Human testing: Militarised technology across Southwest Asia and North Africa

00:08.09
Gus
Welcome to The Tech Pill, a podcast that looks at how technology is reshaping our lives every day and exploring the different ways that governments and companies use tech to increase their power. My name is Gus Hosein and I'm the Executive Director at Privacy International.

00:21.11
Caitlin
And I'm Caitlin and I'm PI's Campaigns Coordinator. Hi.

Gus
This week we're very fortunate.

Is it this week?

Caitlin
Yeah. I mean, we're currently releasing it fortnightly.

00:32.02
Caitlin
So this two weeks.

Gus
Yeah. This fortnightly sound like Abraham Lincoln. Fourscore.

Caitlin
Or indeed like a teenager. This fortnight. This fortnight game.

00:42.71
Gus
That's right.

Caitlin
I'd say bi-weekly, but I think that fortnightly, like fortnight is a really useful term that has fallen out of fashion. And people argue over what bi-weekly means, if it means fortnightly, if it means twice a week. And I think it should mean twice a week. And fortnightly should mean every two weeks because it is a fortnight because we have a word for that in British English.

Gus
Yes

Caitlin
And I appreciate it's a weird hill to dial and irrelevant to this podcast, but nonetheless.

01:07.64
Gus
Okay. So this fortnight, right? Or this week?

Caitlin
Yeah. no

Gus
This fortnight, we're talking to a very old friend of PI, Marianne Rahmé, who was key to a report by one of our wonderful partner organizations called SMEX.

Caitlin
So this fortnight, we're talking to Marianne, who has co-authored their new report, Produced, Tested, Deployed the Militarization of Technology in the SWANA, or Southwest Asia and North Africa region. SMEX is a really interesting organization. They do a ton of really cool human rights and digital spaces work in the region. And they're very old friends of PIs. We've been working with them... I think longer than I've been at PI, which is seven years, so quite a long time.

Gus
At least nine or 10 years been working with SMEX. And what I love about Marianne in particular is she's the person I go to to understand the dynamics in that region, but also to understand, like when we started working on the issue of militarization of tech,

02:10.17
Gus
She basically raised her hand and said, hey, we've been here for a while. It's very fascinating. Listen to me. I got things to say. So we're very fortunate to have her as a guest and to hear those very interesting things that she has to say.

02:22.32
Caitlin
Bosh.

[Muisc interlude]

02:34.80
Marianne
I'm Marianne. I am currently a senior coalitions and research lead at SMEX. I work on many things, platform accountability, militarization of tech, which is what we will be discussing today. And I am the coordinator of the MENA Alliance for Digital Rights, which is an alliance born in 2021 for the MENA region for digital rights. And yeah, that's pretty much me.

Gus
And so SWANA, as you helped us to identify, is Southwest Asia and North Africa. And then MENA is Middle East and North Africa.

03:10.18
Gus
Like apart from MENA and with the term Middle East being a colonial term, is there any geographic difference between those two?

Marianne
I think Southwest Asia and North Africa is a broader look at the region. It includes countries that are not usually included in Middle East and North Africa. For example, we've moved away from the colonial MENA term to also be able to look at issues in Iran, in Turkey that might influence the direct focus of the organization. So that is why we've been using SWANA for the past two years, I think. Yeah, I think you will ask, but why do we still call it the MENA Alliance for Digital Rights?

Gus
Oh, I wasn't being picky, but just wanted to make sure everybody understood.

03:52.44
Marianne
No, no, but we still, because, I mean, it's just a phonetic thing, because imagine calling it the SWANA Alliance for Digital Rights. The acronym would be SWANA, SWANADR, something like that. And it was very heavy.

04:06.68
Gus
So... I get it. I get it.

Marianne
So we actually stuck with the MADR, MENA Alliance for Digital Rights but..

Gus
Okay, okay, got it. And you are joining us from Paris, right?

Marianne
Yes, indeed.

Gus
And so that's the beautiful Parisian traffic that we're hearing in the background.

Marianne
You're going to hear ambulances, traffic, people cursing.

Gus
Gotta love Paris.

Caitlin
There's a non-zero chance you hear my cat who is wandering around.

