Abstract
In 2011 the surveillance industry was exposed. Investigative journalists, aided by documents obtained from the offices of state security agencies in post-revolution Egypt and Libya, revealed the western firms that had provided surveillance technologies to those governments. Similarly, large caches of surveillance product marketing materials were released by WikiLeaks, Privacy International and the Wall Street Journal. These ‘spy files’ detail the advanced capabilities of censorship and surveillance products, sold to governments around the world, that make up the $5bn annual trade.
Following these disclosures, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton publicly condemned the ‘companies selling the hardware and software of repression to authoritarian governments’. Similarly, Republican Congressman Chris Smith reintroduced the Global Online Freedom Act, now tweaked to regulate the sale of censorship and surveillance technology. Although well intentioned, the bill has little chance of passing.
Politicians voice concerns about the largely unregulated market for this technology in humanitarian terms: the governments of Egypt, Syria and Iran are spying on human rights activists, journalists and dissidents, who are then arrested, beaten or killed. However, given the neverending list of serious human rights problems, it is unsurprising that many politicians seem unwilling to invest the political capital to address this issue. After all, Egyptian activists do not vote in Texas (nor London for that matter).
The problem is this: as long as the trade in surveillance technology is framed as a human rights issue, it will compete for the attention of politicians and the general public. This approach is doomed to failure. Instead, activists should reframe the debate by focusing on national security, something that no post-9/11 politician can afford to ignore.
Although governments spy on their own citizens, they also spy on foreigners. However, the snooping technology that is used abroad is very different. This is because intelligence agencies are unlikely to receive the same kind of helpful assistance that they have come to expect from phone companies when they engage in foreign surveillance. As an example, while AT&T has gone out of its way to help the US National Security Agency, the phone company is of little use when the Americans wish to spy on Chinese domestic communications.
One of the most effective ways for intelligence agencies to intercept communications in a foreign country is to use ‘IMSI catchers’, which are briefcase-sized snooping devices that mimic the signals broadcast by normal mobile phone towers. When one of these devices is turned on, all nearby phones will connect to it, as it will appear to be a legitimate phone tower. The IMSI catchers can then be used to track and locate particular phones, or to intercept calls, text messages and data connections.
IMSI catchers are available from surveillance vendors around the world, are easy to transport, and are difficult to detect when used. It is also likely that they have been sold to countries that have a history of engaging in foreign espionage against the United States and other western governments.
Our governments have long been willing to ignore – or in some cases promote – the sale of surveillance technologies to authoritarian regimes. However, once IMSI catchers have been sold to the governments of Russia, Pakistan and China, there is no way of guaranteeing that they will only be used in Moscow, Lahore or Beijing. After all, the technology does not require the assistance of the local phone company and therefore works equally well in Washington.
Although the privacy threat posed by IMSI catchers is not widely known to the general public, it is real. Furthermore, as these devices have been purchased by intelligence agencies, they are likely used to spy on the traditional targets of foreign espionage: politicians, military leaders and business executives. For advocates, then, IMSI catchers and other surveillance technologies that can be used for foreign espionage are a fantastic opportunity. We must shift the debate away from human rights to national security, and in particular to the threat posed by such technologies when they are used by foreign governments in our own capital cities. Only then will our leaders find the will power to regulate the global trade in surveillance technology seriously. ❒