[bestbits] Surveillance: not just a US issue

[Anne Jellema]

Hi all

Yet more evidence (this time from South Africa) that governments beyond the
US are using technology to escalate surveillance of civilians, and for
their own dubious reasons as well as to cooperate with the Americans.

Full disclosure: the author is my partner.

Cheers

Anne

http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2013/10/04/surveillance-may-turn-many-of-us-into-enemies
Surveillance may turn many of us into ‘enemies’
BY ANTHONY BUTLER<http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/staffprofiles/2012/08/10/anthony-butler-profile>,
04 OCTOBER 2013, 05:51

SOUTH Africa’s intelligence operatives often appear hopelessly inept. But
new technologies are empowering even the most incompetent spooks.
Revelations by the WikiLeaks "Spy Files" project and whistle-blower Edward
Snowden point to a large escalation in citizen surveillance.

In South Africa, crime intelligence and private investigators routinely
circumvent the Regulation of Interception of Communications Act to access
individual citizens’ e-mails and phone calls. Targets can simply be added
to legitimate surveillance projects. Even more concerning is the likelihood
that there is already systematic blanket surveillance by the state.

The Citizen Lab at Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs recently
revealed that FinSpy software is hosted by one or more South African
computers, almost certainly within the government. FinSpy inserts "trojans"
onto target computers and cellphones, allowing remote surveillance of
keystrokes, passwords, text messages, e-mails and voice data. It can even
turn a cellphone into a microphone to eavesdrop on private conversations
(which explains some politicians’ unnerving habit of removing the batteries
from their phones).

Huawei Technologies, the world’s second-biggest telecommunications company,
is a recent investor in South Africa. According to one assessment in
Foreign Affairs magazine, Huawei is a Chinese intelligence agency
"masquerading as a tech business". Using software developed for domestic
repression, it could allegedly supply passive surveillance capability to a
friendly ruling party.

A much smaller local company, VASTech, has been a focus of WikiLeaks’
attention. The Wall Street Journal revealed in 2011 that the
Stellenbosch-based firm’s systems helped the Gadaffi regime monitor
millions of mobile and landline calls. This technology was also reportedly
sold to the Mubarak state.

WikiLeaks-hosted company documents show that VASTech’s Zebra system can
monitor 20-million voice channels simultaneously. Such blanket interception
is complemented by archiving power that allows agents to "backtrack and
retrieve all the communications of suspects prior to an incident". Network
analysis permits the identification of "key relationships between
stakeholders" and lays bare "the structure and operation of syndicate
networks".

Even anonymous cellphones are no defence against Zebra: it uses "speaker
identification" technology to "reveal unknown numbers and new mobile
devices used by targets".

VASTech describes surveillance targets as "criminals and enemies of the
public". But it is officials in state agencies, and not software suppliers,
who decide how technology is used. Given that the state’s national
interception centre probably possesses such instruments, can citizens be
confident that intrastate oversight mechanisms are effective?

Drug-smuggling, xenophobia, illicit commerce, and human trafficking, among
many other matters, are routinely touted as "threats to national security".
This could license the surveillance of a vast swathe of commercial entities
and citizens.

Surveillance systems are excellent instruments for the mapping of internal
political party factions. It is possible to take a player in national,
provincial or local politics, reconstruct his "collaboration networks", and
eavesdrop on his archived conversations. There is nothing to prevent such
technology being used against recalcitrant trade unionists — especially
when, as State Security Minister Siyabonga Cwele has observed, so much
industrial action is "illegal".

The KwaZulu-Natal police’s Lt-Gen Solomon Makgale made the insightful
observation this week that service delivery protesters are also criminals.
A protest, he noted, "stops being a protest when a crime is committed … if
you are impeding the flow of traffic, then obviously you’ll be in conflict
with the law".

South Africa is experiencing a rapid expansion in the reach and potential
power of state surveillance. It is unclear how to prevent what may become
an equally rapid rise in the number of citizens defined by state agencies
as "enemies of the public".

• *Butler teaches politics at the University of Cape Town.*

-- 
Anne Jellema
Chief Executive Officer
Cape Town, RSA
mob (ZA) +27 61 036 9652
tel (ZA) +27 21 788 4585
tel (US) +1 202 684 6885
Skype anne.jellema
@afjellema

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