04:35.42
Caitlin
She's been told firmly that she's on thin ice. And if the door needs to be shut, it will be shut. But she doesn't always listen to me. So there is that. Okay, so you cover a lot of things, you know a lot of things, but we're here today to talk specifically about militarization and how different SWANA countries have kind of been engaging in the militarization of tech and their different strategies um and engagements with surveillance technologies, for which conveniently you've just done quite an interesting report. So yeah...Do you want to start by kind of explaining a little bit the research that you've been doing?

Marianne
Yes, of course. Actually, we've started this research with Privacy International about how different actors across the SWANA region are building, testing and deploying these technologies. And O think the main takeaway from this report is that

05:26.96
Marianne
What's very clear is that this isn't just about like looking at military hardware or whatnot. It's about data, it's about who's collecting data, it's about who's processing it and who it's getting used against, if I can say that.

Gus
Yeah

Marianne
And, well, probably the militarization of tech, this systematic blurring between these civilian and military tools is one of the most defining human rights challenges of our time, as you know.

05:53.05
Marianne
And the region that we've focused on, the SWANA region, is it's really sitting at the center of this phenomenon. And it functions simultaneously as a production, a consumption market, and also, unfortunately, as a live testing ground. And what our report documents is these key patterns of technology militarization across the SWANA region. And it also examines the key corporate actors who are driving this while also analyzing the legal framework that is allowing all of this to flourish. The report actually looks at six countries.

06:27.58
Gus
ah cool

Marianne
These are six countries, but it's five patterns of militarization of tech.

Gus
But just to be clear, this doesn't sound like a feel-good report, right? This is not a report that you read when... Yeah. You don't read it with a nice glass of wine. You read it with a stiff whiskey or something like that. Yeah.

Marianne
Or a gigantic glass of wine that you keep the bottle next to you. Situation. yeah ah Researching it was also pretty you know harsh, especially yeah that as SMEX is based in Beirut, we're also living through this. So..So yeah....

07:03.90
Caitlin
I have a researcher friend who I would talk to her and she'd be like, oh, the report's going great. Everything is awful. Like the research is going amazing. Everything is terrible.

Gus
Yeah, there's there's a part of being human rights advocates where as the world gets worse, somehow you feel...

07:21.46
Gus
like you're, yeah. ah Validate is not the right word, but it just somehow, oh there's more data to work with, which is a horrible way to figure out.

Marianne
But also one of the biggest difficulties we faced working on this report is actually the lack of data and the lack of information out there because you know all of this is happening, but you cannot really prove it unless someone from some company goes you know out and works as a whistleblower for this type information.

Gus
And that's outrageous that wehave to count on that.

07:54.07
Marianne
Yes, yes. yeah And that's why like there is a lot of gaps in the report that you will probably see and you'll be like, okay, but what is this? Like: Who's selling that? Why don't we know? And honestly, we we don't know. And that's a very, very big problem with this militarization the time.

Gus
Absolutely.

08:12.34
Marianne
So we've identified five patterns. The scariest, most complete one, most dangerous one is obviously Israel. And Israel occupies a very structurally unique position, because it's the principal developer and exporter of militarized surveillance and AI systems in the region, dare I say in the world,

08:35.19
Marianne
using the occupation of Palestine as a continuous testing ground. And you've all heard of the use of AI-enabled targeting systems deployed in Gaza since October 2023. And who knows if it was happening before? We don't know. So Lavender, the Gospel, Where's Daddy? And these represent the most extensively documented cases of algorithmic killing in the history of armed conflict. And major cloud providers, including Google, Amazon, Microsoft, have provided infrastructure that potentially enabled these systems. So Israel really closes the loop on the militarization of tech, but other countries in the region are not, you know, innocent. So the second pattern is the GCC pattern, the Gulf countries pattern, and we've worked a little bit on the UAE and Saudi Arabia. And the interesting thing about these countries is that historically they were only consumers of militarized technology, but they are slowly moving into being producers.

09:39.45
Marianne
of militarized technology.

Gus
Is that so?

Marianne
Yes. And so there is so many examples about recent projects that the UAE and Saudi Arabia have invested in, be it in producing drones, producing offensive intelligence capabilities, investing hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure, and all of this under a very non-existent legal framework to govern everything that's happening. So this is a very worrying trend that we've identified. It's the shift towards local production of militarized technology in the Gulf.

