7 Dec 2012 | Volume 41.04 Winter 2012
Between February 2011 and June 2012, I attended nine surveillance technology trade shows around the world. At these events, vendors, developers and government agencies meet, mingle and do business. They’re usually held at anonymous corporate hotels and are strictly invite-only. Yet the atmosphere is usually one of pervasive paranoia and attendees often conceal their real names and governmental affiliations. The sales representatives, by contrast, can be extremely frank, particularly when discussing the ethical implications of their trade. During one presentation, delegates from a password forensics company projected an image of a metal interrogation chair draped with chains and joked that their equipment could be used in conjunction with ‘other methods’. Another vendor told me that he was sure his company could come to ‘some arrangement’ with a (hypothetical) North Korean customer. Fat profit margins are top of the agenda; ethics and social responsibility rarely even come into it.
Twenty years ago, the value of the global surveillance industry was negligible – today it is estimated to be worth around $3bn. The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 left hundreds of Stasi officers out of a job and the rash of new surveillance companies that sprang up in the early 1990s in Germany suggests that many found lucrative new employment in the private sector. Privacy International published a report in 1995, highlighting this increased flow of surveillance tools from developed countries like the UK, the US, Germany and Israel to repressive regimes in Africa and South Asia, where they were then used as instruments of political control and internal repression. But not a single Western government has felt it necessary to impose export controls on surveillance technologies, and so this unethical trade has therefore continued unimpeded.
After 9/11, governments around the world ramped up their surveillance operations and private companies competed to develop and supply cheaper and more invasive tools. The business of surveillance was no longer the preserve of large military and arms manufacturers like BAE Systems; small technology enterprises and larger Silicon Valley companies quickly flooded the market. Privacy International’s recent research has identified around 250 vendors of surveillance technology based in 33 countries around the world and there are probably dozens more that have managed to remain under the radar. Unfortunately, these new actors seem to conduct themselves with even less integrity than their predecessors – exports to Africa and the Middle East are significant and companies now offer bespoke solutions and training to their clients.
One would think this would make it difficult to plead ignorance when companies get caught doing business with dictatorships and repressive regimes. Yet this is still the most common defence: companies claim that they had no knowledge of the uses to which their products were being put.
They deny complicity in resulting human rights abuses – censorship, torture, extrajudicial detention and executions – because they say that technology is neutral, that it’s not their responsibility to vet their clients, that they can’t control how equipment is used once sold. Let us be clear: in the majority of situations, this is simply not the case. These companies are not staffed by idealistic young software developers creating socially useful tools that their wicked clients are then misusing and perverting. In fact, most of the time they are working with their customers on a close and long-term basis, carefully tailoring surveillance systems to specific needs.
Milan-based Area SpA last year furnished Privacy International with a disturbing example of just how committed to customer service these companies can be. While President Bashar al Assad’s forces were engaged in brutal attempts to crush dissent in Syria, killing and injuring hundreds of unarmed protesters, Area secretly installed a nationwide mass surveillance system. Dozens of the company’s Italian employees were flown out to Syria to install hardware and software that would allow Syrian security agents to follow targets on flat-screen workstations displaying communications and web use in near-real time, alongside graphics that mapped citizens’ networks of electronic contacts. The €13m (US$16.7m) contract also specified that Area employees would supply training to Syrian security agents, teaching them how to monitor vast swathes of the population. Fortunately, after a Bloomberg report exposed the project and protesters gathered outside Area’s offices, the company quietly pulled the plug on the project.
The effect of a surveillance system of this sophistication and magnitude on political dissent, public debate, the rule of law – in fact, on all of the processes fundamental to participatory democracy – is devastating. When people see their friends and colleagues arrested and tortured because of a text message, a Facebook chat or a phone call, they think twice about complaining about government abuses. They may cut off all phone and email contact with those people, afraid that just being part of the wrong networks will bring the secret police to their own doors in the middle of the night. Arranging face-to-face meetings becomes practically difficult, and even speaking in person isn’t secure – governments can target individual mobile phones with malware that allows them to remotely control the device’s microphone and camera and thereby see and hear everything happening around it.
Organising political demonstrations is equally challenging. Blogs containing anti-government sentiments are identified and blocked almost as quickly as they can be written, preventing citizens from expressing their dissatisfactions to a wider audience. Surveillance technology is therefore one of the most powerful weapons in the dictator’s arsenal; it destroys political opposition and subdues populations far more effectively than guns or grenades.
