Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance

Countries with powerful security agencies are spending literally billions to equip, finance and train security and surveillance agencies around the world — including authoritarian regimes. This is resulting in entrenched authoritarianism, further facilitation of abuse against people, and diversion of resources from long-term development programmes.

Privacy International's report 'Teach 'em to Phish: State Sponsors of Surveillance' examines this problem closely, providng examples from US, China and European Union 'security assitance' programmes.

Powerful and wealthy countries are giving money to arms companies to build border control and surveillance infrastructure, which only serves the interests of those powerful, wealthy countries. As our report shows, instead of putting resources into long-term development solutions, such programmes spur abuses around the world — the very things which cause insecurity in the first place.

The report calls on ‘benefactor’ countries to build schools, hospitals and other infrastructure, and promote democracy and human rights, if they genuinely want to assist other countries to be secure and stable.