Spyware Free-for-all

 Well, isn't that refreshing news from yet another source informing us of current and future warfare. Just as we are all, worldwide, becoming more globally technically linked through the Internet, through social media, through websites and in the process forgetting how much our governments and our industries now depend on computer-driven and Internet-accessed programs, making us potentially vulnerable in ways we might never have imagined on our own, now comes word that the future has begun.

Innovative new software is being developed ceaselessly. Making life simpler and far more interesting in some ways, and complicating life beyond sustainability in many others, particularly within repressive regimes. Privacy, secrets, personal and trade along with government security can no longer be assured. This is nation-to-nation, citizen-to-criminal cyberwar. Nations that would far prefer to handily pick up industrial trade formulae, short-cutting the need to spend long years and funding of research projects.

And which nation wouldn't prefer to set aside the artillery and simply flip switches to economically and politically emasculate and destroy the economic and social life of an adversary? It is that more effective and much simpler, after all. And then of course there is also the need of tyrannies to ensure that they have their thumb fixed firmly on the jugular-pulse of their people, to cut off their breathing apparatus that enables them to have the liberty of free breath should they engage in any manner of opposition to rule.

In the United States there is a network monitoring device called Blue Coat Systems capable of Internet scanning for censorship purposes and mass surveillance. China, Russia, the United Arab Emirates and Vietnam, the reading public is advised by Ron Deibert, director of the Citizen Lab and Canada Centre for Global Security Studies, all use Blue Coat ProxySG devices for those purposes. Creepy, isn't it?

Citizen Lab advises that its researchers found computers of Bahraini and Emirati activists monitored by their governments with the use of spyware obtained by British (Gamma International) and Italian (Hacking Team) sources. Reporters Without Borders' 2013 Corporate Enemies of the Internet have included Blue Coat Systems, Gamma International and Hacking Team. Which places them alongside Syria, China, Iran, Bahrain and Vietnam as formally listed State Enemies of the Internet.

These new and still mysterious digital arms are spreading in use, as autocratic regimes become aware of their usefulness to infiltrate, subvert and disable networked opposition to their style of politics and governance. The ordinary average individual might feel more assured with the knowledge that their own defence, law enforcement, and intelligence agencies make use of these tools permitting domestic surveillance activities, or espionage abroad. And they might not feel reassured, one little bit, on the other hand.

Corporate interests are increasingly taking it upon themselves to strike back at cyberattackers attempting to violate their private property in trade blueprints, protocols and manufacturing.

Citizen Lab identified no fewer than 25 countries where FinSpy spyware command and control servers are located. FinFisher is a "remote monitoring solution", and it is installed in Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Brunei, Canada, Czech Republic, Estonia, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Indonesia, Japan, Latvia, Malaysia, Mexico, Mongolia, Netherlands, Qatar, Serbia, Singapore, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, and Vietnam. How's that for a dog's breakfast of nations?

A commercial hosting provider, Softcom Inc., acts as the commercial hosting provider for FinSpy in Canada. It is unknown who is employing the service; whether it is home-based or imposed upon Canada from without. A company based in Markham, Ontario offering a surveillance system called NetBeholder has partnered with a Russian manufacturer supplying the Russian government with equipment operating Russia's nationwide communications interception system.

Netsweeper, another Canadian company, is supplying Internet censorship equipment to ISPs in Qatar, the UAE and Yemen, helping to block access to political and religious information. BlackBerry has been pressured to spy on users for governments in India, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and others of their nation-clients. It is not known whether or to what extent they have agreed to what are considered to be euphemistically "regulatory requirements" to keep their clients happy.

And then there is Gamma International against whom human rights organizations have filed complaints. Citizen Lab, alerted to their activities, have attempted to urge investor activism after discovering that Blue Coat Systems is partially owned by the Ontario Teachers' Pension Plan. Now that's one very richly endowed union.  It's fascinating to recall that teachers' unions are big on Boycott and Divestment in Israel, as a contrast to this type of morally questionable investment.

What is rather surprising is that we haven't yet heard anything about all of this from our privacy commissioners who are always alert and responsive when issues of privacy and Internet snooping and government interference come to public notice. Of course this is not merely national, this is an issue that encompasses a wide, deep sweep, it is a situation where digital controversy and the digital arms-trade is universal in character.

Clever technical engineering, and the profit motive will ensure that these spyware companies will keep on improving their products, and they will be as popular as the acquisition of conventional arms throughout this dysfunctionally divided world.