The War on Terror Has Turned Ethiopia Into a Surveillance State
By Thor Benson,
<
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/the-war-on-terror-has-turned-ethiopia-into
-a-surveillance-state> Motherboard
April 5, 2014
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There's a knock at your door. You open it, only to find several
grave-looking police officers accusing you of a crime you didn't commit.
They pull out records of your most recent phone calls and tie you to your
alleged co-conspirator, and now you're screwed. This is Ethiopia.
According to <
http://www.hrw.org/node/123977> a recent Human Rights Watch
(HRW) report, Ethiopian surveillance of phones and emails is rampant.
<
http://www.pen.org/defending-writers/eskinder-nega> Eskinder Nega, a
journalist and dissident blogger, reports being shown emails, text messages,
and phone recordings when approached by Ethiopian police who were
investigating him. Nega's newspaper, Ethiopis, was shut down for being
critical of the Ethiopian government's abuses in freedom of expression and
freedom of the press. Nega was sentenced to 18 years in prison for allegedly
conspiring against the government in July of 2012.
"Ethiopia certainly doesn't have the resources or capacity to engage in
surveillance on the scale of the NSA-very few governments do," Cynthia Wong,
a Senior Researcher at HRW, told me. "The biggest difference, however, is
that Ethiopia is using surveillance to silence dissent and opposition
parties. While we don't know the full extent of who the NSA is monitoring,
there is no evidence yet that suggests that the NSA is broadly targeting
critics or political opposition groups, as we have found in Ethiopia."
Ethiopia, despite a dreadful history of human rights abuses, is a key
African ally of the United States. But even American citizens with relations
to Ethiopia are not safe from the surveillance program. The report
highlights a US citizen by the name of "Kidane," who runs technical support
for Ethiopian diaspora groups, who found that his computer had been infected
with spyware that was recording his Skype calls, emails, and web searches.
Wong claims the surveillance is used during abusive investigations and that
police and the government have "unfettered access to call records and
intercepted phone calls." She says even the citizen's protections that exist
on paper are systematically ignored, and that one of the justifications the
Ethiopian government gives for operating at such a level is the ongoing war
on terror.
Washington Post reporter Craig Timber talk to ESAT Ethiopia about
surveillance and cyber espionage
It seems Ethiopia, as an ally of the United States, is taking notes from the
American playbook. In order to fight against anyone who opposes it, the
Ethiopian government is finding ways to silence them under the guise of
"terrorism." "Anything it does to go after terrorists in its state is
largely supported by the United States," Eva Galperin, Global Policy Analyst
at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told me. "When they start labeling
journalist and political dissidents as terrorists, that's really
problematic, because it sort of makes us complicit in their human rights
abuses."
Essentially, the Ethiopian government has learned it can do whatever it
wants in surveillance, as guided by the precedent set by the United States.
"They've learned that 'terrorism' is a very powerful word, both in domestic
and foreign policy," Galperin says. "If you can name your enemies
'terrorists,' and say that you are fighting terrorism by monitoring these
Ethiopian dissidents, it's possible for the government to come out of this
looking really good as strong 'war on terror' allies in Africa."
As a fighter of "terrorism" and an ally of the United States, Ethiopia is
afforded certain opportunities in the international market. The country has
been able to acquire server access and spyware technology from western
countries. <
http://www.hackingteam.it/> Hacking Team (Italy) and
<
http://www.gamma.co.uk/> Gamma/
<
http://www.finfisher.com/FinFisher/index.html> FinFisher (UK/Germany) are
two companies the HRW report identifies as being compliant in the country's
efforts. There is no specific evidence of US software or servers being used
in the surveillance, but it certainly wouldn't require a stretch of the
imagination.
"Trade in surveillance equipment is currently unregulated at the
international level," Wong told me. She believes that the world community
needs to instigate regulations on the trade and selling of surveillance
equipment around the world, as to protect the investigation of human rights
abuses. She thinks the EU needs to take control of where this equipment is
going so it doesn't end up in the wrong hands.
"The U.S. really needs to reconsider Ethiopia as a strong African ally,"
Galperin says. A country with such a tattered history of abusing its own
citizens and turning a blind eye to censorship should not be a country we
put support behind. The United States is obviously a country that should be
concerned with terrorism. However, when the goal becomes getting away with
whatever you can under the umbrella of fighting terrorism, it becomes a
serious problem, Galperin adds.
Surveillance of phone calls, emails, and texts makes sense when you're
investigating a Taliban leader, but is it walking on thin ice when it's a
tech support guy? Possibly. Just not in Mexico.
Received on Sat Apr 05 2014 - 19:07:29 EDT