Privacy International doesn’t think it’s right that companies based in Europe and the United States – where governments publicly condemn the kind of human rights abuses described above – should make vast sums of money by facilitating these same abuses. We also believe that this notoriously murky and elusive industry needs to be much more transparent about which products are being sold to which regimes, particularly in Africa and the Middle East. We embarked on the Surveillance Industry Index – a publicly-accessible online catalogue of surveillance companies, products and marketing materials – because we felt that putting the hard facts in the public domain would hopefully stop companies obfuscating their involvement with repressive governments and make them more accountable. We also hoped that it would add to the evidence base for proper export licensing systems in Europe and the US. In particular, the excerpts from the marketing material we’ve presented provide direct insight into the ethical vacuum at the heart of the industry and demonstrate the terrifying scope and power of some of the technologies that are now readily available.
For example, UK-headquartered Gamma Group describes one of their products as permitting ‘black hat hacking [illegal and malicious] tactics to enable intelligence services to gather information from target systems that would be otherwise extremely difficult to obtain legally’. South African VASTech sells a mass surveillance product that can intercept ‘more than 100,000 simultaneous voice channels, allowing it to capture up to one billion intercepts per day and storing in excess of 5,000 Terabytes of information’. Madrid-based Agnitio is even more explicit, stating that their product is ‘designed for mass voice interception and voice mining’. Mass surveillance has been ruled illegal in most democratic countries as, by its very nature, it can never be considered a proportionate or necessary tactic.
Over the past few years, Gamma International’s FinFisher suite, a range of spyware that covertly takes remote control of a computer or mobile device, copying files, intercepting Skype calls and logging every keystroke, has appeared all over the world. Recent reports by computer security company Rapid7 have placed FinFisher command and control servers in Australia, the Czech Republic, Dubai, Ethiopia, Estonia, Indonesia, Latvia, Mongolia, Qatar and the US. A separate investigation in August by CitizenLab, an interdisciplinary project based at the Munk Centre for International Studies at the University of Toronto, identified potential FinFisher command and control servers in Bahrain, Brunei, the Czech Republic, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Mongolia, Singapore, the Netherlands, Turkmenistan and the United Arab Emirates.
Gamma International’s Managing Director, Martin J Muench, has refuted this research – the latest in a long line of denials and excuses from the company. In April 2011, the Guardian reported that two Egyptian human rights activists had found a proposal from Gamma to supply President Mubarak’s regime with FinFisher products inside the ransacked headquarters of the State Security Investigations service. The company said the offer was for a free trial version and that ‘Gamma International UK Limited has not supplied any of its FinFisher suite of products or related training etc to the Egyptian government’. When it was reported that five Bahraini human rights activists had been sent emails containing FinFisher trojans, Gamma suggested that the malware in question was a ‘copy of an old FinSpy demo version’ that ‘may have been stolen’. Muench also tried to point the finger at organisations that had been investigating Gamma’s practices: ‘It’s been suggested that the information was stolen on behalf of a pressure group to disrupt our business but I have no evidence yet to support that claim.’
Yet Muench’s ultimate defence is that Gamma always complies with British, American and German export regulations, recently stating that ‘Export Control Authorities … act as our moral compass’. This would be all well and good – if such export regulations existed anywhere in the world. In fact, exports of surveillance technologies remain almost entirely unlicensed and thus uncontrolled. It should also be noted that, although Gamma has been using the above justification since April 2011, the company only bothered to submit a technical information about FinFisher to the Department for Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) in June 2012. BIS, which is responsible for licensing exports in the UK, has now decided that exports of FinFisher should in fact be licensed, on the basis that the product contains cryptography.
However, the British government has thus far refused to include other surveillance tools in the export-licensing regime, apparently buying into the industry’s claims that these products are all sold for legitimate purposes. Yet BIS controls exports of hundreds of ‘dual-use’ products (products that can be used illegally or dangerously as well as having a legitimate or civilian purpose) and the industry has thus far demonstrated a woeful inability to self-regulate. Unless surveillance exports are effectively controlled by law, the action the UK has taken on Gamma’s FinFisher will be just a sticking plaster on a bullet wound. Though the European Parliament passed a resolution calling for stricter oversight of surveillance technology exports and President Obama announced an executive order to prevent such exports to Syria and Iran, there has not been any clear, decisive action as of yet. And, for dissidents and ordinary citizens alike, the space for speaking out about human rights violations and ensuring this information gets out to the wider world is narrowing all the time.
