Evidence shows Syrian security got comms from West

[dipsydoodle]

Source: Associated Press

LONDON (AP) -- As violence began racing through Syria last year, two European contractors were putting the finishing touches on an encrypted radio system that Syrian officials intended for their security forces, according to leaked company emails and three senior employees involved in the project.

The documents - made available to The Associated Press and other media organizations by the WikiLeaks organization - show that Greece's Intracom S.A. and Italy's Selex Elsag spent years building a Syria-wide communications network and equipped the government with thousands of walkie-talkies, motorcycle-mounted radio units and avionic transceivers used in helicopters.

The leaked documents give an unusually detailed look at the communications help Western companies have been providing Syria's regime - something activists find disturbing.

This kind of technological assistance is highly undesirable because it is used to repress people," said European parliamentarian Marietje Schaake, who has pushed for tighter export controls on authoritarian governments. "The fact that these are EU-based companies doing all this hurts our credibility."

Read more: http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/S/SYRIA_TECH_SUPPORT?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2012-07-16-07-42-15

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I assume his to be LBN as it has only just been posted on AP's news site. If not so then please advise.

[Igel]

1. Hindsight's great.

Now, if she had been able to predict the uprising and civil war when the Italian and Greek companies' proposals to provide the tech to Syria were being considered, and managed to get the European parliament to be in a position of managing and vetoing the contracts, that would have been amazing.

Two or three years ago Syria wasn't such a bad country. I disliked it, but Assad was still considered a "reformer" and a promising "partner for peace." By idiots.

(In fact, this would be a great idea: Require that every contract between any EU company and any government that an EU parliamentarian or by more than one parliamentarian be looked at and approved, personally, by all the parliamentarians that don't like that government. If they can't all get to the contract in two weeks, then it's considered to be personally approved by default. Any denial would have to have a report written as to exactly how the contract and services offered would diminish the credibility of the EU parliament and central government with a cost-benefit analysis showing how much revenue the EU governments involved would lose and how many EU citizens would fail to earn income.)