Slashdot Mirror
Iranian Police Tracking Dissidents Using Tech From Western Companies
chrb writes "A recent article at Bloomberg discusses Western companies supplying monitoring equipment to Iran. There are few regulations restricting the sale of intelligence monitoring systems to the Iranian government, and large corporations like Ericsson and Nokia have supplied the equipment used to identify dissidents and suppress anti-government protests. '[One such system from Creativity Software] can record a person’s location every 15 seconds — eight times more frequently than a similar system the company sold in Yemen, according to company documents. A tool called "geofences" triggers an alarm when two targets come in close proximity to each other. The system also stores the data and can generate reports of a person's movements. A former Creativity Software manager said the Iran system was far more sophisticated than any other systems the company had sold in the Middle East.'"
Hey, we're not in business to preserve human rights. In fact, we would be legally liable for failing our fiduciary duty to our shareholders if we failed to pursue the lucrative oppression-assistance market. We were incorporated to pursue profit and, by golly, that's what we're doing!
An Episode of Leverage?
Now if we could just get our Western governments to stop using the same bullshit...
To the haters: You can't win. If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine
slashdot = stagnated
Personally I'm more concerned about this tech being used to track people in Western nations.
Let me just say: fuck Creativity Software and fuck any programmer willing to work for them. There's this thing called 'ethics' and if they choose to violate the most basic premises to enable people to do shit like this, the outcomes are also on *their* heads. None of this "just doing my job" bullshit.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
Without court oversight. But, oh no, it won't be abused. Ya right. This is the man who claimed he wanted the Canadian government not to be able to call premature elections... then promptly did so himself to try to get a majority.
Hmm - seems Iran is going to be the new enemy of choice for the USA.
Keep drumming up that anti-iran sentiment so that the US has enough momentum in the populace to justify bombing them next year.
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
FYI - I couldn't be more against despotic regimes, I don't fly because of the TSA... I'm not an apologist. /Syria was before this one)
I do; however, have the same question anytime this article runs on Slashdot (Bluecoat
If you are Ericcson/Cisco/Bluecoat/Juniper/etc, how do you ensure your tech never ends up being used for "evil"?
Who is evil? Should network filtering equipment be declared munitions and its export controlled? Should they include a killswitch so if it gets in the hands of an evil dictator it can be disabled? Should Nokia do background checks on all potential buyers to try to predict whether or not they are straw purchasers for evil entities?
Both of those ideas some either really far fetched, impractical, or inethical in themselves... so my question is - if you feel a hatin' rising up after reading this about Ericcson/Nokia - what should they do?
mov ah, 4ch
int 21h
Most of the weapons that have flooded the third world come from Russia (or the Soviet Union in the past), China or a handful of other countries that routinely ignore international law and protocol on arms dealing. Where was the outrage when the Libyan rebels found all of those brand new Chinese weapons from the Chinese state-owned weapons makers in Gaddafi's posession? Ever notice the dearth of American weapons in all of the third world killing zones?
Frankly, I don't think the pursuit of profit is any more crass than the pursuit of political influence. Either way, you are putting your own good above doing the right thing.
Why not turn the tables? I'd love to see a website that tracks the companies that help violate human rights. I'd also like to see it tied to products. In the market for a cell phone? Find out if the maker of your cell phone helps Iran oppress its own people. Or maybe a badge system maintained by Amnesty International, where the badge is displayed if there are no violations, and revoked when something like this comes to light... Let's track the companies that track citizens, and make it easier to put some economic pressure on them.
Change the word "Dissidents" to "Terrorists" and this would be a good story.
Didn't past articles say they were smuggled into Iran by Dubai-based buyers?
I guess we can have a debate about how many degrees of separation is needed for effective export restrictions, but I don't know how we can ever draw the lines to be reasonable.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
Back in WWII IBM's Brazilian division kept working with and suppling IBM's German division. The IBM's Hollerith punch card system was updated to be the workflow system for the holocaust. According to the author of the book IBM and the Holocaust when IBM USA found out IBM Brazil was still working with German division their response was a request no longer to be told of the activities. At the same time IBM was one of the few companies that knew when the D-Day invasion would be as it was actively using computer power to predict the best weather for the invasion.
Why should this come as a surprise to anyone?
Isn't that the line we can always use? The same thing should apply here. Minus the 7-day wait period, of course.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
You must be joking. The US is the world's largest exporter of weapons. Amongst the countries the US exports weapons to, Egypt, Yemen, Pakistan and Israel have recently been in the news for their "killing fields".
Of course, what the US govt does is make a list of evil doers and good guys. This list has little to do with killing fields or human rights, but rather political convenience and the lobbying of the arms industry. Then when someone sells to the side that the US govt doesn't like or couldn't sell to, there is much screaming about "international protocol" (ie. the list drawn up by the US and its rapidly dwindling allies).
Just because the US makes a list doesn't mean it's true or anyone else accepts it—don't be such a tool.
In fact, we would be legally liable for failing our fiduciary duty to our shareholders
This is not strictly true, though it is often quoted from someplace, usually someoneâ(TM)s ass.
A company has the responsibility to do what is best for the stockholders. There is NO law requiring publically traded companies to pursue profit above all other considerations.
