NICE Systems; Israeli/Italian surveillance SW helps Uganda target gays. 1984?

[bradly1101]

Is this Orwellian?

http://www.buzzfeed.com/sheerafrenk...siness-is-letting-governments-spy#.nrekjBlvQb

The Milan-based Hacking Team and Tel Aviv-based NICE Systems are two of fewer than a dozen companies worldwide that deal in the distribution and development of surveillance software to nation states. Hacking Team, which describes itself as a company that provides lawful interception tools for police and security officials worldwide, has been repeatedly linked to countries that use surveillance software to repress minority and dissident groups.

Hacking Team’s website as of Aug. 24 Hacking Team

Until recently, the level and scope of their cooperation with NICE Systems was undocumented. But on July 8, a group of hackers leaked one million of Hacking Team’s internal emails, laying out all of the company’s secrets and explaining, in their own words, how they use malware and vulnerabilities to create spyware that can get into nearly any computer and smartphone.

The breach showed that Hacking Team and NICE exchanged nearly 3,000 emails between August 2010 and July 2015. While codenames were used in many of those emails, BuzzFeed News found at least five countries where the two companies were discussing doing business: Uganda, Mexico, Finland, Colombia, and Israel.

The contracts being discussed would provide those countries with Hacking Team’s Remote Control System, which allows governments to use so-called zero days, a known vulnerability in software that hackers can exploit to infect the phones of anyone in their country, as well as monitor emails, record keystrokes, and snoop on their phone and computer cameras and microphones.

Spokespeople for Hacking Team and NICE declined to answer repeated requests for comment from BuzzFeed News, or give further details about the way in which their companies work together on those contracts. One Israeli employee of NICE, when reached by BuzzFeed News on a cell phone number revealed in many of the email exchanges, said, on condition of not being named, “Don’t be childish. Of course we do business with Hacking Team. We do good business with them and there is nothing wrong with that.”

“Don’t be childish. Of course we do business with Hacking Team. We do good business with them and there is nothing wrong with that.”
​

In April 2014, LGBT activists in Uganda began noticing that their computers and cell phones were behaving suspiciously. Phishing emails began to target the community, asking them to click on what appeared to be links to news articles, but which activist groups in Uganda later identified as malware.

“I received this link from multiple people in my mailing list, therefore it was hard for a layperson to know that it was a spyware,” one person told the Ugandan civil rights NGO Unwanted Witness. The NGO said it tested the email and found malware that appeared to be linked to the Zeus malware, a notorious piece of spyware that collects contact details, correspondence documents, and other personal information from infected computers.

“It was designed to sweep as much material from the infected computer as possible, and then use the address book to reach out to all of the contacts available through that person. It was very smart malware,” said one cybersecurity expert, who is based in Uganda and spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone. He asked not to be identified by name as he is still working to help the community and is afraid of being targeted by the government. “I don’t know who created the malware, but they were targeting this community.”

I bet this helps:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD-hSXOt5FA