A Stellenbosch engineering firm has been propelled into the limelight as a supplier of telephone surveillance technology to the Gaddafi dictatorship, which used it to keep tabs on its citizens. The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) last week fingered VASTech SA Pty Ltd, along with Amesys, a unit of French technology firm Bull and Chinese telecom company ZTE Corporation.
VASTech provided the regime with tools to tap and log all the international phone calls going in and out of the country, according to emails reviewed by the paper and people familiar with the matter.
The WSJ adds it encountered the VASTech technology at Libya’s international phone switch, where telephone calls exit and enter the country. A group of Gaddafi’s security agents staffed a room there and captured roughly 30 to 40 million minutes of mobile and landline conversations a month. These could be archived for years, a source told the paper.
Andre Scholtz, sales and marketing director for VASTech, declined to comment on the Libya installation, citing confidentiality agreements. The firm sells only “to governments that are internationally recognized by the UN and are not subject to international sanctions,” Scholtz said in a statement. “The relevant UN, U.S. and EU rules are complied with.”
The precise details of VASTech’s setup in Libya are unclear, the WSJ added. VASTech says its interception technology is used to fight crimes like terrorism and weapons smuggling. A description of the company’s Zebra brand surveillance product, prepared for a trade show, says it “captures and stores massive volumes of traffic” and offers filters that agents can use to “access specific communications of interest from mountains of data.” Zebra also features “link analysis,” the description says, a tool to help agents identify relationships between individuals based on analysis of their calling patterns.
Capabilities such as these helped Libya sow fear as the country erupted in civil war earlier this year. Anti-Gadhafi street demonstrators were paranoid of being spied on or picked up by the security forces, as it was common knowledge that the regime tapped phones. Much of the early civil unrest was organised via Skype, which activists considered safer than Internet chatting. But even then they were scared.
The company was started in 1999 by Frans Dreyer, the brother of Democratic Alliance MP Anchen Dreyer. He was killed in May last year when Afriqiyah Airways flight 771 from Johannesburg to Tripoli crashed, killing 103 people. ITWeb reported at the time that VASTech had boosted its turnover from R570 a year when it was launched in 1999 to more than R30 million in 2005-2006. The company was also an original supplier of manufacturing equipment to Siemens in Germany. In 2006 Dreyer said that he believed Zebra was the best technology of its kind in the world.
The nearby Tripoli Internet monitoring centre was another major part of a broad surveillance apparatus built by Gaddafi to keep tabs on his enemies. Amesys in 2009 equipped the centre with “deep packet inspection” technology, one of the most intrusive techniques for snooping on people’s online activities, according to people familiar with the matter. Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp. also provided technology for Libya’s monitoring operation, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. Amesys and ZTE had deals with different arms of Col. Gadhafi’s security service, the people said. A ZTE spokeswoman declined to comment.
Libya went on a surveillance-gear shopping spree after the international community lifted trade sanctions in exchange for Col. Gadhafi handing over the suspects in the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103 and ending his weapons of mass destruction program. For global makers of everything from snooping technology to passenger jets and oil equipment , ending the trade sanctions transformed Col. Gadhafi’s regime from pariah state to coveted client.
iWeek has reported that VASTech has also sold its technology to the South African government in 2005 under a three-year contract for a “recording solution”. VASTech also refused to elaborate on this contract.