Gus
And this changes so much. like yeah you know it's As a student of social sciences, I love when

10:22.26
Gus
technology comes along and can change the way you tell stories about things that traditionally have been told about men and power. you know So we talk about the region as men vying for power, and then all of a sudden AI comes in. All of a sudden investment in tech comes in. And then when you look at Israel through the the lens, as you just have, the lens of the technology and the data and the act of warfare, it projects a different way of looking at Israel and then the region. But then the fact that Saudi Arabia and the UAE are doing this. I knew they were investing. I didn't know they were actually in production.

Caitlin
Does them producing it change any of the dynamics in terms of the transparency?

11:00.12
Marianne
In terms of transparency, I don't think so, because as you know we will identify later on, there are a lot of obstacles for accountability in the region. And one of them is this non-existent transparency around anything from public procurement, as basic as it sounds, to very opaque corporate structures. You know, we're dealing with authoritarian regimes in the end, so there's no winning with them. But also this this kind of this shift that is happening in the Gulf, it's also deepening this entanglement between the countries and global tech companies because of these major investments by be the public investment fund in Saudi Arabia or Abu Dhabi's Mubadala or other Gulf entities in companies like OpenAI or Anthropic, Google, Microsoft and dozens of small AI startups. They create these conflicts of interests that like systematically compromise this already limited capacity of companies to enforce human rights commitments.

12:04.18
Marianne
So if you're a startup and 90% of your money comes from a certain country or from a certain fund, then your hands are kind of tied. And this shift is allowing these Gulf states to increasingly develop, customize and export this militarization of mostly AI systems, without depending on Western companies, like whose products are maybe subject to expert controls or um ah human rights conditions. So, you know, they're producing their own tech. They don't need the Western companies anymore. And this shift is very worrying, especially that they are also, you know, defending their own interests within the region by giving X, Y or Z certain technologies. And we will get to that in the fifth pattern of militarisation of tech that we've identified.

Gus
Keep going.

Marianne
The third pattern is information dominance, the case of Egypt, for example. It's the case of many other SWANA countries, dare I say. So in in Egypt, the militarization of tech takes on like a new face. It's the pursuit of total information dominance. And this is illustrated through the construction of this surveillance architecture that is designed to monitor everyone, to place entire national communications infrastructures under state control, and to be activated whenever you need to target a certain activist or to silence a certain person. And this architecture that Egypt has built is built on the deep packet inspection technology.

Gus
Is that so?

Marianne
Deep packet inspection technology, also known as DPI, is ah a network monitoring technology. and it enables real-time analysis of internet traffic.

13:53.43
Marianne
So DPI examines the full content of data packets and it enables massive surveillance, filtering, traffic shaping, and content manipulation on a very wide scale. So they're using DPI, they're using telecom interceptions, they're using biometric SIM registration while you know linking every mobile user's identity to their communications. And they're using a toolkit of surveillance platforms that are supplied by mostly European and North American firms.

Gus
I was wondering who was supplying it because I remember in the Arab uprising, where there was huge moment of hope in Egypt and the outrage around the role that Vodafone played. And one would have hoped that the telcos would have wisened up and not become complicit. But it sounds like the industry is complicit.

Caitlin
What was the role that Vodafone played?

Gus
It's just Vodafone was a dominant mobile provider and there was that moment where the network had to be shut down because the government was ordering it and industry was asking, what is our appropriate response when all the events are going on in the main squares? Should we be shutting down? And it caused a global conversation around the role of telcos in the protection of human rights, finally. Didn't last long though.

15:14.07
Marianne
This kind of took on new forms, I think, with internet shutdowns, which I'll also mention in a bit. But it feels like the strategies are not new. It's just, you know, faster, bigger, wider when it comes to the scale. Yeah.

15:29.53
Marianne
So that's Egypt for you.

Gus
So are you saying Egypt is actually developing technology as well?

Marianne
Not to our knowledge.

Gus
Okay, so they're consuming from elsewhere.

Marianne
Yes. And the fourth pattern is the Syria example. And we are looking at the dangerous fiction of the dual-use technologies and the terminology of dual-use. So Syria is a very extreme example of militarization of tech.

