Spy Files from Wikileaks show surveillance gear

Wikileaks has a web page called the Spy Files that shows off a number of Internet surveillance products meant for government agencies. The confidential brochures and slide presentations are made for law enforcement and authoritarian regimes and can be used to spy on the public and track political dissidents. In all, Wikileaks has 287 files for products from 160 companies and promises to reveal even more in the future.

Wikileaks worked with activist groups like Privacy International and press organizations including the Bureau of Investigative Journalism and the Washington Post. The surveillance industry is unregulated, allowing governments, authorities and military to quietly track and intercept calls and e-mails and take over computers, Wikileaks believes.

A large proportion of the products are designed to get around privacy and security safeguards in consumer hardware and software and gather as much information as possible. Some of them can even operate like malware.

One such example includes DigiTask's remote forensic software that works on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X computers, and some smartphones and is made to circumvent SSL encryption by intercepting the keys on the local system. It can then intercept IMs, e-mails, key logs, remote file access, screenshot capture and Internet activity.

DigiTask also makes a standalone wireless portable system called WifiCatcher that can intercept data fron public Wi-Fi hotspots. A packet decoding software is included.

By Electronista Staff