How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators

A computer systems coordinator at Tunisia Television in Tunis / Reuters

Surveillance Inc: How Western Tech Firms Are Helping Arab Dictators -- The Atlantic

As democratic movements spread in the Middle East, governments are cracking down, and that means big business for the companies who help them do it.

Reliance means vulnerability, and the activists and citizen journalists of the Arab uprisings rely heavily on the Internet and mobile technology. They use text messaging to coordinate protests, for example, or social media sites to upload the photos and videos that then make it into mainstream global media. In the first protests in Tunisia, because traditional journalists could not get access, citizen journalists filled in, using YouTube and the live-streaming platform UStream to give the world -- including, for example, the Egyptians and Syrians who later began revolts of their own -- a window into the events there.

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My Comment: Helping governments to bring misery to their people for a few dollars .... there has to be an accounting for this in addition to exposing the companies and the people who are involved in this trade.