Syrians protesting Bashar al-Assad, via Flickr
While Americans fret over the US government spying on its citizens in the name of fighting terrorism, the very terrorist regimes the feds are trying to thwart are using surveillance technology from Silicon Valley to monitor and censor dissidents fighting for human rights.
US tech firms have long supplied—knowingly or not, it must be said—tools facilitating oppression by authoritarian regimes. A new report shows the problem is still out of control. Citizen Lab, the University of Toronto program that's been hunting bad guy spies for over a decade, published a report this week that shows web applications from the security software company Blue Coat are popping up in "terrorist states" like Syria, Iran, and Sudan—countries the US has strict sanctions against.
The technology has a range of uses, one of which is online surveillance, which governments have been known to use to monitor dissidents' online activity, track movement, intercept communications, and censor information, in attempts to quash protest movements. With nearly all exports to these countries strictly forbidden, how are the governments getting their hands on the products?
Partly, because sanctions are hard to enforce, which is why activist groups like Citizen Lab want tougher restrictions on products that can be used to violate human rights. "Can be" are really the key words here, since "dual use" products that have legitimate uses are being co-opted for nefarious purposes.
Still, in the last year the SEC has cracked down on a bunch of tech companies—Oracle, HP, EMC, Motorola, to name a few—for the potential use of their products in terrorist regimes, the LA Times reported.
The companies themselves deny any wrongdoing. They say they have no idea how their products are ending up in the wrong hands, passing the buck to the third-party vendors to sell their products. They claim they can't keep tabs on where the vendors sell to.
In some cases, vendors have been caught breaking embargoes and fined tens of thousands of dollars. More often, no one notices. “It's tough to single out one vendor and say they're flaunting international laws," IDC analyst Phil Hochmuth told Network World. “To some extent, it's the 'guns don't kill people' argument."
The dual use issue also makes it hard to legislate the problem away. A New Jersey congressman proposed a bill earlier this year that would make it illegal for companies to export products that could facilitate digital surveillance, but came up against a brick wall. His opponents said that a crackdown would mean casting the net of prohibited products too wide, which could chill innovation.
Citizen Lab argues the responsibility should fall on the companies themselves. Blue Coat—which incidentally was named one of the "five corporate enemies of the internet" this year by Reporters Without Borders—responded to the report saying its products aren't meant to be used for surveillance and are never sold to embargoed companies.
That's all well and good, but clearly isn't enough. "It is encouraging that companies like Blue Coat Systems have voiced their support for international human rights principles," Citizen Lab wrote. "The critical next step is implementing those principles in business practice."
With everyone pointing fingers at someone else, it looks like the latest tech innovations will keep finding their way into the bad guys' hands.