Internet Surveillance Firm Sandvine Says It's Leaving 56 'Non-Democratic' Countries (techcrunch.com) 49
Sandvine, the makers of surveillance-ware that allowed authoritarian countries to censor the internet and spy on their citizens, announced that it is leaving dozens of "non-democratic" countries as part of a major overhaul of the company. From a report: The company, which was founded in Canada, published a statement on Thursday, claiming that it now wants to be "a technology solution leader for democracies." As part of this new strategy, Sandvine said it has already left 32 countries and is in the process of leaving another 24 countries.
Sandvine did not name the 56 countries, apart from Egypt, where Sandvine promised to leave by the end of March 2025. For the remaining countries -- including non-government customers in Egypt -- the "end-of-service" date will be the end of 2025. This change in the company's direction comes after years of investigations by Bloomberg, which reported that Sandvine had sold its internet surveillance products to authoritarian regimes, including Belarus, Egypt, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
Sandvine did not name the 56 countries, apart from Egypt, where Sandvine promised to leave by the end of March 2025. For the remaining countries -- including non-government customers in Egypt -- the "end-of-service" date will be the end of 2025. This change in the company's direction comes after years of investigations by Bloomberg, which reported that Sandvine had sold its internet surveillance products to authoritarian regimes, including Belarus, Egypt, Eritrea, the United Arab Emirates, and Uzbekistan.
So hide it behind a proxy seller (Score:5, Interesting)
The headline that will never happen but will undoubtedly be realized is this:
Sandvine, makers of internet censorship and spy software has reached an agreement with Proxy, LLC to sell it's software in foreign countries with governments unfavorable to the US and Canada.
Proceeds will go into an irish company owned by one man with no known connections, and that company will donate it's earnings to a nonprofit entity which purchases the software from Sandvine's irish holding company for educational "research and development" purposes with a unique agreement equivalent to 99.9999% of the nonprofit's cash flow.
Or perhaps a thousand other possible schemes... Really, how are you stopping software from crossing the border again? lol
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Really, how are you stopping software from crossing the border again?
Like what they do with my BlueTooth remote barbecue thermometer. You have to turn on location services in the app or it will refuse to run.
Why it needs to know where my steak is, I'll never understand.
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Until a subscription is required, but that will also be region locked so they can charge you more after selling your location movement data.
So they can serve you ads? like niimbot (Score:4, Insightful)
Really, how are you stopping software from crossing the border again?
Like what they do with my BlueTooth remote barbecue thermometer. You have to turn on location services in the app or it will refuse to run.
Why it needs to know where my steak is, I'll never understand.
My first assumption would be to sell you ads. I bought a label maker with good reviews and it works OK...worked as expected for a year...then they added ads to the niimbot software and actually dropped fonts. It was shitty, but a reminder that "smart" products can be changed on whim and require recurring costs to the manufacturer to host the servers...so while I will keep my label maker for 10 years or more...my $40 purchase price PROBABLY isn't going to cover their hosting costs...so I understand it. I don't like it one bit. I don't really accept it. If I had to watch ads just to print labels, I would have returned the device immediately and not bothered with a "smart" label maker. But the reviews didn't state that and it didn't happen for the first year I owned the device.
Point being?...I think your location is not to spy on you, but for future "enshittification"
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Not just ads, targeted ads specific to your location. And how do they find your location? From your IP address of course, which is why I never bother to hide it. You see, my IP address doesn't reflect where I am, it reflects where my connection connects to the Internet, and that's about 130 miles from my home. This does have its downside as most fast food and delivery outfits use that to find what they think is their closest location and some of them won't
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I limit my understanding to understanding their foul motives. But that doesn't mean forgiveness or pity. They had the option to design the thing to not need a server at all, so any continuing cost is on them.
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It needs it because accessing bluetooth allows you to get the bluetooth MAC address. This can then be linked to back to your location through other means. So the app is not necessarily getting your location, it is that it could get your location - by looking up the MAC address.
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yes it's a stupid decision by google. they decided to " dumb it down" to saying "if you enable bluetooth for this app it's literally giving your location to the developer"
android permissions are broken and users are desensitized to them at this point.
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What a relief... (Score:5, Insightful)
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Ain't it just marmalade that now only democratic countries can censor the internet and spy on their citizens?
Yep.
I'm looking forward to the nest step ... "voting" becomes mandatory.
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Me personally, I wouldn't make voting mandatory... Consider this:
You didn't vote - it's your fault that everything sucks.
You voted, but for the other guy - it's your fault that everything sucks.
