U.S. Blacklists Authoritarian Regimes' Go-To Tool Sandvine For Human Rights Abuses Abroad

The United States said on Wednesday that it added Canadian network intelligence firm Sandvine to its Entity List, effectively banning organizations from doing business with American firms.

The Ontario-based company has long been accused of selling its web-monitoring tech to authoritarian regimes, including Azerbaijan, TURAN's Washington correspondent reports.

"Sandvine has been involved in facilitating human rights violations by repressive governments around the world including in Azerbaijan, Jordan, Russia, Turkey, and the UAE, among others." according to Access Now, a Toronto-based watchdog that tracks connectivity around the world. In Belarus, Sandvine "played a direct role in facilitating internet shutdowns implemented by President Aleksandr Lukashenko’s regime during the brutal suppression of 2020 election protests,"  Access Now, claims.

The State Department said in a statement that Sandvine "supplies deep packet inspection tools, which have been used in mass web-monitoring and censorship to block news as well as in targeting political actors and human rights activists. This technology has been misused to inject commercial spyware into the devices of perceived critics and dissidents."

"This announcement supports the United States’ comprehensive approach to countering the misuse of surveillance and other technologies.  The action builds on previously announced Department of Commerce-imposed export controls on commercial spyware entities whose products have been misused to enable human rights abuses," reads the statement.

The U.S. government made six different entries for Sandvine in its Entity List, for the company’s operations in Canada, India, Japan, Malaysia, Sweden, and the UAE. 

However, the company’s equipment has also been used to censor the internet in more than a dozen countries in recent years, according to its current and former employees, as well as company documents. Those countries include Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Eritrea, Jordan, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Russia, Sudan, Thailand, Turkey, Uzbekistan and others.

When asked by TURAN's correspondent whether Washington's sanctioning of the tech firm was a harbinger of measures to be taken against governments that used Sandvine, State Department's spokesperson Matthew Miller didn't have any immediate comment. "I do not have any further actions to preview from here," he said.

According to the State Department's statement, the latest action "sends a strong message that the United States will promote accountability for the misuse of surveillance technologies and those who furnish these technologies, facilitating human rights abuses and targeting and silencing of journalists, activists, and perceived critics."

"The United States appreciates Canada's partnership in the Export Control and Human Rights Initiative to counter the misuse of goods and technology to commit serious human rights violations by using export controls in pursuit of national security interests," the Department said.