Can the UN Control the Intelligence Units of Countries? Yeah, Sure. No Problem
January 16, 2025
This blog post is the work of an authentic dinobaby. Sorry. No smart software can help this reptilian thinker.
I assume that the information in “Governments Call for Spyware Regulations in UN Security Council Meeting” is spot on or very close to the bull’s eye. The write up reports:
On Tuesday [January 14, 2025] , the United Nations Security Council held a meeting to discuss the dangers of commercial spyware, which marks the first time this type of software — also known as government or mercenary spyware — has been discussed at the Security Council. The goal of the meeting, according to the U.S. Mission to the UN, was to “address the implications of the proliferation and misuse of commercial spyware for the maintenance of international peace and security.” The United States and 15 other countries called for the meeting.
Not surprisingly, different countries had different points of view. These ranged from “we have local regulations” to giant nation state assertions about bad actions by governments being more important to it is the USA’s fault.
The write up from the ubiquitous intelligence commentator did not include any history, context, or practical commentary about the diffusion of awareness of intelware or what the article, the UN, and my 90 year old neighbor calls spyware.
The public awareness of intelware coincided with hacks of some highly regarded technology. I am not going to name this product, but if one pokes about one might find documentation, code snippets, and even some conference material. Ah, ha. The conference material was obviously designed for marketing. Yes, that is correct. Conferences are routinely held in which the participants are vetted and certain measures put in place to prevent leakage of these materials. However, once someone passes out a brochure, the information is on the loose and can be snagged by a curious reporter who wants to do good. Also, some conference organizers themselves make disastrous decisions about what to post on their conference web site; for example, the presentations. I give some presentations at these closed to the public events, and I have found my slide deck on the organizer’s Web site. I won’t mention this outfit, but I don’t participate in any events associated with this outfit. Also, some conference attendees dress up as sheep and register with possibly bogus information. These folks happily snap pictures of exhibits of hardware not available to the public, record audio, and at one event held in the Hague sat in front of me and did a recording of my lecture about some odd ball research project in which I was involved. I reported the incident to the people at the conference desk. I learned that the individual left the conference and that his office telephone number was bogus. That’s enough. Leaks do occur. People are careless. Others just clever and duplicitous.
Thanks, You.com. You are barely able to manage a “good enough” these days. Money problems? Yeah, too bad. My heart bleeds for you.
However, the big reveal of intelware and its cousin policeware coincided with the push by one nation state. I won’t mention the country, but here’s how I perceived what kicked into high gear in 2005 or so. A number of start ups offered data analytics. The basic pitch was that these outfits had developed a suite of procedures to make sense of data. If the client had data, these companies could import the information and display important points identified by algorithms about the numbers, entities, and times. Marketers were interested in these systems because, like the sale pitches for AI today, the Madison Avenue crowd could dispense with the humans doing the tedious hand work required to make sense of pharmaceutical information. Buy, recycle, or create a data set. Then import it into these systems. Business intelligence spills forth. Leaders in this field did not disclose their “roots” in the intelligence community of the nation encouraging its entrepreneurs to commercialize what they learned when fulfilling their government military service.
Where did the funding come from? The nation state referenced provided some seed funds. However, in order to keep these systems in line with customer requirements for analyzing the sales of shampoo and blockbuster movies. Venture firms with personnel familiar with the nation state’s government software innovations were invited to participate in funding some of these outfits. One of them is a very large publicly traded company. This firm has a commercial sales side and a government sales side. Some readers of this post will have the stock in their mutual fund stock baskets. Once a couple of these outfits hit the financial jackpot for the venture firms, the race was on.
Companies once focused squarely on serving classified entities in a government in a number of countries wanted to sanitize the software and sell to a much larger, more diverse corporate market. Today, if one wants to kick the tires of commercially available once-classified systems and methods, one can:
- Attend conferences about data brokering
- Travel to Barcelona or Singapore and contact interesting start ups and small businesses in the marketing data analysis business
- Sign up for free open source intelligence online events and note the names and organizations speaking. (Some of these events allow a registered attendee to conduct an off line for others but real time chat with a speaker who represents an interesting company.
There are more techniques as well to identify outfits which are in the business of providing or developing intelware and policeware tools for anyone with money. How do you find these folks? That’s easy. Dark Web searches, Telegram Group surfing, and running an advertisement for a job requiring a person with specialized experience in a region like southeast Asia.
Now let me return to the topic of the cited article: The UN’s efforts to get governments to create rules, controls, or policies for intelware and policeware. Several observations:
- The effort is effectively decades too late
- The trajectory of high powered technology is outward from its original intended purpose
- Greed because the software works and can generate useful results: Money or genuinely valuable information.
Agree or disagree with me? That’s okay. I did a few small jobs for a couple of these outfits and have just enough insight to point out that the article “Governments Call for Spyware Regulations in UN Security Council Meeting” presents a somewhat thin report and lacks color.
Stephen E Arnold, January 18, 2025
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