Data is the currency of surveillance, and it’s not just the NSA and GCHQ looking to cash in. As a newly released cache of documents and presentation materials highlights, the private surveillance industry is booming. More shocking is that many firms claim in their own corporate PowerPoints that they’ve got capabilities that rival that of the government giants.
The document trove, called the Surveillance Industry Index (SII) and released by Privacy International, and contains 1,203 documents from 338 companies in 36 countries, all of which detail surveillance technologies. Some advertised capabilities are astounding: A firm named Glimmerglass, which produces monitoring and repair equipment for undersea cables, touts in a brochure that its equipment enables “dynamic selection and distribution of signals for analysis and storage.”
Another firm, Elaman, advertises its line of FinFisher IT intrusion products in another brochure. It reads like any other brochure for tech products, with Elaman stating that the “FinFisher product suite [aids] government agencies in collecting critical IT information from target computers.” The system is designed for anyone to use, the company says; all users have to do is insert a USB dongle into a target computer and, after a “short period of time,” it will “extract information like usernames and passwords, e-mails, files, and other critical system and network information from Windows systems.”
That private companies are developing advanced data-gathering and monitoring technology should come as no surprise, especially when the NSA’s reliance on private contractors in the development of its own surveillance tech is well documented. The surveillance industry, like many other sectors of the massive private industry that supports law enforcement and governments worldwide, is driving the state of the art forward. But what is surprising is how open the industry actually is.
As Privacy International notes in its announcement of the SII, much of its documents are from its “collection of materials and brochures at surveillance trade shows around the world,” as well as information from Wikileaks and Omega Research Foundation. Surveillance companies are businesses, too, and like weapons manufacturers who try to drum up business at major weapons expos like Sofex, the surveillance industry has its fair share of trade shows and glossy, superlative-laden promo materials.
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