'Malaysian govt among largest clients of technology to spy on citizens'

Harakahdaily

Sep 21: How sure are you that your conversations over the telephone are private and confidential? The fear that your phone calls are being heard and archived by a third party, namely the government, is not to be dismissed, judging by a recent report about the Malaysian government's deep interest in acquiring sophisticated technology to listen to citizens' phone calls. A South African paper recently reported that a South African company, VASTech, which had been supplying spy technology to fallen Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi to spy on millions of phone conversations by Libyans is said to have made huge profit supplying similar technology to the Malaysian government. In a report by Mail & Guardian about a recent expose by The Wall Street Journal of the Gaddafi regime's spying activities, VASTech's late founder Frans Dreyer was quoted as saying that other than Zimbabwe, its biggest customer, Malaysia accounted "for most of its revenue outside the [African] continent" (read report, SA firm 'helped' Gaddafi spy on the people of Libya). Dreyer, killed in May last year when a flight from Johannesburg to Tripoli crashed, killing 103 people, replaced by Willem Barnard, who declined to comment on the latest revelation when questioned by the paper. "We are not at liberty to disclose any of the information you asked for as we are bound by non-disclosure agreements by the governments of countries with whom we do business," said Barnard, whose company Dreyer said was focused on "the less developed world". The investigation by The Wall Street Journal found that VASTech provided Gaddafi's regime with tools to tap and log all international phone calls going in and out of the country. It visited Libya's spy centre and the international phone switch where calls leave and enter the country. At the phone switch they were told by people in the know that a separate group of Gaddafi's security agents staffed a room equipped with VASTech devices, capturing 30-million to 40-million minutes of mobile and fixed-line conversations a month which are archived for years. VASTech's flagship equipment named 'Zebra' which was supplied to Gaddafi's security apparatus is said to have the capacity to store and index as many as 100 000 concurrent calls in a central repository with up to 400-million entries, all in real time. The report is the second such revelation implicating Malaysia for cooperating with Gaddafi's regime in maintaining his iron-fisted rule. Earlier this month, secret documents emerged to reveal how Malaysian authorities had cooperated with Gaddafi's regime to have Abdel-Hakim Belhaj, the commander of the anti-Gaddafi rebel force which currently controls Tripoli, and his pregnant wife, to be nabbed from a flight in Kuala Lumpur, so that he could be sent back to Libya where he faced torture under custody. Gaddafi's regime fell at the end of Ramadan last month, after rebels captured the capital Tripoli and formed an interim government.