Implicated in the report are tech companies from the US, Canada, Europe and Africa, and all had a hand in Gaddafi’s obsession with security by providing phone tapping, internet filtering and email monitoring technologies. Those companies include Boeing’s own Narus, which reportedly looked into adding their own internet filtering products to Libya’s established monitoring operation, and Amesys, a French security company that provided Libya with Deep Packet Inspection software back in 2009, and intercepted messages from Hotmail, Yahoo, Gmail, MSN Messenger and AIM.
The messages were tracked all the way up to February of this year, shortly before the uprising and when Gaddafi shut down the internet entirely. It’s a shame the revolution did happen then. They could have kept on making their money. [WSJ]
Photo: AP Photo/Rich Schultz
Stephen
Wednesday, August 31, 2011 at 3:30 PMSo – did these companies break any of their own countries’ laws? It’d be interesting to see them appear in court and say “Oh yeah, we did that as part of the government-sponsored export program”.
Unfortunately I don’t think any charges will be forthcoming.