Israeli firms sold invasive surveillance tech to Indonesia: Report
Al Jazeera
Investigation by Amnesty, Haaretz, Tempo and others finds links between official bodies and agencies from at least 2017.
An international investigation has found that at least four Israeli-linked firms have been selling invasive spyware and cyber surveillance technology to Indonesia, which has no formal diplomatic ties with Israel and is the world’s most populous Muslim nation.
The research by Amnesty International’s Security Lab – based on open sources including trade records, shipping data and internet scans – uncovered links between official government bodies and agencies in the Southeast Asian country and Israeli tech firms NSO, Candiru, Wintego and Intellexa, a consortium of linked firms originally founded by a former Israeli military officer, going back to at least 2017.
German firm FinFisher, a rival to the Israeli companies and whose technology has been used to allegedly target government critics in Bahrain and Turkey, was also found to have sent such technologies to Indonesia.
Amnesty said there was little visibility about the targets of the systems.
“Highly invasive spyware tools are designed to be covert and to leave minimal traces,” it said in the report. “This built-in secrecy can make it exceedingly difficult to detect cases of unlawful misuse of these tools against civil society, and risks creating impunity-by-design for rights violations.”