15:54.14
Marianne
because civilian infrastructure during the Assad regime became directly embedded in systems of torture, targeting and warfare. And before and during the civil war, Western companies have provided the Assad regime with monitoring technologies that were weaponized against the Syrian population. And in our opinion, it really demonstrates why the concept of dual use functions as a very dangerous fiction.

16:20.11
Marianne
That when the technology is transferred to authoritarian regimes, we're not really talking about dual use anymore.

Gus
So just to clarify, so dual use refers to technologies that have both a civilian and non-civilian use. But I think what you're saying is that, sure, it might be okay to export a technology to Syria because it's not for the military, it's actually dual use. The reality of what you found is that it was used for aggressive and highly aggressive and deadly purpose.

Marianne
Yes, yes. And this loophole of saying my technology is dual use allows so many companies to bypass obligations that they might have when it comes to human rights and when it comes to exporting this kind of technology. There is actually a very interesting report from Privacy International called Open Season.

17:11.45
Marianne
And actually, it was very useful for our research and it detailed you know how firms, including Italian firms, South African firms, German firms, had ah played a role in Syria's repressive surveillance state between at least 2007 and 2012. And we have more and more evidence coming from Syria as the regime fell.

Gus
Oh, wonderful. You got some evidence out of that. Okay. Cause that was what we struggled with when we were compiling that initial report was there was no data coming out of Syria. We could only track what we could about what was going in. And we had to make sure we were a hundred percent right. So at that time there were sanctions. And if we got anything wrong and got sued by the Syrian government, we could find ourselves having to break sanctions by paying insurance. It was just insane. So yeah you got actual data. That's fantastic.

Marianne
And this is all documented in the report. We've really based our work on your report and on work by the Business and Human Rights Resource Center, the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, and many others. The worrying thing about the Syria example is that there is a pattern in here.

18:20.79
Marianne
It's a regime using tools to hunt down and disappear its own citizens. And we all know the consequences, they were devastating. And the important thing here is that many activists, after being arrested, were shown their own private online communications and they were shown printed transcripts of intercepted messages during these interrogations. So these dual-use systems, they were integrated into intelligence operations and they were used for real-time tracking of citizens and directly linked to this detention, torture and disappearances. And this is horrible, but in the hands of authoritarian regimes, any tool can become a weapon.

19:03.77
Marianne
And that is where, you know, we criticize the regulatory frameworks that permitted these sales. As you mentioned, Gus, there were so many sanctions. And how did any expert control regime allow this kind of sale?

Gus
How is it that PI was worried about sanctions in doing the report, but the companies that were selling, oh, what the hell? The world's upside down.

Marianne
It tells you a lot about impunity and the lack of accountability when it comes to these things.

Gus
And this is all pre-AI. So when you talk about the transcripts being shown to somebody, that meant somebody somewhere was actually typing down on some old computer system in the dark bowels of the intelligence agency of Syria.

19:43.70
Gus
Now this type of capacity is brought to you by, name any AI company on the planet. That's just extraordinary.

Marianne
This is even scarier. Yeah, and it brings me to the last pattern of militarization of tech that we've identified in the region. And we've used the Sudan example to showcase that. So Sudan really illustrates how the militarization of tech intensifies and gets more activated during active armed conflict.

20:10.65
Marianne
As you know, the state capacity in Sudan is very fragmented. So we're showing through this example that the use of militarized technology is not confined to state actors. And we're also showing how Gulf states, I'm going back to the Gulf countries, are increasingly, you know, as they're becoming producers and exporters of militarized technology, are projecting this capacity outward and are using tech transfer, technology transfers as a tool of regional influence.

20:39.77
Gus
Of course, because the Israelis ah basically made that textbook and so did the Americans.

Marianne
Yes.

Gus
Oh Of course.

Marianne
Yes. So authoritarian regimes listen and learn from each other. And since the start of the war in Sudan, both parties have deployed technology as a weapon against civilians. And external actors such as the UAE have used these technology transfers to interfere in this war. And both the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have weaponized internet shutdowns to block information flows in Sudan in areas controlled by the opposing side. And in February 2024, there was a near total communication blackout that descended on Sudan. And as you know, like telecommunications and internet blackouts are pose severe risks ah to humanitarian coordination, to emergency services for millions of people. And this is also something we're still seeing in Gaza and in Palestine, the targeting of telecommunications and internet infrastructures. In Sudan, as well as in Gaza, the infrastructure has been targeted physically as well as administratively, with all parties in Sudan attacking mobile towers and internet exchange points. So, yeah, this civilian communication infrastructure is built and is operated for...

