This letter requests a follow up to correspondence Citizen Lab sent to Francisco Partners in February after we discovered the apparent use of the products of its portfolio company, Sandvine, to surreptitiously inject malicious and dubious redirects for users in Turkey, Syria, and Egypt.
This report describes our investigation into the global proliferation of Internet filtering systems manufactured by the Canadian company, Netsweeper Inc.
This section details the research questions that informed our study. We also outline in detail the methods that we adopted to identify Netsweeper installations worldwide, and those that we employed to reduce the findings to countries of interest. We also present high-level technical findings and observations.
In this section, we spotlight several countries where we have evidence of public ISPs blocking websites using Netsweeper’s products. Each country has significant human rights, public policy, insecurity, or corruption challenges, and/or a history of using Internet censorship to prevent access to content that is protected under international human rights frameworks.
This section examines the legal, regulatory, corporate social responsibility, and other public policy issues raised by our report’s findings. We focus on the responsibilities of Netsweeper, Inc. and the obligations of the Canadian government under international human rights law.
This report describes our investigation into the apparent use of Sandvine/Procera Networks Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) devices to deliver nation-state malware in Turkey and indirectly into Syria, and to covertly raise money through affiliate ads and cryptocurrency mining in Egypt.
Bu rapor, Sandvine/Procera Networks Derin Veri Analizi (DPI) cihazlarının, Türkiye’de ve dolaylı olarak Suriye’de devlet menşeili kötücül yazılım yaymak; Mısır’da ise reklam ve kripto para madenciliği marifetiyle gizlice para toplamak için kullanımına yönelik araştırmamızı anlatmaktadır.
يشرح هذا التقرير تحقيقنا عن استخدام واضح لأجهزة فحص عميق للحزم (DPI) من شركة ساندفين\بروكيرا لنشر البرامج الضارة في تركيا وبشكل غير مباشر إلى سوريا، وجمع الأموال سرا من خلال الإعلانات التابعة لتعدين العملات الرقمية في مصر.
The Citizen Lab and the Canadian Internet Policy & Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC) have collaborated to produce a report which provides timely legal analysis, political context, and historical background on the Communications Security Establishment Act and related provisions in Bill C-59 (An Act respecting national security matters), First Reading (December 18, 2017).
Ethiopian’s penchant for commercial spyware is notorious, as is its pattern of digital espionage against journalists, activists, and other entities—many of which are based overseas—that seek to promote government accountability and are therefore viewed as political threats. Yet the Ethiopian government and others like it have faced little pressure to cease this particular strain of digital targeting.