©Eric King
41(4): 81/86
DOI: 10.1177/0306422012465540
This article appears in Digital Frontiers, the winter 2012 edition of Index on Censorship magazine.
1 Dec 2012 | Middle East and North Africa, Opinion
Kim Kardashian flew into Bahrain’s capital today to launch the country’s first Millions of Milkshakes shop — but “sources” close to the reality TV star told TMZ that her trip to Kuwait and Bahrain is about more than promoting frozen drinks.
According to the celebrity-stalking website, Kardashian wants to “use her celebrity to raise awareness about important issues in the area”, and while in Kuwait a few days ago she met with the US Ambassador to the country, Matthew Tueller.
Before heading out to the region, Kardashian tweeted that the purpose of her trip was to “set the record straight”:
According to TMZ, Kardashian will also be meeting with “local leaders”, but I have a feeling that won’t include human rights defenders from Bahrain Centre for Human Rights (BCHR) despite an invitation made by its acting president Maryam Alkhawaja asking the starlet to meet with the organisation. The BCHR won an Index Freedom of Expression Award last year for its work documenting human rights violations, political repression and torture in the tiny gulf kingdom after peaceful protests calling for political reform began on 14 February 2011. As similar protests blew across the Arab world, thousands of people took to the streets calling for democratic change and pro-democracy protests continue today. Since then Bahrain’s government has engaged in a brutal crackdown, according to BCHR, at least 84 people have been killed since the start of unrest and despite promises of reform, little has changed.
Only yesterday,ahead of a court decision next week, Amnesty International demanded that “13 opposition activists and prisoners of conscience must be released immediately by the Bahrain authorities.” And Human Rights Watch say Bahrain’s human rights situation “remains critical in the wake of the brutal crackdown”.
But is this just another case of a celebrity cluelessly brushing shoulders with corrupt government officials? Kardashian’s trip has been organised by Paresh Shah and Sheeraz Hasan, the duo behind the US-based Millions of Milkshakes franchise. Shah and Hasan have partnered up for various celebrity-oriented endeavors, including celebrity news and gossip site Hollywood.tv. Shah is an attorney, and Hasan a London-born entrepreneur who moved to the United States and launched a career as a producer, presenter, and eventual businessman. After the duo’s first milkshake store opened in West Hollywood in 2008, Kardashian launched the second shop in Dubai last year and they continue to expand in the region, with shops opening this week in Kuwait and Bahrain. The shop focuses on celebrity to draw in customers, boasting a long list of camera-heavy celebrity visits — from Baywatch actress Pamela Anderson to British X-factor alum Cher Lloyd.
Shah and Hasan appear to have an interesting relationship with Bahrain’s royal family. According to their official website, the two were given a “mandate to source unique investment opportunities outside of Bahrain and developing infrastructure within Bahrain” after meeting with the royal family earlier this year.
Hasan and Shah traveled to Bahrain only weeks before the controversial Bahrain Grand Prix in April, with Hasan tweeting a photograph of himself with Shah and a pair of Rolexes the Bahraini royal family delivered to their plane. Hasan first made mention of their unique mandate in May, shortly after returning from the trip.
Bahrain is no stranger to using flashy events to attempt to whitewash its tarnished international reputation. Formula 1 went ahead with the Bahrain Grand Prix earlier this year despite violent clashes between protesters and security forces in the build-up to the race. The country has also enlisted a number of western PR companies to whitewash its image after international condemnation of its human rights record. Its not a stretch to see why Bahrain might find the Millions of Milkshakes’ celebrity-focused approach appealing.
News of Kardashian’s trip coincided with another bizarre Bahraini celebrity story. American rocker and self-proclaimed “Party King” Andrew WK claimed to be headed to the Kingdom on a “partying and world peace” trip organised by the US Embassy in Manama. His visit was cancelled by the StateDepartment but a State Department spokeswomen told reporters that a “Bahraini entity” approached the Embassy about arranging the trip. The incident raises many questions — who was the “Bahraini entity” that suggested the trip, and why is the US Embassy in Bahrain planning on bringing in celebrities for “inspirational talks”, when it really should be placing pressure on its long-term ally to commit to reform?
Kardashian has close to 17 million Twitter followers (she is the 10th most followed account) and on arrival today she tweeted:
A message that has been retweeted over 2200 times. Kardashian reportedly receives thousands of pounds to promote products via Twitter but even if we take her trip to Bahrain at face value, it’s important to remember that celebrity visits — even if they’re just about milkshakes — are always political.
