US Company Selling Spyware to Dictators

love-laughter · Feb 16, 2011

The U.S. company Narus has been selling Internet spying software to Egypt, members of Congress and other government officials have become increasingly alarmed — and some are even calling for investigations.

On Thursday, during a House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, Reps. Chris Smith (R-NJ) and Bill Keating (D-MA) grilled Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg on the sale of this Internet spying technology to an Egyptian Internet provider controlled by the Mubarak regime.

To recap, Narus is a Sunnyvale, California, Internet surveillance and filtering company begun by Israeli security experts, and subsequently bought by Boeing. The company has nefarious links to the NSA, and to AT&T efforts to monitor phone communications domestically.

Among Narus’ many cyber-sleuthing products is one called "Hone," which can filter through billions of packets of online data to target individuals on social networks and then link that information to their "VOIP conversations, biometrically identify someone’s voice or photograph and then associate it with different phone numbers." Those using cell phones or Wi-Fi connections can then be located geographically.

Narus has sold similar spying technology, not only to Egypt, but also to telecom authorities in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, countries known for their brutal repression of political dissidents.

Over the last two weeks, other journalists — including those at the San Francisco Chronicle and Seattle Times –- have asked Narus to respond to our report, but the company has refused to comment. Al Jazeera sent a correspondent and camera crew to their offices to be turned away at the door. Watch the video of that encounter.

In yesterday’s hearing, Rep. Smith had the following exchange with Deputy Secretary Steinberg:

Rep. Smith: I’d like to ask you about a very disturbing report that an American company, Narus, has sold the Egyptian Government what is called Deep Packet Inspection technology, highly advanced technology that allows the purchasers to search the content of emails as they pass through the Internet routers.

The report is from an NGO called Free Press and it is based on information that Narus itself has revealed about its business… I would like to know what we know about this company – and it is part of Boeing, recently bought. What can you tell us about Narus and this invasion of privacy in the Internet?

Deputy Secretary Steinberg: … I’m unfamiliar with the company that you have identified but I’d be happy to see what we know about this.
Smith: Could you dig into that and get back to the committee? It’s very important. It goes to the whole issue of increasingly that U.S. Corporations are enabling dictatorships… It is an awful tool of repression and Narus, according to these reports, is enabling this invasion of privacy…
Rep. Keating continued the questioning, going so far as to say that "people are losing their lives based on this technology."

Keating called on Steinberg to investigate American companies that sell this sort of Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) technology overseas. He expressed particular concern about a "company in California [that] sold the Egyptian state-run Internet provider the technology to monitor the Internet allowing the Egyptian government to crack down on dissent."

Deputy Secretary Steinberg, again, promised to follow up.

In a subsequent press statement, Keating pledged to introduce legislation "that would provide a national strategy to prevent the use of American technology from being used by human rights abusers."

In particular, Keating wants to create a requirement that DPI companies strike "end-user monitoring agreements" with their overseas buyers that would help ensure that the technology does not fall into the hands of repressive regimes intent stifling free speech and repressing Internet protesters.

"We should have the same safeguards — such as end user monitoring agreements — that we do when we sell weapons abroad,” according to Kea

Stay tuned for his legislation that could do just that.ff
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Source : http://www.savetheinternet.com/

skip · Feb 16, 2011

If you've been reading the Wikileaks, you'd know this is very common, and many repressive regimes have asked for this and similar technology from the CIA.

The CIA & NSA use it anywhere, anytime they want. Including the good ol' USA.

The elephant in the room (in the article), is the fact that the US is using such technology on its own citizens! So does that make the US a repressive regime too?

Why is fine for the US to do this to its citizens, but not a friendly dictator? I didn't see the congressman ask that question.

love-laughter · Feb 16, 2011

Skip said:

If you've been reading the Wikileaks, you'd know this is very common, and many repressive regimes have asked for this and similar technology from the CIA.

The CIA & NSA use it anywhere, anytime they want. Including the good ol' USA.

The elephant in the room (in the article), is the fact that the US is using such technology on its own citizens! So does that make the US a repressive regime too?

Why is fine for the US to do this to its citizens, but not a friendly dictator? I didn't see the congressman ask that question.
Click to expand...

