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HackingTeam's Global Export License Revoked

Posted by msmash on from the mad-world dept.

An anonymous reader writes: You might remember HackingTeam from an epic data leak back in July 2015. Now, the Italian Ministry of Economical Progress has revoked HackingTeam's licence to export their Galileo remote control software abroad, two years before it would expire, on April 30, 2018. Until the situation changes, HackingTeam will have to ask express permission for every single commercial operation that involves the sale of their Galileo system abroad.

2 of 29 comments (clear)

  1. Seeya! by sociocapitalist · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Sounds like the perfect time for them to relocate.

    --
    blindly antisocialist = antisocial
  2. Has to be political by RevDisk · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Once upon a time, when I was doing network security, I got thrown out of IT and into export control. They gave me enough money that I didn't quit. Logic was it was technical, byzantine and required insane attention to detailed regulation that'd make Cthulu go insane. Hey, infosec is virtually the same parameters.

    Short story long, generally the US has among the most byzantine and archaic export control regulation in use by first world countries, specifically ITAR. It's largely unchanged from the 1970's/1980's notion of 'high tech', so you get a lot of interesting stuff that ends up on the US munitions list. Europe in general doesn't have nearly the same level of export control, and gives a substantial advantage in the global defense contracting world.

    That said, many Euro defense contractors have extremely tight relations with their export licensing agency. They dance to the tune very closely, which does actually reduce the amount of legislation or regulation. As a government entity, why bind yourself with written rulings when your customers will do exactly what you tell them? I can very well imagine, and would be shocked to see otherwise, that any Euro export related tech organization that did not have extremely tight relations with their export licensing agency would be punished at least this harshly. Expect a LOT of foot dragging. Not enough for this company to win in court, just enough to cause them to lose business or go bankrupt.