22:03.85
Marianne
civilian purposes and it is being repurposed as a weapon of war used to isolate control and to harm civilian populations. And internet shutdowns are not solely happening in Sudan and in Gaza. They are happening all around the SWANA region and all around the world.

22:21.56
Marianne
And this is horrible.

[Music break]

22:31.26
Gus
The idea that a telecommunications network that you rely on every day to contact your loved ones, to do your job, to figure out where to buy your daily goods and whatnot, the fact that it can be used against you or it can be turned off so you can no longer use it the way that you need to, I feel like that is particularly problematic as much as it's problematic in everyday life, It is particularly problematic in conflict.

23:00.95
Gus
when the stakes are so much higher, but also when conflict ultimately, if you're going to draw a broad brush around it, leads to occupation. Governments wage war against other territories because they want to usurp that territory. And the idea that, let's use, maybe this is wholly inappropriate, but let's use Lebanon as an example. Telecommunications network, Lebanese telecommunications network, is probably every day targeted by neighboring countries, let's just say. And I'll let you get into the details because I don't want to try to simplify your story. And then ultimately...

23:35.70
Gus
you know, if there is to be any annexation, that infrastructure, whether it's telecommunications or any other type of infrastructure, ultimately is going to be owned by the occupying force, whether it's financial or just physical possession. And then they turn it against you, even more so than they did prior to annexation.

23:56.95
Gus
And so the things that you come to rely upon are already being used against you and will ultimately be a tool of an oppressive occupying force.

24:08.25
Gus
How do we use that knowledge to prepare? How how do we harden our systems for the fact that there is more conflict, that there is more ambition to occupation?

24:19.67
Gus
How do we learn from Israel? How do we learn from these horrible stories you're telling?

Marianne
So I think it's it's really hard for Lebanon to deal with excessively funded war machines that are living around our borders. And there are a few steps that Lebanon can take to be in the right direction.

24:38.54
Marianne
I'm not doing a policy checklist for the Lebanese government, but I'm saying that there are concrete steps that we can take that we actually need to protect our data that's coming out of the country. And first of all, is closing this legislative vacuum that we have and it's a very crucial problem that we have.

24:55.72
Marianne
We're trying to have a digital state, but we have no real data protection law. And we have the electronic transactions and personal data law that was passed in 2018. But if you take five minutes to go through it, first of all, the personal data section is horribly small and it does not protect...

25:15.54
Marianne
Lebanese residents' personal data and it's obsolete and really ineffective. It was drafted in 2004 just for context.

Gus
Oh my god and yeah

Marianne
We need a genuine data protection law with good implementation that provides actual safeguards for personal data one that specifies what gets collected, how it gets stored, etc. All of the checklists and not with the security you know exceptions that just make it hollow. Also, just as a side note, there are a lot of countries around Lebanon, especially in the GCC, that have implemented data protection laws that look practically like the GDPR, but that are actually draconian, that include so many exceptions and loopholes that allow this mass surveillance to...

26:02.04
Marianne
flourish. And that's also one of the findings from our report. So first things first, close the legislative vacuum. We need laws. We need actual laws that get implemented. We need to treat public registries not as open databases, because as you've probably seen, Lebanon's vehicle licensing plate data gets leaked almost annually and the voter registry is published online for everyone to look at with so much personal data that is publicly put out there. And you don't need to be Israel to hack these public registries. They are out there. They are just out there for anyone to come and take. So this is also a very, very big problem. We also need to have cybersecurity strategy.

26:52.82
Marianne
We have one. It's not great. We need a better one and we need it to be actually implemented. SMEX works a lot with the government in Lebanon. I mean, we try. We try as much as possible to have a positive attitude and try to support their work with whatever capacity we have.

27:08.94
Marianne
And all of our work reveals that most of government platforms lack even the most basic security standards, privacy policies, or safeguards to protect residents' data. And that's a very big problem that we faced during the COVID-19 pandemic with platforms that were not safe, that were not secure, that did not have privacy policies, at least. I mean, we've had some wins with some platforms, but it's not enough.

