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European Firms Assisted Gaddafi's Internet Monitoring Regime
riverat1 writes "The Next Web has a story on Muammar Gaddafi's monitoring of the internet and other telecommunications. As you might expect, the monitoring was intense. The story names companies that supplied the monitoring software, most notably Amesys, a unit of the French company Bull SA. There is a more detailed story behind the paywall at the Wall Street Journal."
Boeing's Narus division may also have been involved (collecting very important Analytics and nothing suspicious of course). Update: 09/01 16:08 GMT by UL :Axure pointed out that VASTech (South Africa), ZTE (China), and the aforementioned Narus (US) also provided assistance, making the title of the article a bit inaccurate. It seems the Libyan Internet monitoring was an international affair (my apologies to Europe).
Every oppressive regime, from Nazi Germany to China, needs unethical companies whose management values money more than human freedom to maintain their power. The only reasonable thing that we as a society are morally obligated to do now is to publish all of the names of those companies for everyone to see, remember and boycott. If you are a consumer, don't buy their products. If you are a business owner, don't cooperate with them. If you are their worker, quit your job. If you are a stock broker, advise everyone to sell their stock. We owe that to people who were and still are being oppressed using tools provided by those companies. The only message that those bastards will understand are lost profits. The boycott is the least that we can do.
Karma: Positive (probably because of superiour intellect)
Wow I hope this is not the Bull of AIX fame.
I've admired this company for years. Hope this is not true.
Every country that has internet service has it monitored by the government. Every company that makes telephone equipment builds in the capability to monitor it as well, and governments use it, including yours.
Muammar Gaddafi's still monitoring the internet? Is he doing it from dial up?
Six months ago Gaddafi and his government were legitimate. There are export restrictions to many nations (both from the US and Europe), but was there one to Libya? I'd suspect there wasn't. So this becomes a moral issue. Companies should have a "don't sell to dictators" policy. We should isolate them from all trade. No more business with China until they have a freely elected government. No more oil from Saudi Arabia until the kingdom is overthrown. The only viable solution is for "free" governments to allow and encourage anonymous, encrypted communication. Yes, that will make the job of law enforcement harder, people will use it to violate IP laws and traffic in child porn, but it is the only way to enable free exchange of ideas outside government control.
Corporations are "people"... until it is time to prosecute them. Then nothing seems to happen.
Money talks, whats the real story here?
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
If he has gilt so do those who assisted and need to be charged being as they are a person and all.
Corporations are required by law to be completely amoral money-making machines. They are supposed to pursue all legal avenues for profit, and can be sued by their shareholders if they do not. Therefor, it is no surprise that the vast majority of major corporations, even ones with slogans like "Don't be evil", will work with oppressive regimes in order to gain access to new sources of revenue.
I am officially gone from
It's funny. When it's in the USA you go even to the city-name. When it's outside, you pick the name that you can flame against the better.
Shame on you.
Have you heard about SoylentNews?
How about the British Labour Party? Up to their armpits in money, posts and doctorates when it comes to the Gaddafi family. Time for a boycott?
Slashdot - News for Nerds, Stuff that Matters, in ISO-8859-1 Has just realised that beta makes this signature redundant
Companies should have a "don't sell to dictators" policy. We should isolate them from all trade. No more business with China until they have a freely elected government.
So when you deny these countries all trade, who do you think it hurts the most? Do you the dictator and their cronies care? They might care that they don't get their Bentleys and 80 year old scotch but who really gets hurt are the people.
Here's some bedtime reading for your altruistic folks that an Egyptian pointed out to me when I said that US Sanctions are the only ethical way to get dictatorships in line. When we sanctioned Iraq, half a million children died. Now, you might say that it's not your problem that a country of sand can't get an agriculture infrastructure together to save its own children but when we went in there all cavalier like a couple times do you think the people praised our troops for ousting the dictator? Do you think they didn't know that we had imposed sanctions on their country which meant many of them starved?
You can say "no more high end commodities, only food and water" which is slightly better but then those simple commodities just become the prized possessions and dictators/warlords sit on rice and use it to control their starving populace. It's a good thought but you have to be prepared for the reality of what ensues.
My work here is dung.
There are four contractors named in the story: Amesys (of Bull SA, France), Narus (of Boeing, USA), VASTech SA (South Africa) and ZTE (China). How on Earth did you come up with the title "European firms ..." ??
I hate to say, but you confirm some ugly stereotypes about Americans' awareness of the world beyond their borders.
(BTW, the WSJ story is a rare free one - no pay wall.)
If you run a firm that provides IT snooping for war criminals, then you too are being a war criminal and you too should face criminal charges.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
was doing business with Lybian regime, especially before it was called a "regime" but rather a "government".
