New online tool reveals how the global surveillance industry is watching you

Dell Cameron

2016-08-02 05:01 p.m. | Last updated 2016-08-02 05:06 p.m.

The global surveillance industry is a monstrous thing.

Repressive regimes are now routinely acquiring powerful surveillance technology from private firms in democratic nations. In the United States, police bypass the security of private citizens’ cellphones using a handheld device produced more than 5,000 miles away in Israel.

It’s a tangled web—one that few truly have the bandwidth to explore.

That’s why this week, Privacy International (PI), alongside Transparency Toolkit, launched the Surveillance Industry Index (SII), a searchable database containing records on over 520 surveillance companies. Relying on various technical, governmental, and investigative reports, the database reportedly includes “over 600 reported individual exports of specific surveillance technologies.”

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