27:35.90
Marianne
We need to have more transparency on public procurement, on deals with foreign tech companies. I mean, recently, one of the ministries signed an MOU, a Memorandum of Understanding with Oracle, and we need more details about that.

Gus
Oh, god yeah.

Marianne
What's going to happen.

Gus
Exactly.

Marianne
Yes, and we need, of course, resources to protect civil society. We need to push the the platforms and the licensing governments and every agency that is working in Lebanon to actually have the political will to create some change. We know that we are facing a extremely powerful entity.

28:14.84
Marianne
But we cannot just sit and do nothing. We need to do small steps to protect our data. I mean, I know we we don't have the the capacity to save everything and ah save ourselves from, okay, no, maybe let's just cut the political s*** that I'm about to say.

Gus
Yeah.

Caitlin
I think one of the things that when it comes to personal needs that made it really clear and obvious how much cybersecurity is important was the QR code drop, where a ton of leaflets with QR codes got dropped all over Lebanon. And the idea is people would scan the QR codes. It's like very kind of...

28:51.30
Caitlin
bizarre industrial levels of weird phishing. We've been talking about don't scan weird QR codes since the COVID pandemic and all the menus started being QR codes because you slap a sticker on top and you know send someone in a different place. But they're all really basic cybersecurity things that people tell people that people kind of don't take that seriously. But in Lebanon, the stakes are so much higher than being scammed and losing your life savings. The stakes are so much scarier. And the very simple, here is a flyer, here is a QR code, please scan the QR code, you know because data is such a key aspect of then all of these modern systems that are in use. Whereas you know in the 90s, when data protection law kind of came around last time, the implications of bad data protection were just not in this, well, I'm guessing, because obviously I was so terribly, terribly young, which is definitely a dig at Gus. But like the implications were just in a vastly different,

29:47.82
Caitlin
arena than they are now in particular in Lebanon, in particular in places in the SWANA region. Yet, we struggle to get people to take basic data protection and cybersecurity seriously, and that's with a theoretically protective legal regime.

Gus
Well, that's why I think our governments are actually being negligent. And this is what I would say, if I dare say about Lebanon, but and your point, Marianne, is that the government of Lebanon is being negligent by not ratcheting up privacy and security measures. It is interesting, there's only three countries that I've seen that have taken the same line as I have around privacy as a national security concern. And those three countries are Israel, where I remember when Netanyahu was trying to push a biometric ID in Israel, he recognized that that system they were building was going to be vulnerable and they'd have to make it extraordinarily safe

30:39.51
Gus
for Israelis so that their data doesn't get leaked. Then the Biden administration started looking at data brokers and saying, hold on, all these companies are accumulating all this so-called open data and other data from Americans and selling it to other governments. Isn't that outrageous? Said the Biden administration. And then third, the UK government recently did a consultation again on data brokers and saying there are national security concerns when this data is sold to others. But they don't want to stop the tap for themselves. And this is why I'm a little sympathetic to the Lebanese government and arguably all the governments you mentioned in your report, because they want to make sure that they have access. And if the price is that their citizens are at risk from foreign governments, I almost think that they're taking the approach like, **** them.

31:28.92
Gus
You know, we want to be able to control our people. It's too bad that others are going to. But when warfare leads to occupation, then governments are setting their selves and their people up for sale and worse.

31:43.67
Marianne
Yeah. I think that also something important for the Lebanese context is that, so as you know, Lebanon has been dealing with crisis after crisis after crisis since since its creation, really. And as I think is the case in many other places around the world, privacy is not seen as very important given all of the other crisis that is ongoing in the country. For example, on the QR codes, the response from the general security, you know, it was it was published.

32:16.20
Marianne
It's just that it was a bit late and also there is not enough awareness around these issues and around privacy and around what a QR code actually can do.

32:29.24
Marianne
And we've actually analyzed the QR codes that were on these leaflets and leaflets are a very, very old thing that the Israeli occupation does to Lebanon, especially in the south of Lebanon, every couple of days they'd be like, okay, leaflets. And that's part of their psychological warfare. They're like, okay, we're in the sky above you. And these these leaflets that had QR codes, when we've analyzed them, one was for a WhatsApp number and another one was for a Facebook page.

