Listening in on Libya: communication breakdown. The involvement of a French company, Amesys (purchased by Bull in 2010) in the Libyan telecommunications surveillance scandal was successfully proven by OWNI last June, then, this week, by the Wall Street Journal, the BBC, and finally, the Figaro. But Amesys and Bull head honchos refuse to respond to our calls and still haven’t officially reacted. Last Tuesday, the day after the WSJ published its article, Amesys‘ website abruptly shut down. Bull’s personalities, who would normally be aware of the subject, are accustomed to using the silent treatment. Bull’s CEO Philippe Vannier was Crescendo Technologies’ Director-in-Chief, the holding that bought up I2E and that became Amesys.
At the time of the sale (for a sum of about 105 million euros), the company’s gains were about 25% over 5 years. That’s only about 100 million euros, which is 11 times less that what Bull makes. What sort of country is interested in being able to listen to everyone. Illustrations: Flickr CC binnyva. SpyFiles: Revelations of a Billion-Dollar Mass Surveillance Industry.
Today Wikileaks releases nearly 1,100 internal documents, sales brochures and manuals for products sold by the manufacturers of systems for surveillance and the interception of telecommunications. These new leaks reveal a mass surveillance industry that’s now worth $5 billion a year, with technologies capable of spying on every telephone and Internet network on a national scale. The flagships of this market are called Nokia-Siemens, Qosmos, Nice, Verint, Hacking Team, Bluecoat and Amesys. The documents detailing their interception capabilities will be progressively released online by Wikileaks. OWNI, who worked in partnership with the Washington Post, The Hindu, L’Espresso, the German channel ARD and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism in this operation which has been dubbed the Spy Files, has attempted to present an overview of this new type of industry, by creating an interactive map and a dedicated site, SpyFiles.org.
Amesys is a manufacturer of equipment. The Surveillance Catalog - The Wall Street Journal. As the Internet has grown to handle more data, monitoring companies have had to keep up. Interception now can mean taking all the traffic from the Internet backbone and funneling it through devices that inspect the packets of data, determine what is inside them, and make decisions about whether to copy them for law enforcement. Busted! Two New Fed GPS Trackers Found on SUV | Threat Level. Wired.com.
Internet.