Wikileaks has released nearly 300 files with a total of 1,100 documents, which give an insight into the billion dollar business of the surveillance industry. Wikileaks founder Julian Assange warned that this largely secret operating industry is more dangerous than the military-industrial complex that President Eisenhower in 1961 marked his farewell speech as a threat to freedom and democracy. “We live in a world where it is not only theoretically possible, the entire telecommunications network of a country, all telephone conversations recorded. There is also an international industry, which sells equipment for it,” said Assange in a video interview.
Under the title “Spy Files” Wikileaks has a collection of marketing materials and technical documents online, affecting 160 companies from 25 countries. These are not accustomed to typical “whistleblower” as revelations of Wikileaks, but rather the result of extensive research, were at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in the UK and the partner organization involved OWNI in France. Among the media partners include the publication of the ARD, the Washington Post and the Italian weekly magazine L’Espresso.
Besides it is already publicly available documents, for example, presentations at conferences, which were reserved for employees of police authorities, intelligence agencies and telecommunications service providers. The most popular of its kind conference will be held in the Middle East and moved this year to 1300 participants. According to a report in the Washington Post there are also governments in the Middle East, which are among “the most avid buyers of software and technical equipment for surveillance.” What is the provider of the 5-billion industry as a “legal interception” will call, developed mainly in the U.S. and other Western countries, but many appliances into the hands of repressive governments such as Syria, Iran and China.
Amesys, which belongs to the French IT company Bull, boasts in one of the published documents, how can it help governments when listening – from one person to the “traffic-monitoring of the whole country.” This includes automatic translation and mapping of social networks in the real world, which are determined on the basis of discussions between the participants.
This surveillance technology sold Amesys – supposedly with the approval of French President Nicolas Sarkozy – even on Libya. The Wall Street Journal in August described a system that used the secret police of Muammar al-Gaddafi to monitor the Internet traffic in Libya – and it fell on logos, manuals and posters of Amesys. The company admitted in September, “Analysis Hardware” to have sold to Libya, to the fight against terrorism should serve. The Declaration also contained a vague Amesys threat of legal action against anyone who might “impair reputation or goodwill,” his.
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According to research by the MDR-magazine fact delivered a German spy software company that began by the Egyptian secret service against dissidents. The software “Finfisher” should have allowed him to spy on computers, mobile phones and listen to create motion profiles. To date, subject to the export of such technology does not permit. The surveillance industry is virtually unregulated worldwide.
It’s not just about “good Western countries” who sell to authoritarian regimes and dictatorships, says Wikileaks. The same company also supplied the contrary, Western intelligence agencies with equipment for mass surveillance. It suffices therefore not to rely on one in the future may be better regulation of this industry, argues Julian Assange: “We need to use Individual rather than different forms of encryption technology and means for data protection and understand the various risks to our privacy.” Will the failure to run in its estimation and Western countries in danger of becoming totalitarian surveillance states. Since social life is always more to the internet was shifting, threatening an unprecedented surveillance scenario: “This is a worrying situation for Western democracy.”
