhstan report, \u201csevere limits on citizens\u2019 rights to change their government\u201d was listed as a significant human rights problem.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Sowers, an assistant to the general manager of Verint Systems, said in a telephone conversation on Nov. 20 that all of the company\u2019s senior personnel were traveling and could not be reached for comment. Netronome spokeswoman Jennifer Mendola said in an email that the company had \u201cno information on the matter\u201d described in the Privacy International report. The company complies with all applicable laws of the United States and every other jurisdiction in which it operates, and \u201cdoes not condone any violation of human rights or personal privacy,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n

Privacy International, a 24-year-old registered charity in the United Kingdom, publishes investigations and studies about digital privacy. It has challenged the legality of Britain\u2019s spy agency using information obtained from the U.S. National Security Agency\u2019s PRISM surveillance program to conduct mass surveillance of British citizens.<\/p>\n

Several of the firms alleged to have exported snooping gear to the region have Israeli connections.\u00a0Verint\u2019s\u00a0exports, for example, were dispatched by its Israeli subsidiary, according to the report. According to Omanovic, multiple sources had told his group that the transfers had been approved by the Israeli government. Israel and Kazakhstan signed an\u00a0agreement<\/a>\u00a0for defense trade and cooperation at the beginning of 2014. A spokesman at the Israeli embassy in Washington did not have any immediate comment.<\/p>\n

The report also\u00a0said the Israeli firm NICE Systems has supplied monitoring systems with mass surveillance capabilities to the Kazakh and Uzbek regimes. Erik Snyder, NICE\u2019s director of Corporate Communications, told the group in response that NICE provides law enforcement agencies and intelligence organizations with solutions for lawful communication interception, collection, processing, and analysis, but that it \u201cdoes not operate these systems, and has no access to the information gathered.\u201d<\/p>\n

Some of the U.S. companies named in the report allegedly provided the Central Asian governments with technology that has less controversial purposes. Sunnyvale, Ca.-based Juniper Networks manufactured broadband equipment that Kazakhstan has been using to transmit data, according to the report, and a surveillance system that actively monitors internet users is now operating from that equipment. But the report makes no claim about Juniper\u2019s complicity in surveillance. Juniper spokeswoman Danielle Hamel said she would look into the claim but then did not respond further.<\/p>\n

The sole international agreement that includes regulations for the export of mass surveillance technologies \u2014 known as the Wassenaar arrangement \u2014 is non-binding on its 41 signatories. Israel is not a signatory, but says it uses Wassenaar\u2019s control list as a guide, according to Privacy International\u2019s Omanovic.<\/p>\n

In October 2014, the European Commission\u00a0amended<\/a>\u00a0its export controls to impose extra licensing requirements on monitoring and interception technologies. But the U.S. has not enacted its own controls on such exports.<\/p>\n

Rep. Chris Smith, R-N.J., has introduced several versions of a bill entitled\u00a0\u201cThe Global Online Freedom Act,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0meant to \u201cprevent United States businesses from cooperating with repressive governments in transforming the Internet into a tool of censorship and surveillance.\u201d But he has not been able to get the bill approved even by the subcommittee on Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights and International Organizations that he chairs.<\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 publicintegrity.org<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

American companies are supplying technology that the governments of Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan are using to spy on their citizens\u2019 communications and clamp down on dissent, according to a new report from the U.K.-based advocacy group Privacy International.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[60],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-50547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whistleblowing-surveillance"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50547\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}