Report: Israeli Cybersecurity Tools Used for Repression Abroad
The spy systems were used against LGBT citizens, human rights activists and Muslims in 15 countries, Haaretz finds.
After leaving the military, some Israelis are selling intelligence technology globally. (Photo: IDF Spokesperson's Unit)
Israeli cybersecurity companies sold lucrative surveillance systems to countries that then committed human rights violations, according to a report by Haaretz published Friday. The programs were used to prosecute LGBT citizens, detain human rights activists and discriminate against Muslims, according to 100 sources in 15 countries.
Intelligence experts who previously served in the Israel Defense Force’s Unit 8200 went on to take new products to market, according to the report. A sprawling, lucrative, largely unregulated industry, based in the Tel Aviv neighborhood of Herzliya Pituah, sells to foreign governments that then use the products to spy on their citizens’ electronic communications.
According to one source who worked in Latin America for the company Verint, which makes a range of surveillance products: “There was one time that I was teaching people how to collect information from the social networks. I’m working with the trainees and explaining things to them, when suddenly they ask me to run a check on [political] demonstrators. Just like that, in the middle of the training session.”
Israeli equipment has been used to monitor dissidents in South Sudan, Nigeria and Colombia. It was also used to monitor social networks in Angola and Malaysia.
An anonymous source who works in the Israeli cybersecurity field said:
Even when limitations are placed over the capabilities of the computer programs, the companies don’t know who they will be used against. Everyone in this field knows that we are manufacturing systems that invade people’s lives and violate their most basic rights. It’s a weapon—like selling a pistol. The thing is that in this industry, people think about the technological challenges, not about the implications. I want to believe that the Defense Ministry supervises exports in the right way.
“I can’t constrict my client’s capabilities,” another Israeli cybersecurity expert said. “You can’t sell someone a Mercedes and tell him not to drive faster than 100 kilometers an hour. The truth is that the Israeli companies don’t know what use will be made of the systems they sell.”
Your support matters…Independent journalism is under threat and overshadowed by heavily funded mainstream media.
You can help level the playing field. Become a member.
Your tax-deductible contribution keeps us digging beneath the headlines to give you thought-provoking, investigative reporting and analysis that unearths what's really happening- without compromise.
Give today to support our courageous, independent journalists.
Environment
Dana R. Fisher's new book investigates what it will take for the world to finally rally around rapid, sustained climate action.
Opinion
Staunch capitalists like Gurner tell us every day they want more exploitation and precarity for people just trying to get by.
Opinion
Besides their ultra-right rulings, the justices have a well-documented history of misconduct.
The people of Mumbra fear that the government is threatening their independence and their identity.
Our oligarchic rulers are determined to ban all discussion of class warfare, which is why they are trying to block the nomination of Sanders.
For more than a century Zionists and, later, Israelis have pursued a project to seize and ethnically cleanse Palestinian land.
You need to be a supporter to comment.
There are currently no responses to this article.
Be the first to respond.