Gamma International enters anti- disinformation campaign segment
Gamma International was in bad name after police searches of its German subsidiary FinFisher in October. Later, Gamma decided to reinvent itself as a champion against online disinformation.
The German-British Gamma Group will host a conference on disinformation titled as “Propaganda 4.0: is fake news really so new? A Journey through the various ways in which media is used,” at the ISS World Europe in June 2021. In 2015, the company developed tools like OSINT and social network monitoring, or SOCMINT that can be used in the fight against disinformation spread.
Gamma’s German subsidiary has also been suspected of exporting its interception tools to countries illegally, including Turkey via a Malaysian branch of its subsidiary Raedarius M8. The accusations came at a time when the German government was already mulling stricter rules, while governing the cyber technology export.
Gamma Group came into prominence when it was discovered selling spyware to Middle East dictators during the Arab Spring. It has also been accused of selling its products to authoritarian regimes that can use the technology to both track dissidents and conduct foreign espionage over the internet.
The group’s website reports that it has technical and sales offices in Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Its famous “FinFisher” spyware was used by UAE to target its human rights activist — Ahmed Mansoor.
According to a report from WikiLeaks, Qatar’s State Security Bureau (SSD) has been a customer of Gamma Group that also sells software to secretly monitor emails and other forms of online communication.
WikiLeaks estimated that the cost of the licences sold to Qatar was around €683,700 (QR3.22 million). WikiLeaks claimed to have an actual list of 17 alleged customers, such as police departments or intelligence agencies from Australia, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Mongolia, Nigeria, Netherlands, Pakistan, Singapore, Slovakia, Qatar, South Africa and Vietnam.
Gamma is only the tip of the iceberg in a larger market. Many other surveillance companies are exporting their tools for similar purposes, for which they have even invoked huge criticism.
The question at large is whether or not Gamma Group would be able to recover its name, lost amid criticisms after entering the anti-disinformation campaign race.
