It’s Time to Sanction Repression Profiteers
There is nothing more despicable than companies seeking to earn profit by helping to repress those fighting for freedom. PJ Media and other outlets hit Siemens and Nokia hard, and their complicity in the suppression of Iran’s Green Revolution ultimately resulted in an end to the firm’s business with the regime. But the problem doesn’t end there. Western companies continue to sell surveillance equipment to oppressive governments. There is no reason for this to be tolerated. They should be sanctioned and targeted by consumer boycotts driven by America’s powerful voices in media, politics, and (hopefully) Hollywood.
Take Skype. Because of its encrypted communications, it’s a favorite tool of freedom-fighters around the world, from Venezuela to Iran to China. Now, largely with the help of Western firms who put money above the freedoms that they enjoy, repressive governments are working to rid citizens of Skype’s protections.“A cottage industry of U.S. and other companies is now designing and selling tools that can be used to block or eavesdrop on Skype conversations,” reports the Wall Street Journal. For example, software is now available that can record the audio streams of a computer, including phone calls made via Skype.
After Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak fell, the headquarters of the state security agency was entered. One of the documents found was a top-secret memo dated January 1, 2011. It revealed that the Egyptian government had been trying out hacking software called FinSpy, created by Gamma International of the United Kingdom. The company offered it to the Egyptian government for a little less than $560,000, along with training in its use for four security officers. The software was used by the government to hack into Skype accounts and record the communication of users, as well as to break into Hotmail, Google, and Yahoo accounts.
In Libya, the rebels have discovered that spyware was distributed through activists’ Skype contact lists. Once targeted, everything they said and every key they hit was recorded. A Hong Kong-based company named TOM Group provided the Chinese government with filtering technology that stops certain keywords from being used in chats. Now, in Syria, hundreds of activists have been arrested in recent weeks with the help of Iranian Revolutionary Guards forces armed with Internet monitoring software.
The Obama administration has said it is committed to Internet freedom. In January, Secretary of State Clinton said the U.S. will help “people in oppressive Internet environments get around filters” and “stay one step ahead of the censors, the hackers, and the thugs who beat them up or imprison them for what they say online.” Well, what’s taking so long?
The U.S. and its allies should not wait to assist democratic activists, especially those seeking to change ones that threaten us like in Syria and Iran. It is probable that the software the Iranians are using against the Syrian uprising is the same Siemens and Nokia technology they used against their own Green Revolution. Once a software is sold, it is sold.
In a sane world, everything in this article would be obvious, and frankly we wouldn’t have a need for this, because no company would dare stick its nose outdoors after selling tools like this to a repressive regime. But that’s in a sane world, not ours…
I agree with the point of the article, but don’t think the article is effective.
What companies are involved and how are people going to find out who is involved? Furthermore people are going to scan the article looking for names of the firms involved. Seimens and Nokia are mentioned as bad players, and the need to boycott companies who do this, the next paragraph starts out “take skype” – very poor postioning. This strongly creates the impression that Skype is one of the bad firms. The reader needs to go through the whole paragraph to determine that the original impression created by the poor postioning, is not correct.
I didn’t get a clear idea of exactly what steps should be taken to stop companies who engage in these activiies.
The article does have a point, but shouldn’t it be time for Skype, Hotmail, Google, and Yahoo to start modernizing their software to prevent hackers from getting into their systems? After all, this game of cat-and-mouse has been going on for years and it’s always up to the manufacturer to come up with better ways of preventing people from hacking into their systems. People who copy software programs onto computers without buying them are breaking the law all the time, but you don’t really hear much about the Government cracking down on that. So it’s really up to the manufacturer to somehow stop this from happening through safeguards within the software itself.
If you wait for the government to do something (let alone enforce one of its own laws), you’ll die of old age. The manufacturers of the software will get better results if they build better firewalls to prevent this kind of stuff from happening.
The difference between then and now is that you have “legitimate” businesses selling commercial products for breaking their security. It started with them offering the technology to employers for monitoring their networks. It was only natural that they’d sell it to repressive regimes.
You should note, however, that part of the hacking mentioned in the article was against webmail. That might have been nothing more than a man-in-the-middle attack on the SSL session, but if not, that’s disturbing that they’re not being sued by Google and Microsoft for facilitating illegal activity against their services. Note: it is illegal in the US to facilitate breaking into GMail and Hotmail even for employers because the act of gaining unauthorized access into a third party’s service exceeds the scope of the legal right to monitor your company’s network traffic.
So the author is advocating shutting down the entire economy of the US? That’s not tongue in cheek – have you been to Walmart. There’s almost nothing in there that isn’t from one of the most oppressive, murderous regimes in the entire world – China.
Treason is treason. The penaly is and should be death. If a company sends strategic technology abroad then its CEO should be prosecuted. After all, it is already against the law to do so. Where is Holder?
“There should be a three-track program to assist these activists. Firstly, the U.S. must declare that any company which sells such technology to repressive governments is subject to sanctioning by the U.S. government and its allies”
Only big companies that make much money in the United States could be coerced
to refrain from the shady business described in your article. After all Russia/China/Iran…(axis of evil) pay very well for anti-privacy software/technology. Siemens can not afford having american public opinion against them, other companies do. BTW: Germans (and europeans) don´t care about Siemens selling state-of-the-art tech to the mullahs.
“The second track of the program should provide dissidents with equipment that can defeat filtering and monitoring programs. Democratic forces must be given the ability to anonymously organize and break the information blockade imposed upon them.”
A defensive tactic, that won´t work. I thought you wanted to end the cat and mouse game, where the free world is alway two steps behind.
“The third track would be an authorization for the CIA and friendly intelligence services to actively undermine the Internet monitoring activities of regimes like those in Iran and Syria. ”
Ya that makes sense. An even better would be to also legalize attacks on any countrys/ companys IT infrastructure. Hackers are portrayed as the enemy by Clinton. Yeah, well they are not.