You voted, but for the right guy - good for you, but everythings still sucks, it's the fault of other voters. You probably should have done more to spread the good word and fight the bad word, so it's still kinda your fault.
Whatever you do, everything sucks, and it's the voters fault. Only a fool would mess with such
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Me personally, I wouldn't make voting mandatory...
Neither would I ... I was being sarcastic :)
So now they will only spy in democratic countries (Score:5, Insightful)
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We're just animals that mostly agreed to get along.
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>"What are they getting out of it?"
Control.
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Why of course (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not easy to build a dystopia where there's already one in place.
Great job (Score:5, Insightful)
>"Sandvine, the makers of surveillance-ware that allowed authoritarian countries to censor the internet and spy on their citizens, announced that it is leaving dozens of "non-democratic" countries"
'Cause we want to do the moral thing and make sure only democracies have the censorship they so desperately want and need.
When do they leave? (Score:2, Funny)
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Company spin (Score:5, Interesting)
It reminds me of that car company that figured it was cheaper to pay out crash victim survivors, than do a mass recall of car braking systems. It's all a calculated balance-sheet decision. No ethics or morality involved whatsoever.
Us? (Score:1, Insightful)
They might have to leave the US in a year or two. We'll find out soon enough.
Translation from Biz-speak (Score:2)
"We've given these fascists everything we have available, and we know damned well they'll track us down and slaughter us if we take any more of their money without delivering even better ways to track down dissidents...so we're leaving. Honestly, it's all about our principles and respect for decency.
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"We've given these fascists everything we have available, and we know damned well they'll track us down and slaughter us if we take any more of their money without delivering even better ways to track down dissidents...so we're leaving. Honestly, it's all about our principles and respect for decency.
I was more thinking... We can't compete in these other markets - because they have it all worked out, so we will concentrate on the democratic countries so we can turn them into authoritarian hell holes as well!
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I can't disagree with you!
Russia and the US have a "democracy" (Score:2)
Re:Russia and the US have a "democracy" (Score:5, Insightful)
The metric they use to measure, as mentioned in TFS, is The Economist Democracy Index 2023. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] UK is ranked #18, USA is #29 and Russia is #144. This composite index includes 4 components: "Electoral process and pluralism", "Functioning of the government", "Political participation", "Civil liberties".
"even China's leader is elected". But you can't start your own party that disagrees with the power in place. Hence China gets 0 points in "Electoral process and pluralism".
"UK has become scary authoritarian where people get arrested and convicted for saying naughty words, many times more often than for example Russia."
Try to shout "I dislike King Charles' and Prime minister Starmer's policy regarding Ukraine" in London's Piccadilly Circus then "I dislike President Putin's and Prime minister Mishustin's policy regarding Ukraine" in Moscow's Red Square. Then compare the resulting.
Democracy does not equate to "I can send death threats and go free". Here are actual examples in UK of what you are referring to https://www.theverge.com/2022/... [theverge.com] One was sentenced to community service for racist words, another one for kind of rejoicing the death of British soldiers. The one sentenced to jail included death threats. The one with homophonic comments was not sentenced.
The classification into Authoritarian requires the several criteria to be very low. Even if UK lost some few points in Civil liberties by applying stronger penalties for death threats and racist comments, it still would qualify as a (lower-ranked) democracy thanks to its transparent electoral process. While you can't easily fix Russia or China into a democracy. There is no freedom of criticizing the Government, elections aren't free, justice isn't independent.
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Correction: The metric was mentioned in TFA not in the summary.
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So theyâ(TM)ll just be focusing on surveillin (Score:1)
Helping to fight âmisinformationâ(TM) for those democratic governments?
This may backfire (Score:2)
Authoritarian doesn't necessarily mean bad. In many cases, authoritarianism may be the only way to maintain a stable country and a working social order. For example, in the cases of Egypt, Uzbekistan and even UAE, weakening of authoritarianism may easily lead to rise of violent Islamism, and set these countries on the path to become new Afghanistans.
Re: This may backfire (Score:1)
Hmmm (Score:3)
1. If the software is sold, these countries still have the software, they merely can't buy updates directly.
2. The US can't spy on private US citizens, so routinely hires third parties to do so. Nothing stops others from pulling the same trick.
3. This is why the Internet should have mandatory encryption, and why the spy agencies lobbied against that happening in the 90s.
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So concerned but not until the end of 2025... (Score:2)
irony (Score:3)
They make hardware (Score:5, Interesting)
Burn (Score:2)
their shit to the ground.
Leaving 'Non-Democratic' Countries (Score:2)
So long. It was nice knowing you.
Don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.