Teach ‘em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance

Privacy International (PI) has today released a new report, 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance', showing how countries with powerful security agencies are training, equipping, and directly financing foreign surveillance agencies.

Spurred by advances in technology, increased surveillance is both powered by and empowering rising authoritarianism globally, as well as attacks on democracy, rights, and the rule of law.

As well as providing a background to the issue, the report provides data and examples of how such assistance programmes are being implemented around the world:

• In 2001, the US spent $5.7 billion in security aid; in 2017 it spent over $20 billion. In 2015, military and non-military security assistance in the US amounted to an estimated 35% of its entire foreign aid expenditure. US Departments of State, Defense, and Justice all facilitate foreign countries' surveillance capabilities, with large arms companies taking advantage and embedding themselves deeply into such programmes, including at surveillance training bases in the US. Data shows how these agencies have provided communications intercept and other surveillance technology, how they fund wiretapping programmes, and how they train foreign spy agencies in surveillance techniques around the world.
   
• The EU and individual European countries are already spending billions developing border control and surveillance capabilities in foreign countries, largely to ensure they to deter migration to Europe. For example, the EU is supporting Sudan's leader with tens of millions of Euros aimed at capacity building for border management. The EU is now looking to massively increase its expenditure aimed at building border control and surveillance capabilities globally under the forthcoming Multiannual Financing Framework, which will determine its budget for 2021-2027. Other EU projects include developing the surveillance capabilities of security agencies in Tunisia, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Iraq and elsewhere. European countries such as France, Germany, and the UK are sponsoring surveillance worldwide, for example, providing training and equipment to "Cyber Police Officers" in Ukraine, as well as to agencies in Saudi Arabia, and across Africa.
   
• Surveillance capabilities are also being supported by China's government under the 'Belt and Road Initiative' and other efforts to expand into international markets. Chinese companies have reportedly supplied surveillance capabilities to Bolivia, Venezuela, and Ecuador. In Ecuador, China Electronics Corporation supplied a network of cameras - including some fitted with facial recognition capabilities - to the country’s 24 provinces, as well as a system to locate and identify mobile phones. 

Such assistance is facilitating rights abuses, reinforcing authoritarianism, can undermine governance, facilitate corruption, can illegitimately equip non-state actors, and endanger inter-communal relations.

These programmes also come at the expense of other foreign expenditure, particularly aid and development spending. The EU, for example, is diverting billions of euros in development money towards projects aimed at increasing surveillance and border controls to tackle issues around migration. In effect, the EU is spending billions to fund foreign countries, including authoritarian leaders, if they promise to keep people from Europe’s shores. And it is now planning to increase this by billions more.

Such sponsorship is not only driving increased surveillance throughout the majority world, it is a cornerstone of how powerful spy agencies gain cooperation and intelligence from foreign counterparts, and it is integral to how countries exert influence and project power.