{"id":42018,"date":"2015-07-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2015-07-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/42018\/great-news-the-lebanese-government-just-spent-1-1-million-to-spy-on-us"},"modified":"2023-08-11T04:18:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-11T04:18:05","slug":"great-news-the-lebanese-government-just-spent-1-1-million-to-spy-on-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beirut.com\/en\/42018\/great-news-the-lebanese-government-just-spent-1-1-million-to-spy-on-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Great News! The Lebanese Government Just Spent $1.1 Million to Spy on Us"},"content":{"rendered":"It still hasn\u2019t gotten a lot of mainstream media attention. After all, if Snowden\u2019s revelations didn\u2019t get the world overly excited, the latest evidence of massive government surveillance shouldn\u2019t cause too much of a stir either.

Just this past Sunday, Hacking Team, an Italian security firm specializing in surveillance technology, rather ironically got hacked. The hackers who hacked Hacking Team managed to hack (how many times can we use the hack in this sentence?) some 400 GB of data.



Although the firm has maintained for years that they do not sell their technology to \u201crepressive regimes\u201d \u2013 whatever the hell that means \u2013 the emails, internal communications and source code, now made available via torrent to any curious individual with an internet connection in the world, would seem to suggest that \u2013 oh-so shockingly \u2013 the firm was lying.

And guess what! Surprise, surprise: Lebanon was one of Hacking Team\u2019s customers<\/a>. In fact, a leaked invoice reveals that just over a week ago on June 30, Lebanon was billed $1,156,420 as a first installment for \u201cRemote Control System Galileo.\u201d

Now, I\u2019m not a tech genius, but according to the Hacking Team\u2019s brochure (yes, they have brochures for their products) the newly released system can \u201cTake control of your targets and monitor them regardless of encryption and mobility.”

\u201cRemote Control System is invisible to the user, evades antivirus and firewalls, and doesn\u2019t affect the devices\u2019 performance or battery life.”

\u201cHack into your targets with the most advanced infection vectors available. Enter his wireless network and tackle tactical operations with ad-hoc equipment designed to operate while on the move.”

\u201cKeep an eye on all your targets and manage them remotely, all from a single screen. Be alerted on [sic] incoming relevant data and have meaningful events automatically highlighted.\u201d



Now, you may be one of the people who trusts the government and thinks this technology is only being used to spy on groups like ISIS. Perhaps you\u2019re right. But I\u2019ll just assume you haven\u2019t heard the recent reports of torture and unlawful detention for actions that aren\u2019t even criminal in many other countries throughout the world.

Of course, Lebanon was only one of many customers revealed to be clients of Hacking Team. The usual suspects Oman, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt all got outted on Sunday as well. Additionally, Sudan was revealed as a client even though the firm formerly denied that it did business with the repressive and violent regime.

And if you\u2019re still not quite convinced that Hacking Team\u2019s business with Lebanon is such a bad thing, Reporters Without Borders placed the group on The Enemies of the Internet index back in 2013.

My point? Carry on uploading all your selfies just make sure to add #LiveLoveSurveilance. Big brother is watching.<\/big>

[Images via here<\/a> and here<\/a>.]
\"\"<\/figure>
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