Sara Yasin is an editorial assistant at Index. She tweets from @missyasin
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23 Nov 2012 | Middle East and North Africa
OPINION
“Maybe we have a discussion about who is a journalist,” said Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev, in a much-publicised interview with Al Jazeera on Monday during which he was grilled about Israeli attacks on media centres in Gaza City. Even with the hopes for the current ceasefire holding, this is undoubtedly still a discussion that needs to be had, as Israel’s behaviour towards journalists throughout the week-long Gaza crisis has set something of a precedent.
The main target, hit during three out of the five incidents, was the Al Shorouq tower, known locally as “the journalists’ building”, as it housed media outlets including Sky News, Al Arabiya, Al Quds TV and Russia Today. The third attack killed two people, including a local head of a branch of the militant group Al Quds brigades, and wounded eight journalists. Regev dismissed suggestions Israeli forces were targeting journalists, saying:
If you can bring me someone who is a bona fide journalist who was injured, I want to know about it.
At the suggestion that Palestinian journalists were not being given the same level of respect that Regev gives the Israeli media — which he praises for its freedom — the spokesman argued that the media in Gaza is not free, implying it is a legitimate target for Israeli attacks.
An Israeli air strike on Gaza City – Demotix
The illegitimacy of Palestinian media has been the first line of defence by Israelis justifying four separate attacks on media centre buildings — and one journalist directly — since the beginning of the Gaza crisis. The first attack last Sunday morning used five missiles to target a tower block housing pro-Hamas station Al Aqsa TV as well the offices of independent Palestinian news agency Ma’an, and has previously housed international media such as the BBC. According to Reporters Without Borders, “around 15 reporters and photographers wearing vests with the words TV Press were on the building’s roof at the time, covering the Israeli air strikes”. In an attack on Tuesday, two journalists from Al Aqsa TV were killed by an Israeli airstrike while driving in a car marked “press”.
Regev told the Al-Jazeera presenter: “unlike the country where you’re broadcasting from, Israel has a free press, the Israeli press is very aggressive and we respect that right.” He later added: “If you think Al Aqsa is free press, like say Tass in the former Soviet Union is a free press [sic], then let’s be serious for a second.”
Regev ignored how Israeli media is, like Al Aqsa, also likely to publish articles in favour of its own government’s policy, particularly in a time of heightened conflict. Witness the infamous Jerusalem Post article published by Gilad Sharon (son of Ariel), entitled “A decisive conclusion is necessary”, which stated: “There is no middle path here — either the Gazans and their infrastructure are made to pay the price, or we reoccupy the entire Gaza Strip.”
Al Aqsa in particular may not be a sterling example of free media, but that an attacking army is allowed to cherry pick sources of “legitimate” media is highly disturbing. It also implies that the IDF are of the belief that for Palestinians, their nationality trumps all, making them supposedly legitimate targets. Regev himself used the word “legitimate” to describe channels such as Al-Jazeera and the BBC in comparison to Al Aqsa, although offices used by Al Jazeera were also damaged during a nearby attack on the Abu Khadra building on Wednesday night, and offices of Agence France-Press (AFP) were targeted on Tuesday evening. Journalists, regardless of whether their outlet is considered “legitimate”, have been treated as collateral damage in this conflict.
Regev also blamed Hamas for “using journalists as human shields” by “placing their communications equipment in buildings that they know that journalists will use”. For their part, Ma’an stated when reporting on this issue that “there is no military infrastructure of any kind inside the building,” referring to the Al Shawa tower, another media base. The IDF have provided no proof of the communications equipment on either building.
Israel made much of its decision to allow international media into Gaza, from keeping the northern Erez checkpoint open to fast-processing of the press cards that allow journalists to cross it. On arrival at Erez, it was mandatory for all journalists to sign a waiver, stating that should they come to any harm, the IDF bears no responsibility.
The Israeli Government Press Office was also quick to condemn rumours of Hamas refusing to allow journalists to leave Gaza, but had fewer qualms about making its own demands that restrict journalists’ movement when inside the Strip. It explicitly warned journalists to stay away from anything or anyone connected to Gaza’s ruling Hamas party — a difficult task in a place as densely-populated as Gaza. In one incident, Nicole Johnston from Al Jazeera’s English service reported receiving a message from the IDF which said:
Don’t take any Hamas or Islamic Jihad leaders in a car with you. We know who we’re looking for. We know their cars.
