The BBC has reported that he BAE Systems (the UK defense company) had sold powerful inspection technology to various Middle Eastern countries. This report came out after one year long investigation organized by BBC Arabic and the Danish newspaper (Dagbladet Information). The alleged surveillance technology was sold through ETI (a Danish branch of BAE Systems). The BAE Systems had created a system called Evident in order to enable government in arranging massive inspection. It includes pinpointing the location of a person using cell phone data and viewing the entire online activity and message decryption of a person. BBC source further mentioned that Evident has the ability to intercept the entire internet traffic of a country.
BBC further mentioned that BAE sold the surveillance technology to Saudi Arabia, Oman, the UAE, Morocco, Algeria and Qatar. A source also indicated that Tunisian president Ben Ali used Evident technology against his opponents during the Arab Spring uprisings. There were some e-mail exchanges between Danish and British export authorities collected by the BBC. The United Kingdom made it clear that they didn’t need Evident to be forwarded to the UAE. The British authorities confirmed that they will reject such an export if it were up to them. But, the Danish authorities approved the sale without exceptions. The sales of Evident were entirely made legally. But, the government inspection of citizens is taking place in a number of countries and this kind of technology for everyone shouldn’t be an excellent approach.