High tech greed becomes the tyranny of torture, murder and oppression over democracy and humanity

Hacking the Revolution
President Obama may talk a good game about Arab democracy, but he’s done nothing to stop Western technology firms from helping repressive regimes crack down on protesters.
BY DANIEL CALINGAERT – DECEMBER 5, 2011

Pick a country, any country, touched by the Arab Spring, and chances are that Western technology has been used there to suppress pro-democracy movements. Even though this directly undermines U.S. efforts to promote democracy and Internet freedom in the Middle East and elsewhere, President Barack Obama’s administration has remained oddly silent about it. If the White House won’t act, it’s time for Congress to pick up the slack.

European companies have provided software to security services in Bahrain, Egypt, Libya, Syria, and Yemen to monitor email and voice communications. In Bahrain, dissidents were confronted by interrogators with intercepted email messages and were tortured. U.S. surveillance technology was reportedly provided to Egypt (from Narus, a subsidiary of Boeing) and Syria (from the Silicon Valley-based firm NetApp), though both companies deny knowledge of the sales.

The use of Western technologies to censor Internet content is even more widespread. Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, among others, have blocked access to content deemed undesirable by their governments by using U.S.-made SmartFilter products. Syria got hold of Internet-filtering devices from California-based Blue Coat without the company’s knowledge, despite the U.S. trade embargo on Syria. These devices were used to block websites of opposition groups and news about the anti-regime protests. Other countries, including Qatar, Kuwait, and Sudan, use Canadian or European technologies to filter content on a large scale.
Western technologies to restrict the Internet are working directly at cross-purposes with the Obama administration’s policy of promoting Internet freedom and its encouragement of democratic forces in the Arab world. The Obama administration has repeatedly declared a strong commitment to the free flow of information online and has allocated $120 million to support civil society’s efforts to challenge Internet restrictions in repressive environments. Much of this support goes to circumvent Internet censorship and strengthen digital security of activists — thus, in part, to get around U.S.- and European-made blocks to Internet access and to protect activists from Western-built surveillance technologies. …more