Saturday, 24. September 2011

A guide to Libya’s surveillance network


After repeated interrogations lead by Reflets.info, OWNI, the Wall Street Journal and the Figaro, Amesys, the French company that sold Internet surveillance systems to Gaddafi’s Libya tried to calm things down with a statement posted on its website (mirror):

"The contract only concerned the sale of materials capable of analysing a fraction of existing internet connections, only a few thousand."

However, the documents in OWNI’s possession tell a different story, in fact, the exact opposite story. In contrast to traditional surveillance systems that target specific connections, the “massive” (sic) Amesys surveillance system is used to intercept and analyze the entirety of the telecommunications network, to the scale of an entire country.

In its presentations for the high-end surveillance service, Amesys flaunts EAGLE as having been conceived to monitor the whole spectrum of telecommunications: IP traffic (internet), mobile and landline telephone networks, WiFi, satellite, radio and micro waves thanks to its “passive waves, invisible and inaccessible to any intruder.”

owni.eu

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