How U.S. Surveillance Technology is Propping Up Authoritarian Regimes

Robert Morgus and Justin Sherman wrote for The Washington Post about how surveillance technology from the West is propping up authoritarian regimes (and what we could do about it).

NSO Group, an Israeli cyberintelligence firm, makes spyware that it sells to a variety of government clients around the world. It has denied that those surveillance products were involved in the torture and murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, although it has neither confirmed nor denied selling its products to the Saudi government — elements of which, the CIA has concluded, ordered the killing.

That may raise eyebrows, but this intermingling of privately sold technology and authoritarian regimes is hardly an outlier. Throughout the world, despots are also probably monitoring Internet traffic, communications and behavior — in many cases using surveillance technology supplied by U.S. and other Western companies.