UK firm's surveillance kit 'used to crush Uganda opposition' | Hacker News Reader

UK firm's surveillance kit 'used to crush Uganda opposition'

bbc.co.uk

108 pointsescapologybb28 comments

For reference, Gamma Group are a well known bunch of evil bastards in the UK. Nothing they do is considered honorable. Literally nothing. They also pretty much have a license to do what the hell they like under government mandate as a lot of things they do are actually pretty much illegal if someone founded a startup to do it today.

It says everything about the place when I had my CV put forward by an agent a few years ago for a "high tech position" in the "expanding data sector". Wouldn't reveal who it was to start with due to an NDA. Moment I got told who it was, it was "fuck off". And you know what I got stick from the agent for actually having some ethics. Clearly it's not common these days otherwise outfits like that wouldn't have any staff.

Then again they seem to groom people without experience or understanding of exactly what they do at university job fairs.

I await my bag and tag for criticising them.

> actually pretty much illegal

Not at all. This is like saying weapons manufacturing is illegal, just because they can be used for committing murder. As for Gamma Group being 'evil' that's also a bit of an overstatement. I don't want to get into a huge ethical debate here, but the principle is that tools are morally neutral, their users or mis-users are the ones that should be criticised.

At some point it becomes the bully on the playground, holding your arm and hitting you with it, chanting 'stop hitting yourself! Stop hitting yourself!'

Weapons manufacturing in bulk for sale to anybody with cash can be called evil, with good reason.

Bollocks.

I'm a British citizen, how can we stop this from happening again.

I don't think writing a letter to my MP is going to change anything since I write very often (yearly, since snowden) about surveillance, and nothing changes.

I think the only person who might come near to being able and willing to do anything about this is Labour deputy leader Tom Watson. Obviously nothing will be done about it under a conservative government.

You can donate to Privacy International, who are at least promoting awareness of the issue.

Surprisingly, there are many quiet parts of the Conservative Party who think this sort of thing has gone on too long. Especially the (increasingly small) Libertarian branch. People like David Davis (the former candidate for party leader) are a good start. Ditto reach out to people in the House of Lords, whatever we may think of the institution, there are many very influential voices there. Baroness Manningham-Buller for example, though the former head of MI5, is actually a surprisingly strong critic of such surveillance. Esp when it's over seas.

David Davis, will all due respect, is completely isolated in his own party and mostly fulfils a theatrical role these days.

Such software should be classified as arms for export purposes.

Would you say the same about Metasploit or Wireshark? If not, where do you suggest the line be drawn?

Software that runs on your own computer is not a weapon; software that is designed to run on other people's computers without their knowledge or consent probably is. That would put Wireshark clearly on the acceptable side of the line and Metasploit in a very questionable place.

Living in Sweden, it's relatively common to read the news that Ericsson has sold networking equipment to some company in country X where the required feature "lawful intercept" has been used to something horribily bad by a corrupt regime.

If Ericsson would block the sales of network equipment to those kind of countries on that ground, Huawei would jump in and gladly accept the deal instead. :/

Maybe Ericsson could try to get privacy-protective technical features into the GSM specs. (The best time to do that would have been between 1999 and 2001. It will be harder now.)

GSM is a privacy and security nightmare.

I tried bringing up Second Amendment Protections applying to software about fifteen years ago to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I got a polite letter back laughing at me.

Let's just say I agree with you, though.

The article is awfully light on what exactly was sold to the Ugandan government.

The article states the technology can be used,

"to spy on the enemy, collect data, intrude enemy systems, intercept enemy communication and also manipulate transmissions. "It can covertly be deployed in buildings, vehicles, computers, mobile phones, cameras and any other equipment deemed worthy for information extraction or surveillance."

I mean from the article it could be anything - a software interface on top of standard CCTV cameras, voice activated microphones on government and government sympathizer personal electronic devices or just a piece of analytic software for parsing through data they've already collected.

Doing a bit more digging it appears that Finfisher (the tech sold to Uganda by Gamma Group) is a spyware tool that uses common security exploits including phishing and social engineering to infect target devices and monitor them. It appears to do this in a somewhat automated, click-to-launch, way.

Come on, the important part is "intrude enemy systems, intercept enemy communication and manipulate transmissions"

The big red flag for you should be "enemy" rather than "someone I disagree with politically."

If these allegations are true, then I find it hard to imagine a fair and just society arising in these countries.

It would appear to me that autocratic governments are being given additional tools to retain power and more control over young democracies which have not yet developed the institutions necessary to 'self-correct' or reverse/prevent the abuse of such tools.

In my view, it is those who are most likely to agitate for a more democratic society and create institutions that demand for accountability who will be targeted and silenced.

This will deny those countries of the very people who are needed to create the kind of country that their citizens dream of.

