“These devices are clearly manufactured by Blue Coat, and they are clearly in Syria and administered by the state telecommunications company,” said Peter Fein, a computer programmer with Telecomix. “They are being used to block Syrians of every political stripe, and even those not politically active, of accessing sites that we in the West take for granted, things like Facebook and Twitter. They are also being used to monitor the communications of peaceful dissidents.”
Amr Al-Azm, a Syrian activist who fled to the United States in 2006 and has played an active role in organizing the uprisings in Syria this year, called the ability to spread information via the Internet “the tools of our trade.”
“It is vital that the U.S. finds ways to restrict regimes like the Assad regime in getting this technology,” said Al-Azm, who is now an assistant professor of history at Shawnee State University in Ohio. “These uprisings are meant to be peaceful, so our primary weapon is our ability to spread information.”
Blue Coat promotes itself as a leading provider of Web security and management. Founded in 1996, the company sells to more than 15,000 customers worldwide, according to its Web site. The company, originally called CacheFlow, had revenue of $487.1 million in 2010. It sells high-end computer security systems, which give some of the world’s biggest corporations the tools to do sophisticated “data management” by blocking users from accessing certain sites and tracking users who try to access such sites.
The company’s biggest customer in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia, with major sales in United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Yemen, according to a Blue Coat news release.
In recent months, technology experts have alleged that Western companies are knowingly or unknowingly selling technology to authoritarian regimes.
“Hundreds of Western companies are pitching these kinds of surveillance technologies to some of the most authoritarian regimes in the world, turning a blind eye to the ways in which these dangerous technologies are being used to monitor and oppress,” King said. “Stricter regulation of this trade is desperately needed.”
Staff writer Shyamantha Asokan and researcher Julie Tate in Washington contributed to this report.
Loading...
Comments