HANOI (Dispatches) – The Zionist regime’s spying software Cellebrite is supplying Vietnam digital surveillance tools which it has used to quash opposition, rights groups say.
Israeli newspaper Haaretz said Vietnam’s Public Security Ministry, which is responsible for the police and internal security, has purchased the software.
In a recent interview with the business daily Globes, the company’s CEO, Yossi Carmil, claimed the surveillance firm had developed technological equipment that prevents its tools from landing into “the wrong hands”.
However, an investigation conducted by Israeli human rights lawyer Eitay Mack, exposed how Vietnamese authorities used the spyware in 2018 to detain a citizen, who participated in a prank which involved displaying the flag of South Vietnam which is banned in the country, for up to five years. His motorcycle and phone were also confiscated by the state.
In an open letter to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and investors, digital rights groups, including Access Now, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy International, urged all “parties to halt this deal until Cellebrite demonstrates that it has taken sufficient measures to comply with human rights”.
It further stated Cellebrite’s sales of surveillance tools were still “enabling detentions, prosecutions, and harassment of journalists, civil rights activists, dissidents, and minorities around the world.”
Rights lawyer Mack noted how Vietnam is also licensed to produce the occupying regime’s Tavor and Galil ACE rifles and added a long list of high-level visits and meetings to the occupied territories, including by top war ministry officials, former prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former president Reuven Rivlin.