Companies around the world—including American, European, and Israeli private firms—are selling sophisticated surveillance technology to countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). Although much of this technology is characterized as “dual use” due to its ostensibly legitimate use for law enforcement, credible reports show that, rather than use the technology for lawful purposes, MENA countries weaponize this technology to target citizens and rivals, resulting in harassment, imprisonment, and torture. Additionally, some of the surveillance technology acquired in the region (like Deep Packet Inspection technology) is inherently indiscriminate, inevitably violating established legal principles of proportionality and necessity, rendering any legitimate legal use impossible (for more, see TIMEP’s Brief on Use of Surveillance Technology in MENA).
High-profile cases in which surveillance technology use has been linked to human rights violations, like the murder of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi and the arrest of UAE activist Ahmed Mansoor, have fueled recent calls for more regulation, transparency, and corporate responsibility around use and export in this field. However, most states still lack the necessary regulatory controls to prevent such technologies from demonstrable misuse. The only current international export control framework, the Wassenaar Arrangement, lists the types of technology that should be regulated, but does not contain stipulations for its enforcement. Furthermore, companies and governments are generally not obligated to share details of exports, making this multimillion dollar market a highly secretive one.
