Meet the Cynical Western Companies Helping the Syrian Regime

Late last year, as the regime of Bashar Assad was continuing its murderous rampage against the people of Syria, the governments of Iran and Russia offered their diplomatic support. But Bashar also received significant practical assistance from a much more unlikely ally: an Italian surveillance firm by the name of Area SpA. Throughout all of 2011, employees of that company were being flown to Damascus to direct Syrian intelligence officers in the installation of a computer system that would allow the Syrian government to scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country. As the violence escalated, so did the regime’s insistence that the project be completed. It was a “race against time to set up monitoring centers,” says Trevor Timm, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who recently provided a report to the EU parliament on the subject—a race that Area SpA showed few qualms about participating in.