In 2014, Verint signed a contract with the Government of Saudi Arabia for a full-service monitoring center, one of the largest contracts in their corporate history. The firm avoided the logistical quagmire of travel bans by sending Indian professionals on their behalf. This is a textbook example of the pernicious business of convenience between states that publicly portray themselves as ideological opponents.

Verint Israel leadership has extensive ties to the Israeli national security apparatus and state-funded R&D programs. Over the years, it and its former parent, Comverse, have reportedly been the target of FBI investigations for financial misconduct as well as corporate espionage in the U.S. Despite this, Verint has worked with Verizon, the FBI, and the Department of Justice. Clients of Verint CCTV surveillance products include the Mall of America, the U.S. Capitol Building, and the Pentagon.

The Companies: NICE Systems

NICE Systems openly calls itself one of the world leading providers of all forms of surveillance, including lawful interception based on IP and PSTN (public switched telephone network). Until recently based in Ra’anana, Israel, it lists the Statue of Liberty, Los Angeles International Airport, New Jersey Transit, the London and Beijing Undergrounds, and the Eiffel Tower amongst its top clients. Police forces in Europe and the U.S. are on its client-list too.

Since the early 2000s, NICE has worked directly with the national security agencies of Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Although the work on monitoring centers is conducted between NICE management in Israel and the authorities directly, NICE also has a substantial commercial presence throughout the regions where it has monitoring centers, especially in Kazakhstan, Moldova, Poland, and Russia. Likewise but to a lesser degree, the company offers mass interception and surveillance services in the Middle East and many conflict-affected African countries. NICE is attempting expansion in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.

In 2008, NICE announced that the Russian telecommunications provider VimpelCom would undertake further expansion of NICE solutions to its service centers in Russian language, which would help improve VimpelCom customer service in Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Ukraine, and Armenia.

In Kazakhstan, as well as Moldova, Poland, and Russia, NICE is represented by Aman Computers, led by Sagi Eliyahu. Aman Computers also represents the Israeli ICT firms Informatica and Citirix, providing video surveillance and other services to the Ministry of Defense, the Israeli police, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, Israeli Aircraft Industries (IAI), and the IDF. In one form or another, NICE technology is used to monitor some 1.5 billion people.

Both Verint and NICE, although Verint is technically a U.S. company, are cleared for exports through Israel. Surveillance exporters based in Israel are pre-authorized to export these commodities and services by Israeli government agencies, and enjoy the speedy export procedures granted to companies recognized with “security industry” status. Authorization is presented to the firms in the form of a list of pre-approved export destinations.

In 2013, the list of pre-approved export destinations for “unclassified” technologies was expanded to include 100 countries, an increase from the previous list of only 30 registered countries. In exchange for these export permissions, the Israeli intelligence community occasionally requests that benefitting companies take on contracts in countries of interest. So in Central Asia, similarly to the rest of the world, companies enjoy minimum scrutiny and are dealing with limited paperwork produced and pre-approved by the national security agencies themselves.

Postscript

Hackng Team HQ, Milan Italy 2015

The initial panopticon was based on an eighteenth century workhouse blueprint. It let the managers observe the workers while the workers could not see the managers. Designing an Internet-generation panopticon that gives the government the means to observe any citizen at any time online is at the very core of the product provided to state authorities by the cyber-surveillance industry.

Companies like NICE, Gamma Group, Verint, and HT, who sell this power to governments for which “watched a YouTube protests video” constitutes criminal behaviour become co-arbiters of what is and isn’t a “wrong act”. Yet for the companies, much like for their clients, their own secrecy remains absolute and proprietary: not something for press consumption, researchers, or advocates.

In Central Asia and the Caucasus, the deployment of mass surveillance and information vacuum around it (knowing the watchtower is there, but not what’s in it) has created a widespread culture of electronic self-censorship and self-imposed exile. A culture in which people who disagree with the government and wish to be active about it voluntarily choose to cut off electronic communication with friends and family as a way of preemptive protection. For them, knowing what surveillance is in place, how it operates, and who puts it there is an imperative. Until that knowledge is made public, or until unrestricted surveillance is restricted, someone will take offence. And profiteers will continue to face opposition, enquiry, and yes, hacking.