Trove hacks selling4/6/2023 ![]() Speculation has linked the decision to the torture and killing of Italian graduate student Giulio Regeni, who was studying in Cairo before his body was found earlier in 2015. Why the Italian government has now decided to revoke the global authorisation is unknown. This leak, however, seemed to have no effect on Hacking Team’s license, and we never received a response from the Ministry. Then, in what was one of the biggest surveillance stories in 2015, there was a hack of Hacking Team’s internal systems, exposing to the public a massive trove of internal company material, including details of all of the company’s customers, and the inner workings of the surveillance industry.Īs a result, Privacy International together with our partner, the Italian Coalition for Civil Rights and Freedoms wrote to the Ministry again, asking whether they were subjecting each of Hacking Team’s exports to individual scrutiny. Subsequent enquiries by the investigators led to Hacking Team cancelling their contract with Sudan, and claiming to the investigators that they had no “current” business in the country. Privacy International had in early 2014 reported to UN experts monitoring the arms embargo in the Darfur region of Sudan that Citizen Lab had found evidence that their equipment was being used in the country. Investigators from the United Nations were also knocking on their door. With the imposition of EU-wide rules on the export of such equipment in January 2015, the Ministry in April 2015 granted Hacking Team a global authorisation for export, a form of license countries use to give exporters more freedom to export items, although Hacking Team was still required to report to the Ministry the destinations of their exports, including Egypt. Taking advantage of their relationships with senior officials in the government and security agencies, they warned that the move could destroy the company. With sufficient human rights considerations in place, the idea was that the equipment would not be exported if there was a clear risk to human rights.Īs confirmed during a subsequent meeting between the Ministry and Privacy International, and as the Intercept reported last year, the Ministry did subsequently impose a “catch-all” because of human rights concerns, meaning that the company was seeking individual authorisations for every export. In the letter, we asked that the ministry take unilateral steps, known as a “catch-all”, to impose a licensing requirement on all of Hacking Team’s sales, meaning that the company would have to apply for a license from the Government before exporting. We cited evidence produced by Citizen Lab, which indicated that Hacking Team’s technology was in use by authoritarian regimes across the world, including Sudan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt. In March 2014, Privacy International wrote to the Italian export authoritiesand government representatives, drawing attention to Hacking Team’s technology, which can be used to gain access to all data stored on a device, and take control of functions such as the webcam and camera. ![]() One of the countries to which Hacking Team sold was Egypt, whose human rights record and relationship with Italy has come under pressure after the torture and killing of graduate student Giulio Regeni earlier this year. The move comes after intensive media scrutiny spurred by the hack of their internal systems last summer and revelations that they had sold surveillance technology to some of the world’s most authoritarian states. Hacking Team, an Italian surveillance company selling intrusive spyware to government authorities around the world, has had its global export license revoked by the Italian export authorities, according to a report in Il Fatto Quotidiano. ![]()
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