Global software firms are reportedly selling hacking as well as spying tools, with little to no restriction to governments who keep a vigil on political opponents, journalists and also human rights workers.
While the clients of software firms come mainly from the autocratic countries,they are also present in the democratic states of the world including US and many European countries.As per experts, the reason why deals involving spying as well as hacking software come so lucrative for software companies is the amount of money (which is typically 5-6 fold of a normal software deal) involved.
In one such instance, a human right activist was beaten and fired from his job in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as the government contracted to spy on him among 1100 others. While the Italian company which inked the contract with the country’s government claims that it is no longer working with the country’s government, many other companies will line up to sell their offerings simply because of the sheer size of money these deals bring.
In October 2015, the US authorities also arrested two individuals for smuggling equipments which could be utilized to spy on opponents. What’s more worrying here is that while the international arms market was considered to be highly regulated, the perception is changing with these recent cases.
Experts also believe that while hardware equipments can easily be traced, software spying tools being intangible have emerged as the preferred offering for arms merchant who intend to smuggle to other countries for more profit. This has raised the security concerns for agencies across the globe.