Spyware can be classed as weapons – New Technology

     How It Works software RCS, shown at right. Graphics: Jonas Askergren

Software easily become weapons in the hands of authoritarian regimes. Within the EU, discussions are now coating Digital Spy equipment with export control. 33-company Combain offered this summer its exclusive positioning service to the controversial company Hacking Team, but now back.

The EU is considering to impose aggressive spyware and other surveillance technology export controls. They can be considered as dual-use products, ie they can be used militarily. In Germany, the rules already in place.

– It is a hot topic now under discussion, says Jan-Erik Lövgren, Deputy Director General of the ISP, the ISP.

Even today, he said, is developing tools to produce such a spy technology coated with restrictions for exports to countries outside the EU.

The background is that the softwares from the EU come to be used by governments that violate human rights.

One company highlighted sell its advanced and aggressive spyware RCS Remote Control System, to authoritarian states, Hacking Team. Canadian Citizen Lab has shown that several states have used the technology to identify human rights activists. When Hacking Team last summer itself fell victim to hackers, revealed that it has sold licenses to, among others, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Russia, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The company’s email correspondence was leaked – and published on the WikiLeaks website. According to Wired magazine shows the leak of a “global spy companies that run amok”.

An e-mail shows that Saab’s former Information Security Michael Niva contacted Hacking Team 2013. “I have seen that you have an interesting product that may be of interest to my business in different ways,” he wrote in the email, the Swedish media reported on last summer. DI Digital he stated then that any cooperation never became an issue.

When new technology examines email harvest, we find even an email from a Swedish companies to Hacking Team. It comes from Richard Windhager, partner, in Lunda company Combain Mobile. It is considered one of the hottest young Swedish engineering companies and qualified in the spring on the magazine’s 33-list. The company has developed proprietary algorithms and compete with Google on who has the best positioning database on the world market.

The letter was wondering Richard Windhover of Hacking Team is interested Combains service “because it can help you (Hacking Team, editor’s note) to locate people and connected gadgets.” He asks about coincidences and proposing to be seen in exhibitions in 2015 or in 2016.

Combain often has marketed itself as a company that can help players to keep track of connected gadgets, such as refrigerators and cars. But according to Richard Windhager emphasis is also on getting customers in the business segment of national security, not least technology company that helps agencies with law enforcement.

– We already have US and Israeli clients, he said.

When he gets the information from Ny Teknik that Hacking Team revealed to have customers the world that violate human rights, he says immediately that the company is no longer interested in any cooperation with the Italian company.

– Now say information that I had not known before. We do not want to support that kind of activity. This product will support a good cause.

Last week ended key international discussions on export control rules in Vienna, under the Wassenaar arrangement Sweden and other EU countries have acceded. The meeting deals with conventional weapons and goods and dual-use technology.

Can also Combains positioning technology be considered as a product with dual usage forward?

– It depends, it allows sensitive. If you use encryption service can be affected by the dual-use rules, says Jan Erik Lövgren, in a quick comment.