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Bingo. For crying out loud, someone please mod this up.
http://www.rootstrikers.org/
Only countries that US and Israel deem adversaries are monitoring people and infringing on civil liberties. That's right, Echelon doesn't exist and people that US is monitoring are either terrorists, either software pirates, either pedophiles.
western corporations are completely amoral entities designed to generate obscene amounts of money
and would, if not thoroughly regulated by the united states government, export everything from toothpicks to
nuclear ICBMs to foreign countries just to turn a profit.
dont like it? use open source. at least then you didnt help finance the company that thinks its ok for despots and tyrants
to oppress their people, and you're part of something that helps liberate them.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Should they include a killswitch so if it gets in the hands of an evil dictator it can be disabled?
Why not? It would strongly discourage the act. Who cares if you lose sales from it? It surely isn't significant. Then again, why even produce such software? In what case is it appropriate, and in which legitimate case is there no alternate means of achieving the desired goal?
Twinstiq, game news
The fact the tools exist is the issue, not necessarily who is using them. right?
If the US is using the same tool as Iran... it is really the same issue unless you are going to believe that the US is only going to use it correctly.
Many oppressive regimes use open source to do the same as well. Does the slashdot community care about that?
Bet they used the Internet as well to perpetuate these crimes.
It's so silly to condemn tech companies for doing business with "Bad Guys." It's not our (US citizens) job to be world police, and part of that means we don't get to decide who's a big bad government and who's all good (I.E. it's stupid to say any non-white/non-christian-based/non-democratic government is evil). One mans political dissident is another man's terrorist. Sure in some cases it's pretty clear cut (humorist writes funny cartoon about scary dictator who wears funny hat and gets thrown in the slammer), but in others, not so much, and it's not our place to decide. Either we should disallow all foreign sales of arms/surveillance tech/etc or permit it to every country. My preference would be to disallow, since selling things like that merely empowers rich people the world over to screw poor people, but either way, I think neutrality is more important.
Ze Atomic Device! It iz Ztolen!
We should be more worried by Our police tracking US with OUR technology.. Drones in Houston anyone?
So I agree it was unethical for the company to sell them software.. We all get that. Libya got all thier weapons from the EU (italy, germany,france, UK). The U.S. just did a 60 billion dollar arms package with Saudi Arabia. Attack helicopters to Turkey (so they can get revenge against the Kurds. Half the shit we blew up in Iraq was American made. These are GUNS AND BULLETS, not software. Hell, last year (13 months ago) we did a 5 year multi million dollar arms package with PAKISTAN (you know, the stuff that's killing our guys in Afganistan?). Which is a 30% increase in our past arms deals with Pakistan. Half the middle east is armed by the United States directly or indirectly (with things that have no other purpose than to kill another human being), and your getting bent out of shape about software. Seems kind of petty when you put out a couple hundred BILLION dollars worth of US/EU/Russian weapons that went out in the last few years or so.
What needs to happen is for every shareholder to be aware of exactly what it is they are buying into. If I buy a share that is responsible for killing someone I must be made accountable for it. Is there a legal framework for this already? That is, when Enron happened can we pursue shareholders seeing as no knowledge is no defense.
Too many people buy shares recklessly, many without knowing exactly what it is they are creating.
A blog I run for the wealth
Most people don't think about it, and so don't recognize that most of the most boring and repetitious low-level computer program writing is farmed out to third-world workers. People in places where repetitious work that people in the first world want someone else to do is paying work and the skills are therefore worth learning. They are skills that can get one a job, that developing can get one a better job, and developing real expertise in, so one knows computer language from Boolean up, may even get one a visa to work in the USA or Europe.
Or get one a prestigious job with ones own government, scanning for malicious code that may have been included in purchased software and systems-ware. To be looked for especially if the systems suppliers' home nations may be antagonistic to ones own third-world nation, or neighbors, or for insurance, in case a system supplier may be susceptible to economic and other kinds of arm-twisting by important customers or others.
It is one of the ironies of computer-world warfare and computer programing grunt-work being out-sourced, that career-seekers in rich and powerful nations tend to have higher level language skills and be dependent on those in less developed nations for the lower level language skills, and so, if and when a crisis should develop, be, first, behind the curve, second, dependent on ones they want to drop their spyware on for fundamental parts of the spyware theywant to drop, and, three, may start a contest with a "lowly" nation unaware they are already disadvantaged.
It is the Native American Error. Native Americans adopted firearm technology without developing powder-making and metalurgy skills, and so were dependent on their enemies for what they needed to fight their enemies.
http://events.ccc.de/congress/2009/Fahrplan/events/3706.en.html
see what is difference between democracy and totalitarian regime at 2:22
So, here's a thought. How about an arms race? Really all this sort of thing does is create an opportunity for another company to create a product that defeats the offending company's product. Then the "good" company can sell the product to the dissidents who are being harmed by the "bad" company's actions. The problem with ethical dilemmas like this is that there will always be a group of people who will take profit over anything else. I just see this as another capitalistic opportunity. Heck, you might even get an entity like Mossad to buy and distribute the counter measure thereby alleviating the financial burden on the dissidents.
is THE proving ground for Barak Obama's and DHS's Secure America State Tactics Program soon to be visited upon you at your very door step.
)
Not
You do realize that western governments are using the same tech to track their dissidents too? Right? That is why those capabilities were put into the tech products in the first place.
Ask intel
Ok, so I'm not going to comment on the story, but the complete and utter bullshit summary compared to the article.
Slashdot says "Western Companies like Ericcson and Nokia"
Article says EUROPEAN Companies like Stockholm-based Ericsson AB and only mentions Nokia in passing by pointing out how the European Parliamentary Hearings were pure hypocrisy in light of This particular story.
So yeah, word of advice to Soulskill- your own colon is not a good place to be finding news.