A British company — Silver Bullet — and a US company — Verint Systems (subsidiary of Comverse Technology) — sold equipment for surveilling mobile phone calls to Vietnam's intelligence services, according to the UK-based publication Jane's Defence Weekly. The report went on to say that a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries served as an intermediary in the transactions. Silver Bullet's website has gone offline.
Journalists' advocacy group Reporters Without Borders issued a related statement today. Snip:
"We are appalled to learn that our phone calls with Vietnamese cyber-dissidents have been monitored with equipment provided by European and US companies. Coming a year after it emerged that Yahoo! cooperates with the Chinese police, this new case reinforces our conviction that telecommunications companies must be forced to respect certain rules of ethical conduct. In particular, they should be banned from selling surveillance equipment to repressive governments."
The sales were revealed by Robert Karniol in an article headlined "Vietnamese army enhances mobile phone monitoring" in the 31 October 2005 issue of Jane's Defence Weekly (JDW). He said the London-based Silver Bullet had recently sold two P-GSM stations (portable mobile phone listening devices) to Vietnam for $250,000 each. Elta (a subsidiary of Israel Aircraft Industries) and Aikap Group, another Israeli company, acted as intermediaries in this transaction.
