Regimes Use U.S. Tech to Censor Citizens

A company whose Internet-filtering servers were recently found to have been used by Syria's regime for censorship is facing a new research report that Myanmar, too, uses its technology—and that the Syrian use is wider than acknowledged.

The findings released today by the Citizen Lab, an Internet research center at the University of Toronto, are the latest evidence that commercial technology from the West—in this case from Blue Coat of Sunnyvale, California—is often used by repressive regimes, says Ron Deibert, the lab's director, who posted the findings today in a blog.

"Prior research by our group, and others like it, have highlighted the growing market for censorship, surveillance, and even offensive computer network attack products and services," Deibert says. "It is distressing that many, but not all, of the companies that sell this technology are based in liberal democratic regimes."

A spokesman for Blue Coat said he hadn't seen the report and pointed to the company's October statement about the Syrian matter. The company said in the statement that its "appliances apparently were transferred illegally to Syria."