Sent as ripples into the electromagnetic field. No single photon has been harmed in the process.
Six months ago Gaddafi and his government were legitimate
What you mean is "legitimate" as determined by other governments -- namely the current world superpower governments -- NOT legitimate as determined by the people of Libya, nor by the people living under the rule of other governments. If you wish to speak for those millions of individuals, then you will need to actively collect the opinions of each of those millions of individuals, because each of them is quite capable of thinking for himself or herself (that is what makes us human after all), and therefore no government can logically speak for "their" people as if they mindlessly think in unison like the borg.
You always have an idea of what the current superpower governments want, because the political reality of the world is controlled by exactly those people (i.e. the elite at the very top of the pyramid).
KDQ (Kaddafy Ghadafi Qadafee) makes #2 on the list of all time badass African Dictators (Africanews.com http://www.africanews.com/site/Africas_top_10_dictators_of_all_time/list_messages/39642 ). Trying to control how oil rich African dictators spend their money has never been a solution. Ultimately, the Revolution 2.0 or "Arab Spring" is a sign that young people in these emerging markets/nations have caught on to the idea of "blaming colonialists" for the acts if dictator assholes. Trying to blame "multinationals" for their problems probably isn't going to fly any better.
By the way, most of these regimes are now seizing containerloads of working computers as "e-waste", blaming all the technology companies for "polluting" their landfills with internet cafes, err, "toxic computers". They'll be warning their people of contagious computer viruses next. So far, German media Bauerfiend is the only major media to catch on to the "ewaste" excuse for hardware censorship disguised as "stewardship". This program documents how I had 3 containerloads of Pentium 4s seized by Mubarak's "EPA" enforcement... http://www.zdf.de/ZDFmediathek/beitrag/video/1352178/E-Waste I think it's too late for these dictators to put the genie back in the bottle. The African "Geeks of Color" will triumph, and in 30 years I hope we'll be talking about "African Tiger" tech economies, and these dictators will be join General Custer, Stalin, and Hitler in the history books. You never saw stories like this in African magazines in the 1980s, they would have been seized and burned.
Gently reply
Do you honestly expect a society that runs on pure greed to do a moral background check on its customers before cashing in?
What I'd like to know is, why Amesys actually mentions services like Hotmail, Gmail etc. as completely and in real-time interceptable by governments using its products:
http://web.archive.org/web/20081114014541/http://amesys.fr/PRODUITS/DTSHEET/Glint_EN.pdf
Since at least Gmail is SSL-only, are we seeing here the first actually public evidence, that SSL is routinely and en mass intercepted and MITM'ed by a bunch of governments, most likely through using CA-signed certs in-between, that any browser trusts??! That, for me, is the real story here and it would be terribly nice, if some investigative journalist would get some more details on this point (see the Amesys brochure)!
I can't understand why everyone gets so upset about the fact that companies does business with dictatorships. It is not a companies place to dictate foreign policy, that is why we have politicians (they do precious little anyways so why make their burden even lighter ?). An embargo against a country should be enforced on a national level, by a nation or group of nations, not by a sales rep at Toy's 'R Us or Nokia. If they can refuse to do business with Gaddafi's regime that opens the flood gates to all kinds of discrimination, what is next ? If companies should be required to stop doing business with Gaddafi or maybe Syria, why should they be allowed to continue trade on the Chinese market? Also an oppressive and military backed dictatorship.
But if they'd sell the same thing to US government, or NZ government, then it's ok?
Arabic is written from right to left. In the past, vandals have used right-to-left rendering control codes to disrupt the rendering of Slashdot. That's why Slashdot's comment system doesn't allow the use of any characters that aren't on a whitelist.
allow citizens of the affected country to sue companies that facilitate violations as a class
remove limited liability from corporate officers and shareholders in case of judgments against them for human rights violations
these things will work themselves out
If you let the muslims write their chickenscratch on /. , you open the portal to Zalgo.
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
If you sell to a regime that represses its people, and there is a revolt, you risk being outed. Being outed as a supporter of a government that censors, oppresses, and attacks its own people can't be good for business. It would be nice if this became a trend. It would be more interesting and impressive if some monitoring companies actively marketed their distance from such regimes. "Our competitors support dictators. We do not. Make the ethical choice."
This is just a non-issue.
If anything, it is a red-herring that draws attention away from the illegal and morally bankrupt behaviour of G and the gang of monsters he called family and friends. These companies sold equipment and technology within legal boundaries, practices and processes. Absolutely everything we consume today is tied to a moral issue at some degree of separation. Techno-morality cherry picking.
