If you're selling technology to Iran or Syria that's used to commit human rights violations, you've got a new enemy: the White House.

President Barack Obama announced Monday morning that he signed an executive order creating new types of sanctions against companies that sell technology such as cell phone monitoring systems and Internet privacy filters to Syria or Iran.

Both countries have reportedly used such equipment to clamp down on citizens' privacy and other rights.

"These technologies should be in place to empower citizens, not to repress them," Obama said during a speech at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

The order, signed Saturday, allows the U.S. government to employ sanctions and visa bans against those who "commit or facilitate" human rights abuses through technology sold to Syria or Iran.

The new sanctions and travel bans will apply to anyone who has:

1. Operated or directed "computer or network disruption, monitoring, or tracking" that may have assisted human rights violations in Syria or Iran. 2. Sold or leased goods or services allowing Iran or Syria to disrupt, monitor, or track computers or networks. 3. Bought goods or services for Iran or Syria allowing such disruption, monitoring, or tracking. 4. Acted on behalf of someone else seeking to do any of the above.

"I have determined that the commission of serious human rights abuses against the people of Iran and Syria by their governments, facilitated by computer and network disruption, monitoring, and tracking by those governments, and abetted by entities in Iran and Syria that are complicit in those governments' malign use of technology for those purposes, threaten the national security and foreign policy of the United States," wrote Obama in a statement.

Obama considers the new sanctions part of a larger strategy for preventing human rights violations, which also includes the creation of an Atrocities Prevention Board.

U.S. law already prevents almost all trade between Americans and Iranians and restricts U.S. business from sending most products other than food and medicine to Syria.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, lillisphotography