The point is that it's NOT OK to do to anyone.

I've been saying for a while for people to get the fuck off Facebook and the social network sites. Because people on Facebook are not just fucking with their own lives.. They're fucking with the lives of even those that ARE NOT ON Facebook.

A good and true example is this.
A guy was talking about problems with his hydroponics on Facebook. So his friend on Facebook say's

"Hey the guy that lives across the street from me is growing about 50 plants in his basement. He even had to re-wire his electricity meter to keep cops off his door. What's your problem, I'll ask him for some advice."

Well this idiot filled in where he lived and it wasn't hard to find the guy across the street. First it was the electric company that came to investigate and then after that the cops. (The good news is they only caught him with the hydroponics and charged him with theft against the electrical company and not the plants.. Motherfucker got lucky)

It's going to get to the point that you can't even trust the guy next door to you or perhaps even your own brother. Facebook addicts can't seem to figure out that they are "fucking with freedom".. All of our freedom. And once freedom is lost, they only way you get it back is with bloodshed.

The CIA and NSA and any other government organization have found a solution to their problems with "over-sight committees." And that is they get private corporations to do what they can't and then just purchase the product from them. So stop trusting these "corporations" like they are fucking good guys. They'll gladly sell you out for a buck.

skip · Feb 16, 2011

Ah but L-L, all the goody two-shoers would just say,

"See, he was doing something illegal, so it's good he got caught. Don't want to get caught? Don't do something illegal..."

(can't believe I used the term "goody two-shoe", man I MUST be gettin' old.)

What we are losing is not so much our freedom (to do illegal shit - we never had that), but OUR PRIVACY. That is the big issue.

With sites like FACEBOOK, ppl's lives become open books, their ability to prevent others (including gov't agents) from invading their privacy becomes a moot issue if you've got a facebook page.

And setting the profile to private for friends only, doesn't stop the gov't from seeing absolutely everything, so Facebook gives ppl a FALSE SENSE of PRIVACY. Naive ppl will think, oh good, only my grower friends can see these pics of my huge grow now that I've changed my privacy settings...

Yeah, right! What fools these mortals be...

love-laughter · Feb 16, 2011

Skip said:

Ah but L-L, all the goody two-shoers would just say,

"See, he was doing something illegal, so it's good he got caught. Don't want to get caught? Don't do something illegal..."

(can't believe I used the term "goody two-shoe", man I MUST be gettin' old.)

What we are losing is not so much our freedom (to do illegal shit - we never had that), but OUR PRIVACY. That is the big issue.
Click to expand...

Skip,
You're forgetting to look at history. In fact, you only need to look back about 20 or 30 years to see that a lot of things were once LEGAL are NOW ILLEGAL. Pot and LSD are great examples that come to mind.

Also,
Unless your a priest or nun, we're all guilty of committing some sort of crime every single day. Anything from driving a little too fast to never returning the drill you borrowed from the guy next door. (It's technically theft)

Lastly,
The world today has embraced the entire "everything is a corporation trying to make money" philosophy. This includes the police, prisons and the judicial system. With prisons being the 5th largest industry in the United States... Ask yourself, if you really think our legal system going to be erasing any rules currently on the books any time soon...

Hey in Los Angeles, jay walking is about a $600 fine. There is talk about raising it to $1,000 or 30 days in jail. If you ask me.. I think being a goody-two-shoes is going to be getting a whole lot harder to be in the future.

So my advice,
Even if you're not on Facebook. It would be a smart idea to start smacking those idiots on Facebook now. Because sooner or later, some big mouth asshole on it is going to get you into trouble. And it's likely to be over something fucking stupid.

LoC · Feb 17, 2011

Maybe they should investigate their own government, ie, the NSA using the same "Narus intercept suite" to ILLEGALLY spy on Americans via their ISP's such as AT&T! (not just phones, as the article mentions) But their panties are in a wad about Egypt? They've got head-in-ass syndrome. Unlikely to be cured.

We also don't need more government meddling like this idiot's bill will do! That is THE PROBLEM, not the solution! Don't save the internet, it will be just fine if you keep government hands off it.

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