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British Companies Are Selling Advanced Spy Tech To Authoritarian Regimes (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Since early 2015, over a dozen UK companies have been granted licenses to export powerful telecommunications interception technology to countries around the world, Motherboard has learned. Many of these exports include IMSI-catchers, devices which can monitor large numbers of mobile phones over broad areas. Some of the UK companies were given permission to export their products to authoritarian states such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Turkey, and Egypt; countries with poor human rights records that have been well-documented to abuse surveillance technology. In 2015, the UK's Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) started publishing basic data about the exportation of telecommunications interception devices. Through the Freedom of Information Act, Motherboard obtained the names of companies that have applied for exportation licenses, as well as details on the technologies being shipped, including, in some cases, individual product names. The companies include a subsidiary of defense giant BAE Systems, as well as Pro-Solve International, ComsTrac, CellXion, Cobham, and Domo Tactical Communications (DTC). Many of these companies sell IMSI-catchers. IMSI-catchers, sometimes known as "Stingrays" after a particularly popular brand, are fake cell phone towers which force devices in their proximity to connect. In the data obtained by Motherboard, 33 licenses are explicitly marked as being for IMSI-catchers, including for export to Turkey and Indonesia. Other listings heavily suggest the export of IMSI-catchers too: one granted application to export to Iraq is for a "Wideband Passive GSM Monitoring System," which is a more technical description of what many IMSI-catchers do. In all, Motherboard received entries for 148 export license applications, from February 2015 to April 2016. A small number of the named companies do not provide interception capabilities, but defensive measures, for example to monitor the radio spectrum.
Because all world governments are a lot more authoritarian than they let on. Just stop and think about the list of things you can't do. Ever thought you could try and reason your way out of punishment because you really didn't harm anyone?
So British companies are selling advanced spy tech to authoritarian regimes, like their own governemnt? and the americans?
No. Neither Britain nor America is authoritarian. If you are free to question and ridicule the government, they you do not live in an authoritarian country. The USA and the UK both have problems, and both excessively spy on their own citizens. But that is not authoritarianism.
If you are free to question and ridicule the government, they you do not live in an authoritarian country.
That's a ridiculously simplistic view of authoritarianism.
The ideal authoritarian government would allow anyone to say anything, as long as nothing the say puts the government at risk.
IOW, everyone would be closely monitored with sufficient laws that everyone has been established guilty of something. Then, if anyone's rabble-rousing becomes too effective, you can take them away.
Everyon feels free, but nobody is free.
That's essentially the brand of authoritarianism that British Home Secretary Theresa May has been pushing to implement the infrastructure for.
She is now Prime Minister, having just pushed the Investigatory Powers Act through the Commons and beginning the process of removing legal obligations under the Human Rights Act. This last Act brings the European Convention on Human Rights into British law, and - contrary to its name - has nothing to do with the EU, but was proposed by Churchill and framed mostly by British lawyers, and is the nearest we have to a written constitution (our unwritten constitution is more about procedure than substantive law).
Not necessarily, ITAR is a thing after all.
ITAR is directed at countries that have an adversarial relationship with America. It has nothing to do with authoritarianism. For instance, Saudi Arabia is a brutal and repressive country, whipping dissidents to death and beheading apostates. There is no moral difference between the Saudis and ISIS. Yet ITAR does not affect them because they are a staunch American ally.
Why the fuck would the NSA want to listen to you?
For the same reason they do every night, Pinky - We're trying to take over the world!
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Turkey is a parliamentary representative democracy. The president is elected for a five-year term by direct elections. There are human rights issues, but "authoritarian" is strong a word.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
This is Standard Operating Procedure for the English oligarchy/monarchy.
England is not a democracy...it has exactly as much democracy as will keep the subjects from rising up.
If you understand the truth of the statement above, a lot of history makes sense, and this move in TFA is completely predictable.
Thank you Dave Raggett