MEPs to debate leaked reports on EU firm selling spyware to dictatorships
According to information obtained by hackers this summer, the Italian company “Hacker team” has sold spyware tools to countries with poor human rights track, such as Azerbaijan, Bahrain, Egypt, Morocco and Uzbekistan, possibly even Russia and Sudan. MEPs on Monday evening will ask the EU Justice commissioner Věra JOUROVÁ to address the problem of lack of regulation in the area, by, at the same time, avoiding bureaucratic burdens for researchers.
In the oral question drafted by MEP Marietje Schaake (ALDE, NL), MEPs point to the documents leaked this summer from the “Hacker team” which show that it may have marketed and sold tools allowing governments to monitor and record a persons’ digital moves, to countries whose human rights records the EU has criticised. MEPs point that the respective tools may be used to violate the human rights of journalists, political opponents and human rights activists.
They also ask to pay attention to the fact that the trade in “privacy-invasive dual-use tools” is largely unregulated and add that the EU’s condemnation of human rights violations in third countries “will never be credible” if it allows the sale of products that enable these violations.
MEPs will ask the Commission to specify some of the leaked data, in sanctions regimes against Russia and Sudan, ask how does it plan to address this problem, including difference in interpretations by different Member State authorities, by at the same time avoiding unduly stringent controls or excessive bureaucratic burdens that can hinder research.