Military Thread V22 
Oct 18 2016, 09:06 PM
How Israel Became a Hub for Surveillance Technology
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The Mer Group’s evolution from cutting metal to electronic snooping reflects a larger shift in the Israeli economy. Technology is one of the main sectors in Israeli industry. And Israeli firms with ties to intelligence, like the Mer Group, are using their expertise to market themselves internationally. The company’s CEO, Nir Lempert, is a 22-year veteran of Unit 8200, the Israeli intelligence unit often compared to the National Security Agency, and is chairman of the unit’s alumni association. The Mer Group’s ties to Unit 8200 are hardly unique in Israel, where the cyber sector has become an integral aspect of the Israeli economy, exporting $6 billion worth of products and services in 2014.
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When drafted into the army, Israel’s smartest youth are steered toward the intelligence unit and taught how to spy, hack, and create offensive cyberweapons. Unit 8200 and the National Security Agency reportedly developed the cyberweapon that attacked Iranian computers running the country’s nuclear program, and Unit 8200 engages in mass surveillance in the occupied Palestinian territories
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Increasingly, the skills developed by spying and waging cyberwarfare don’t stay in the military. Unit 8200 is a feeder school to the private surveillance industry in Israel, the self-proclaimed “startup nation” — and the products those intelligence veterans create are sold to governments around the world to spy on people.
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In August, Privacy International, a watchdog group that investigates government surveillance, released a report on the global surveillance industry. The group identified 27 Israeli surveillance companies — the highest number per capita of any country in the world. (The United States leads the world in sheer number of surveillance companies: 122.) Unit 8200 veterans either founded or occupy high-level positions in at least eight of the Israeli surveillance companies named by Privacy International
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Israeli veterans of Unit 8200 but is now owned by Boeing, the American defense contractor. (Privacy International categorized Narus as an American company because it’s headquartered in California.) Narus technology helped AT&T collect internet traffic and billions of emails and forward that information to the National Security Agency
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Unit 8200 is a “brand name” in Israel, a celebrated institution that allows members easy access to tech companies after their service, said Meyer. Sometimes technology companies approach alumni of the unit; other times alumni recommend one another. There’s a secret Facebook group for alumni filled with job offers at tech companies, Meyer said. “In many cases you just put Unit 8200 in your CV, and magic happens,”
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Mer Security is one of the companies exporting spy products. It is well-known in the country’s security circles; it won an Israeli police contract in 1999 to establish “Mabat 2000,” which set up hundreds of cameras in Jerusalem’s Old City, a flashpoint of tensions in the occupied area. In an interview with the Israel Gateway magazine, a trade publication, Haim Mer, chairman of the company’s board and also a Unit 8200 veteran, explained that “the police needed a system in which ‘Big Brother’ would control and would allow for an overall view of events in the Old City area.”
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Mer Group’s clients are in Israel and abroad. The company does “joint development” work with Unit 8200, according to Raz, and they recruit veterans from the unit to work for the company. Other clients are scattered around the world, including in Europe, though Raz refused to divulge specifics. But publicly available information shows, for instance, that in 2011 Mer inked a $42 million contract with Buenos Aires to set up a “Safe City” system, complete with 1,200 surveillance cameras, including license plate recognition technology.
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Unit 8200’s ties to the Israeli surveillance industry attracted widespread attention in late August, when digital security researchers at the University of Toronto-based Citizen Lab released a report detailing the provenance of a specific type of malware. They said it was likely that the United Arab Emirates had targeted Ahmed Mansoor, a prominent human rights activist, with sophisticated spyware that had the ability to turn his iPhone into a mobile surveillance device that could track his movement, record his phone calls, and control his phone camera and microphone.
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On its face, an Israeli surveillance company selling spyware to an Arab nation is striking. The United Arab Emirates and Israel do not have official diplomatic relations, and like in other parts of the Arab world, many Emiratis detest Israel’s decadeslong occupation of Arab lands. But NSO Group’s sale to the UAE is an indication of the growing ties between Israel and the Gulf state, which has a growing appetite for surveillance gear.
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In February 2015, the Middle East Eye writer Rori Donaghy reported that the UAE had signed a contract with Asia Global Technologies, a Swiss-registered company owned by an Israeli and reportedly staffed by former Israeli intelligence agents, to set up a surveillance system featuring thousands of cameras.
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Donaghy, who is also the founder of the Emirates Centre for Human Rights, said the UAE has quietly bought hundreds of millions of dollars worth of security products from Israel in recent years. The UAE turns to Israel, he said, because it believes Israelis are “simply the best in this market, the most intrusive, the most secretive.”
The Intercept
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