This implies that journalists were expected to consider contact with any Hamas official as overtly making themselves a target, a tactic designed to dissuade them from conducting interviews or engaging in any activity where the perspective of Hamas might be broadcast.
International media have praised the Israelis for their decision to allow Gaza to remain open, in contrast to Operation Cast Lead in 2009. But there is evidence of sleight-of-hand with journalistic safety, and the so-called “rules of engagement”. Targeting media, or in this case — targeting journalists who either don’t or can’t comply with the IDF’s demands — ignores Protocol 1, Article 79 of the Geneva Convention which states it is a war crime to target the media. This is despite a press release distributed by the Israeli government press office, which stated: “Israel and the IDF are fully committed to international law in general, and to the Laws of Armed Conflict in particular”.
International media have been flooding into Gaza to work alongside Palestinian media. But with such an aggressive targeted air campaign in one of the most densely populated areas on Earth and no “front line” to speak of, the most that both parties were able to do was to speak up in order to hope that Israel would react to international pressure to accept some part of the so-called “rules of engagement” and avoid targeting journalists.
The ceasefire is holding for now, but there are many lessons to be learned from the past week and a half, most of all because the vast majority of people believe that similar attacks on Gaza are likely to happen again. If that is the case, it is not unreasonable to expect that Israel and the IDF will have learnt that the harming of media of any nationality is not just an action which attracts the bad press that they seek to avoid. It is a crime.
Ruth Michaelson is a freelance journalist currently on assignment in Gaza. She tweets at @_Ms_R
18 Sep 2012 | Uncategorized
A Libyan woman shows her ink-stained finger after voting during the National Assembly election this year. (Demotix)
As protests against the anti-Islam film, The Innocence of Muslims, rage on across the globe, some began to ask if this means that the so-called Arab Spring was a failure, as news from the Arab world is once more dominated by chanting, burning American flags and beards. This conclusion is not only problematic, it is also wrong.
The number of protests only seems to grow, but we aren’t really saying much about the amount of people that are actually participating in them. Take Egypt — protests against the film drew about 2,000 protesters in Cairo Friday. A paltry number compared to the reported 1,000,000 that took to the streets of Cairo to call for the fall of Mubarak’s regime last year. Even now, labour protests have spread across schools, universities, and government bodies in Egypt, with thousands demanding improved pay and rights. The Muslim Brotherhood claimed that it organised 350 protests nationwide, no doubt distracting from some of the growing discontent with Morsi’s presidency.
There is no doubt that religious extremism is very present in the Arab world, but these groups are more interested in power, rather than protecting the integrity of Islam or the Prophet. I think it is no surprise that calls for protests have come from political religious groups like the Hezbollah and the Muslim Brotherhood. Religion is a pretty quick and easy tool to gain support and divide populations.
Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah’s leader, made a rare public appearance to address tens of thousands of protesters in Beirut, but made it clear that protests were about the age-old enemy: the US and Israel. No doubt an important message for Nasrallah, as his ally, Syrian president Bashar al-Assad continues to wage a brutal war to stay in power. Focusing on an external threat is a convenient way to distract from an internal struggle.
Sectarianism has been the choice tool of many repressive regimes and political groups. One of the major victories of the so-called Arab Spring was a start of a conversation to push back on those lines — hurting political groups and regimes that draw their loyalty along religious lines. Still, political leaders have clamoured to use the revolutions to their advantage, strategically condemning human rights abuses, and turning a blind eye when similar abuses are inconvenient. In a translation of a speech by Egyptian President Mohammad Morsi, where he condemned Syria’s regime, Iranian state TV replaced “Syria” with “Bahrain”.
Bahrain’s government has painted the country’s ongoing unrest as a Shia uprising, even though the protesters’ demands have been secular, and largely focused on calling for democracy. In addition to a brutal crackdown on protests, state-owned media has depicted the protesters as Shia troublemakers and agents of Iran — a transparent attempt to use religion to crush dissent. While Bahrain has voiced concern over Syria, it has yet to address its own ongoing human rights abuses.
Last year’s uprisings were the start of a long road of change, and religious extremism is another part of those struggles. The Arab world, much like many other parts of the world, is a region that has been rife with corruption, despotism and inequality, as well as groups struggling to gain power with whatever tools they can get, including religious, ethnic or racial identities. Boiling unrest in the region down to Muslim anger or an inherent hatred of the West is short-sighted: it only encourages the flattened image that benefits the groups who wish to exploit it.
Sara Yasin is an Editorial Assistant at Index on Censorship. She tweets from @MissYasin
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