Israeli and Italian companies sell software to enable government surveillance, oppression of citizens

SAN FRANCISCO — On the afternoon of April 22, Dotan Peltz, the head of sales at an Israeli surveillance company called NICE Systems, emailed his colleagues at the Italian surveillance company Hacking Team to describe an upcoming “African opportunity.”

Written in the informal, yet cryptic style used across hundreds of emails exchanged between the two companies, Peltz wrote that the “process is boiling” and that it “is being sponsored by the topmost level of the country.” Only the subject line gave away that the country in question was Uganda, while subsequent emails revealed that “the process” was a package of surveillance software for the government. The two companies had already sold software to Uganda’s police force, but they hoped that the new contract would be much larger.

Nowhere do the emails question what the Ugandan government would do with the software, despite Uganda’s frequent appearance in the newspapers that month for its surveillance of human rights organizations in the country, and attacks on local LGBT groups.

The Milan-based Hacking Team and Tel Aviv-based NICE Systems are two of fewer than a dozen companies worldwide that deal in the distribution and development of surveillance software to nation states. Hacking Team, which describes itself as a company that provides lawful interception tools for police and security officials worldwide, has been repeatedly linked to countries that use surveillance software to repress minority and dissident groups.