07.Mar.2012
“Surveillance Inc.”: Profit Makes It Good
Sell moral responsibility
The mass surveillance industry is a large one — estimates now put the global market at $5 billion per year. The businesspeople getting rich from the crackdown industry don’t often talk to the media, but some of the few who do can seem less than concerned about their potential role in their clients’ violence.
Jerry Lucas is the president of Telestragies Inc, the company that runs ISS World, the trade show circuit (also known as the “Wiretapper’s Ball”) that brings these companies and their clients together. Asked by the Guardian in November if he would be comfortable knowing that regimes in Zimbabwe and North Korea were purchasing the technology from his trade shows, he responded, “That’s just not my job to determine who’s a bad country and who’s a good country.” He added, “That’s not our business, we’re not politicians … we’re a for-profit company. Our business is bringing governments together who want to buy this technology.”
• Read more at The Atlantic