32:56.82
Marianne
And interacting with these codes, as you know, can expose your phone number, your Facebook account to Israeli intelligence units. And there was a website. And if you access it, it will immediately identify information about your device, including the type of phone you're using, your screen size, and entering information if you're connected to via Wi-Fi or mobile data, your battery status, the type of browser. And that's just not an extensive list.

Ghs
That's insane. And the duty extends to the phone manufacturers, the phone OS developers, Facebook and its metadata. But again, they don't want to turn off the taps of themselves.

Marianne
No. But one thing that SMEX has done is basically try to do some awareness around this.

Gus
Nice.

Marianne
And we've really, really worked on awareness during and the past ah war.

33:44.95
Marianne
I mean, it's ongoing, so it's still the this current war. The SMEX. team has done really amazing work. I mean, I am not based in Lebanon, but the SMEX team has done really amazing work on the SMEX digital safety help desk in supporting people who had actually scanned this QR code.

34:01.88
Marianne
And also with in-person trainings to anyone really. We've done so many trainings about digital security in Lebanon during the war and how to protect yourself during the war. And this feels like this shouldn't be civil society's job, but at least there is civil society that is able to do that.

34:23.06
Marianne
Unlike other countries where the civic space is really, really, really closed, we are still able to do things like that.

Gus
Yeah, so nobody's doing this in Egypt, right? There's no civil society able to do this kind of essential work that, first of all, the state should be doing, but fortunately, SMEX is doing.

34:39.77
Caitlin
I bet there are Egyptian organizations giving it the best.

Marianne
Actually, there are we should all just learn from Egyptian civil society. They are amazing and they are relentless.

Gus
No, I'm sorry. You're right. I didn't mean it disrespect civil society. I mean, the Egyptian government crushes civil societies. Like, we've worked with the Egyptian civil society and they are extraordinary, but they're working under such duress.

Cailtin
The context is really hard.

Marianne
Yes, yes. They have so many things to face and they are at risk of literally being jailed the whole time.

35:10.87
Marianne
But yeah, i mean, we still have some space to work with in Lebanon and SMEX has really done so much during the war. It's been a really big lesson on how much you can actually achieve.

35:23.67
Caitlin
I wanted to ask, it's a little bit off a topic, leap but like you mentioned UAE and Saudi and kind of the trends in UAE and Saudi becoming more building their own. And both have had quite large smart city programs and I wondered how much they have been development and staging areas for the new surveillance technologies that they've been starting to develop.

35:46.14
Caitlin
Because they haven't really worked. Like how how much they've been kind of more of a separate sideshow.

Marianne
So actually the smart cities, or you know we like to call them surveillance cities.

35:57.91
Caitlin
I think taking away the implication that they're smart is good because they're mostly really not.

Marianne
Yeah, it is actually something we've covered in the report when we're talking about UAE. We've just covered one example, which is the Oyoon program. Oyoon in Arabic means the eyes.

36:12.76
Marianne
So it's literally called eyes. I mean... So we've detailed this example because in Dubai alone, there are around 300,000 cameras integrated with AI-powered facial recognition and behavioral analytics through the Oyoon program. And this is one of the most extensive urban surveillance networks in the world. And it was announced in 2016. I think it was operational shortly after. As you've said it, it's framed as a smart policing initiative designed to reduce crime, accelerate emergency response, all of the, you know, national security sh...stuff.

36:54.23
Marianne
But it actually integrates biometric and identification, movement tracking, behavioral pattern analysis across a city that has 3.5, 4 million people. And this example, we've used this example because it really...

37:09.61
Marianne
exemplifies the smart city to surveillance pipeline and is basically an urban surveillance infrastructure that is marketed as a hallmark of technology modernity but it's actually creating a comprehensive monitoring and a surveillance system whose capabilities are very identical to the capabilities of a purpose-built intelligence surveillance system and there is to our knowledge, no actual framework governing the Oyoons program data retention or access policies or limitations on use. And if there is even the idea of an oversight body, I don't know. So like we have this, okay, it's not perfect, but it's there in EU countries, for example. You can go, you can ask, you can ask for what data do you have on me?

