Report: New Zealand company selling surveillance tech to global spies
A company headquartered in Auckland, New Zealand has played an integral role in global mass surveillance, according to a new report.
Based on documents and emails leaked to The Intercept, Endace has quietly been selling its technology to government agencies, allowing them to gather vast quantities of "private emails, online chats, social media conversations, and internet browsing histories."
Founded in 2001, the company claims to deliver "the world's best network monitoring and recording systems," producing technology that can help clients intercept and monitor online traffic. It boasts "100 percent accurate capture and storage of network traffic."
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TVNZ, which also worked on the story, reported that Endace founder Ian Graham shed light on how some of its technology worked in a 2004 news story.
"[Endance had] developed equipment that allowed customers to 'see a copy of all the internet traffic passing that point.' He said 'we put a time stamp on it and feed it to software which gets out the information that the user needs.'"
According to a leaked client list, customers apparently include government agencies in Australia, Canada and Israel, among others.
The Intercept also reported Endace had sold assets to DGST, the Moroccan spy agency, which has been implicated in serious human rights abuses.
Corporate clients also include Australia's largest telco company, Telstra, as well as AT&T in the U.S.
On its website, Endace says it works with "5 of the top 10 global telcos" and "Top US, European and APAC government and defence departments."
One important customer according to The Intercept, is UK spy agency, Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ).
"The records of Endace sales are confirmed by internal GCHQ documents, provided by Snowden, which describe the company's data capture devices being used as part of mass surveillance programs ... documents from 2010 and 2011 repeatedly mention the Endace products while discussing the capture of "internet-derived" data to extract information about people's usage of services such as Gmail, Hotmail, WhatsApp, and Facebook."
In order to capture ever growing amounts of internet traffic for GCHQ, Endace began work on a product called Medusa, with the ability to hoover traffic at up to 100 gigabits per second from trans-continental undersea cables.
According to the report, it's also possible Endace used public money from the New Zealand government to develop the surveillance gear for GCHQ.
The Intercept has published the leaked documents on its site.
Topics Privacy
Ariel Bogle was an associate editor with Mashable in Australia covering technology. Previously, Ariel was associate editor at Future Tense in Washington DC, an editorial initiative between Slate and New America.