Imagine such tools in the hands of the British during the time of the birth of the United States.

I am left with a bitter taste in my mouth. I am not quick to see a dystopian future, but it will make it harder for needed change to come. I welcome any alternative viewpoints that can shed a kinder light on this situation.

The software seems kind of irrelevant to me. They recently arrested the main opposition and threw them in jail on trumped up charges. You don't need software for that.

>Police arrested the country’s main opposition leader and a dozen other officials from his party in dawn raids on Thursday, as President Yoweri Museveni scaled up efforts to thwart a mounting challenge to his three-decade rule.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/ugandan-opposition-leader-kizza-...

I don't think the technology, and who sold it to whom, is the real story here. We all know that the NSA and GCHQ have similar capabilities. I imagine China, Russia and several other states do too. The point is, this power will corrupt.

Consider this quote:

> people deemed dangerous to state security like government officials and opposition politicians are being surveilled

What happens if Labour look likely to win the election and someone decides Jeremy Corbyn is "dangerous to state security" because he opposes renewing Trident. What institutions exist to ensure that he can't be surveilled?

This has likely happened before during the cold war when there were concerns that communists had infiltrated the Labour party. Harold Wilson famously believed he was being spied on throughout his term as prime minister

And in fact it turned out that they should have been looking at Cambridge and who the Queen kept company with. Whoops.

What institutions exist to ensure that he can't be surveilled?

Realistically, none. It's probably contrary to ECHR - mass surveillance definitely is - but that makes little difference. We're almost back to the days of A Very British Coup. There have already been generals threatening this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3241904/We-won-t-sta...

You're assuming/implying he isn't already being surveilled. For all n, n is being surveilled.

The only question at this point is whether that information is used for blackmail today, or at some point in the future. If so and so is "dangerous to state security" today, then it's today. If he's inconvenient later, then it's later.

There was a ruling this week saying MPs can be surveilled by gchq, it'd be interesting to know where the immunity really is - the PM and his cabinet? Opposition leaders? The opposition leader? http://arstechnica.co.uk/tech-policy/2015/10/gchq-allowed-to...

Oh, and David Cameron has already called the Labour party run by Corbyn a danger to national security. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/david-cameron-...

I don't think there is any immunity. Probably the only restriction is the classified material rules: there has to be some way to hold a "TOP SECRET" meeting without it going into the general surveillance bucket.

And the day you want to cut GCHQ funding? Well just a moment minister let me play you this before you make a final decision...

The establishment have already floated the idea that Corbyn is a "friend of terrorists" which they will keep in their back-pocket. Corbyn will be a financial terrorist as he wants to bring down the rentier cartel of the goverbankment.

> 'someone decides Jeremy Corbyn is "dangerous to state security"'

Tweedle-Cameron and Tweedle-May already have announced that - they're paving the way for the possibility that his popularity continues to grow, so they can first off attempt discrediting him (the volume of smear already is incredible), and if that fails, he'll be arrested for a) treason b) sedition c) paedophilia d) a parking offence in 1977 e) none of the above f) all of the above.

I think the particular dystopia we are headed for is most akin to Gilliam's Brazil, in which Kafkaesque bureaucracy, the application of technocratic principles, and a veneer of "reasonability" stifles and neuters all possible opposition.

This is the kind of discourse we hear from our politicians today, and it sends chills down my spine:

    INTERVIEWER
                         Deputy minister, what do you believe 
                         is behind this recent increase in 
                         terrorist bombings?

                                     HELPMANN
                         Bad sportsmanship. A ruthless 
                         minority of people seems to have 
                         forgotten certain good old fashioned 
                         virtues. They just can't stand 
                         seeing the other fellow win. If 
                         these people would just play the 
                         game, instead of standing on the 
                         touch line heckling

                                     INTERVIEWER
                         In fact, killing people

                                     HELPMANN
                         In fact, killing people  they'd 
                         get a lot more out of life.

          INTERVIEWER
                         Mr. Helpmann, what would you say 
                         to those critics who maintain that 
                         the Ministry Of Information has 
                         become too large and unwieldy... ?

                                     HELPMANN
                         David... in a free society 
                         information is the name of the 
                         game. You can't win the game if 
                         you're a man short.

                 INTERVIEWER
                         And the cost of it all, Deputy 
                         Minister? Seven percent of the 
                         gross national produce...

                                     HELPMANN
                         I understand this concern on behalf 
                         of the tax-payers. People want 
                         value for money and a cost-effective 
                         service.

                                     HELPMANN
                         That is why we always insist on 
                         the principle of Information 
                         Retrieval Charges. These terrorists 
                         are not pulling their weight, and 
                         it's absolutely right and fair 
                         that those found guilty should pay 
                         for their periods of detention and 
                         the Information Retrieval Procedures 
                         used in their interrogation.

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