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back to article UK firm slammed for flogging spy software to Iran

A senior lawmaker has called on the UK government to ban the export of British-made surveillance software to repressive regimes. "I'm hoping for an open debate on whether or not the UK should be involved ... [and] what the implications of previous sales are," Lord David Alton of Liverpool told The Register. Lord Alton has …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    A question...

    If the software sale itself is blocked, then that won't stop them hiring the staff that write it, and they can write something in the customers country.

    ...or is my simple brain missing something obvious?

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  2. G R Goslin

    Errr!

    In the light of what is happening in this country (UK), can we have the British Government labelled as a "Repressive Regime", and have them banned from buying surveillance software? No? Thought not. The whole thing about repressive is that "we do what we like and you do what we tell you"

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      What?

      I don't notice the UK hanging people for being gay, stoning women to death for being raped or rigging elections. I don't notice clerics under sentence of death having been accused of changing religion. I don't notice any non-uniformed militia attacking people protesting and I don't notice the mass arrest and detention without trial of protesters.

      Get a perspective.

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      1. Intractable Potsherd
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        Thumb Down

        @AC ...

        ... the things you identify are is simply a matter of degree, not type. I suggest it that it is you that needs some perspective.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
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          Anonymous Coward

          @IP

          No, it really really isn't. If you think that living in Iran is in any degree like living in the UK, you are seriously deluded.

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  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder.

    Has it been used to "track down protesters and democracy activists" in the UK?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Well

      Just look at the list of police customers.....

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  4. Anomalous Cowturd
    WTF?

    it does not appear that the exporter has broken the law...

    So we're going to change the law!

    It's alright for US to spy on OUR citizens, but not alright for the arbitrary countries on this list.

    Bastards! I hope the press go to town on Hague's links back to this company too.

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  5. amanfromMars 1 Silver badge
    Mushroom

    Not fit for purpose again ...... on HMS Ship of Fool Tools.

    The Foreign Secretary, William Hague, who cannot deny after his instrumental rhetoric calling for, and supplying of military action in Libya, that he is nothing more or less than a common or garden warmonger and weapons of mass destruction trafficker, has his work cut out to stay out of the Hague, where his profiteering from deadly conflicts may be perfectly apparent and considered particularly abhorrent and criminal ..... http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/06-11-2011/119534-indictment_nato-0/# ...... and would make a third party software sale inquiry seem like a very small affair in the bigger scheme of things .... and somewhat bizarre whenever non-compliant independent regime change is so clearly a foreign policy putting leading ministers in the deadly firing line and at the mercy of mercenary lynch mobs, which is an odd choice for the government to make for itself.

    It appears the Conservatives learned nothing at all from the Blair Follies and Chilcot, and that must mark them out as particularly and peculiarly retarded, and quite why they would presume to be, and be accepted as leading a country, is a madness confirmed as being endemic in a sad and sorry nation, is it not?

    Do you think the pravda report is a spoof ? A media distraction? Or will the government be looking for something to waffle about to distract attention away from their serial prime ministerial incompetence with sub-prime competence?

    And is that the Best that Blighty has to offer the World? That which is presently squatting in Parliament?

    Jeez, how pathetic and how far has a once proud and able nation fallen.

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  6. Anonymous Coward
    Big Brother

    Hypocritical much?

    I wonder if the goverment realises how hyporcitical it is to complain about foreign use of UK made spy software while ignoring the UK's use of said software, either UK made or not.

    Probably not.

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    1. Field Marshal Von Krakenfart
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      Big Brother

      Its not hyporcitical it is to complain about foreign use of UK made spy software while ignoring the UK's use of said software

      It's only hyporcitical when you get caught doing it.

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  7. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

    It's the FO

    The telegraph does take a while to get through the internal mail.

    The reason they discourage sales to Iran is that it might help them in their war against our ally Sadaam.

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  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Commentards seem to be saying that the UK is using this (or similar?) software against UK citizens. Somehow, I've missed this. Can anyone provide links to the story?

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    1. Anonymous Coward
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      Anonymous Coward

      Links

      You begin with http://www.creativitysoftware.net/about-us/company-history and find that cached versions mension the UK Associaion of Chief Police Officers - whoops, the site has been updated, I wonder why?

      Are not those caches a bloody irritation for yor average tech company that wishes to change their profile..........

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