38:02.33
Marianne
It doesn't exist in this part of the world. And this is really part of a very long trend of the normalization of surveillance in the region. And this normalization, i mean, I'm going to say surveillance is not new to the region. It's not new to the SWANA region. It's not new to the world. And the technology did not invent this. It just industrialized it in a way. And this is one of the most dangerous consequences of the militarization of tech.

38:30.90
Marianne
Because what feeds this militarization of tech? It's the constant surveillance and mass surveillance of people. And it's years and years of data being collected in the West Bank, in Gaza, in everywhere in the region that is being weaponized right now. And these systems, Lavender, the Gospel, the, you know, if I made a...

38:53.14
Marianne
what we're seeing mostly in the press, they're not just like, okay, I'm going to create an AI-assisted targeting system. It's just feeding on years and years of data collected by these intrusive surveillance systems. It's being stalked, it's being worked on, if I may say, on these civilian infrastructure, on clouds, on AI, and then...

39:20.57
Marianne
we get the final product, which is built, operated and tested in the SWANA region. And that is the full loop of the militarization of tech that I was talking about in the at the beginning. It's that the SWANA region really closes this loop because from conception, if I can say, until it is operational and until it is marketed, it's all happening in the region.

39:43.42
Marianne
with assist of international, mostly US tech companies, EU companies, other Western companies. This is all happening in this region.

39:54.42
Marianne
It has repercussions everywhere around the world. And that is one thing that the militarization of tech project by Privacy International has showed us is that I thought that this was happening solely in the SWANA region, but it's actually happening all around the world. And seeing, for example, how much Israeli tech impacts in Mexico, in other parts of the world, it really shows you how important it is to look at the militarization of tech as a phenomenon, as ah something that's happening, as a danger to international human rights law and international humanitarian law. Yeah.

40:31.93
Gus
Oh, Marianne, that's perfect.

Caitlin
It is kind of perfect.

Gus
I really want to explore this this point about privacy as a national security thing. Because when you were talking about the UAE system, and in light of the fact that we know the Israelis hacked Tehran's CCTV network and were able to monitor for months what was going on to decide when they were going to do the initial attack. Again, it's insane to me that governments would set up these systems.

40:59.70
Gus
that just open people up. But as you say, it's because they get a loop. They don't really care. They want the data to build the system so the system can scale and they get the benefits of the security that they want, but also get to sell it elsewhere.

41:14.87
Gus
oh, somebody should do something about this, you know. Thank God you are.

Marianne
You too. And I think, yeah, the you know the main thing from this research is that it's not one single actor. It's not one single decision. it's not one single company that is the problem. It's a whole set of ah mutually reinforcing relationships between states, companies, export regimes, legal frameworks, and investors. Together you make this this military system of tech profitable.
41:44.69
Marianne
and therefore politically normalized and therefore largely unaccountable. And that's the loop that we are in. And we were trying to, you know, build a set of recommendations at the end of the report. And I was like, where do we even start?

41:57.92
Caitlin
It must be quite difficult to talk about international legal accountability in a context in which even existing laws are not exactly working as you would want them to work. I think it's fair as somewhat an understatement to say.

Gus
...to somebody from Lebanon. Yeah.

42:17.72
Gus
Yeah. Marianne, thanks so much for your time. we really appreciate it we're going to

Marianne
Thank you. It was lovely. No, let's not say let's not say it was lovely. It was not lovely.

Gus
Well, look, we we talk about the worst.

Caitlin
was interesting.

Gus
Yeah, we talk about horrible things. And if we can't smile and enjoy each other's company along the way, then it's just not worth it.

42:37.75
Gus
You know?

Marianne
Indeed.

Caitlin
Just never get out of bed.

Gus
Yeah, exactly.

Marianne
Yeah. Thank you, PI.

42:56.73
Gus
Thanks for listening. You can set up to be the first to learn more about our work at pbcy.org slash pod signup. And we'll include some links to relevant articles and information in the description wherever you're listening or on our website at pbcy.org slash tech pill. And of course, we'll also include links to the SMEX report.

43:16.69
Gus
Don't forget to rate and subscribe to the podcast on whichever platform you use. Music is courtesy of Sepia. This podcast was produced by Max Burnell for Privacy International.