Haul G's ass up onto the docket for prosecution. And reserve a special cell for Hannibal G and his twisted, obscene troll of a wife. Shine the spotlight on Algeria for propping up G with weapons, supplies and mercenaries, and in the final act for providing refuge for the clan.
Go to
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2031390/Aline-Skaf-Gaddafis-daughter-law-threw-boiling-water-nanny-Shweyga-Mullah.html
to see what Aline Skaf (Hannibal's wife) did to their nanny.
There is so much real, solid, evil to latch onto in this conflict, I find this story to be laughable.
I would feel different if the foreign tech companies acted directly in immoral acts. Providing a country with monitoring capability is not even close to being immoral.
If this issue turns your crank, then let's look at some other activities in Libya:
Want a techno issue? How about the hosting providers who give voice to G propaganda outlets like mathaba.net and algathafi.org? Or other sites that the regime used to communicate with terrorist orgs?
There are companies which drilled for oil to feed money into the regime. How did G get $50B / yr to keep Saif, Mutassim, Hannibal etc in their positions of power?
Bankers gave safe harbour for billions embezzled from the country's coffers.
What about the tanks and guns used by G to suppress the population? Where did they come from?
Everybody and his malamute sold them arms. Want a morally corrupt issue? Talk to the Russians about the more than 20,000 SA7s (shoulder launched surface to air) missiles they sold G. Obsolete, next to useless against military aircraft even back when new, and useful mainly against civilian airliners. The CIA provided only 1500 Stingers to the mujahadin in Afghanistan. Expenditure on this one weapon system alone was over $100 million. Frick. Libyans are walking around with diseases caused primarily by neglect and malnutrition while the government is spending huge dollars on weapons useful only to terrorists.
Huawei built the cellular infrastructure and then refused to help the TNC get the system going again in the Eastern part of the country after G chopped off coverage.
How about the GMR and the unknown effect on water resources in Africa. Better haul Brown and Root to the table for a grilling along with Thyssen Krupp, and dozens of other companies.
The list goes on and on, but so what?
Freedom for us? Good! (we have no oil, right?)
Freedom for "them"? NOT GOOD! Please send bombs/teargas/firewalls/wiretapping-equipment!
Of course - we, in the US, and those in the UK, France, Russia/USSR, and other Superpowers, AND even regional powers, have been at this game for centuries. IN FACT. Rome did it to Gaul. Ancient Lower-Egypt did it to (what is now)Somalia, until they pressed for unification to become Upper-Egypt (upper/lower as-the-Nile-flows). Anywhere you have resources, and inequality, you can have exploitation.
And - of course, I'm only joking with you all. It's not like we're really FREE here.
Did our presidential election in 2008 actually count for jack squat? Did it change the policies that Obama voters were hoping for? (anything besides DADT? - this is the ONLY meaningful policy change he has accomplished!) We still wiretap, domestically, we still detain without warrants, we still imprison without trial, we still deprive people of property, we still invade personal privacy, and our democracy is a sham with two corporatist center-right parties, and no voice for any other view.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
but someone's gotta do it.
It's not that hard to get around this stuff. You can't boycott them all, and they all sell to allies and/or distributors that do.
Cisco sells to Pakistan (ally), Pakistan sells to Russia (supposedly an ally now), who sells either directly to Libya (who was taken OFF our state terror list a while back) or to China (supposedly an ally now too), who sells to North Korea, Libya, Syria, or Canada, all definitely NOT allies. Boycott Cisco all you want, but good luck finding a competitor large enough to supply what you need at a better price and has found a way to keep their products off non-ally soil... and by good luck, I mean, no way.
Oh Canada, I keed, I keed!
I8-D
I think that it is time for /. to consider saying no to posts that have links behind paywalls.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks#p/search/0/SSYXw87BWXo Look especially 08:32 and a few minutes onwards.
For the impatient: Privacy International reflects on the point that these dictatorship-friendly features aren't originally ordered by dictators. From the beginning it was demanded by western governments, and once available, not explicitly disabled to the next customer. (In this case, Iran)
I'm not an administrator, so I can only guess. But I think it's because Slashdot's administrators have chosen English as the language of the comment system, and other languages' characters may be more useful for ASCII art than for text that other English speakers will understand.
I know someone who worked at Narus when it was a shiny new startup, and after hearing what they did (basically spy on internet users) I was a little shocked my friend was willing to work there.
Hmmm this is a tad disconcerting seeing as the ANC in the South African Goverment want to make some new laws allowing them greater secrecy and greater snooping powers on their people.
http://mg.co.za/article/2011-09-02-sa-firm-helped-gaddafi-spy/