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I've previously blogged about my deep dives into the Cellebrite UFED smart device hacking suite and raised big ethical questions about our own LEOs use of this human rights abuse software. Now I am asking another. Read the article and ask yourself: Is it even close to OK that our own nations Law Enforcement does business with a company evidently does business with regimes known to violate human rights using the same exact software? I think not. \- Dr.Gonzo Monday March 08, 2021 @10:30PM from the phone-hacking-equipment dept. A report from Al Jazeera: Documents obtained by Al Jazeera's Investigative Unit (I-Unit) and Israeli newspaper Haaretz reveal how the Bangladesh government spent at least $330,000 on phone-hacking equipment made by an Israeli company, even though the two countries do not have diplomatic relations. Developed by the Cellebrite security firm, UFED is a product that is capable of accessing and extracting data from a wide range of mobile phones. Its ability to hack encrypted phone data has worried civil rights campaigners, who have long called for its use to be more strictly regulated. It is unclear whether UFED was provided to Bangladesh directly by the Israeli company or via a Cellebrite subsidiary based elsewhere in the world, presumably with the intention to mask its origins. The latest documents obtained by I-Unit, which Al Jazeera also found on the Bangladesh home ministry's own website, relate to contracts signed in 2018 and 2019. They are from the Public Security Division, a department in the Ministry of Home Affairs that is in charge of domestic security and whose agencies include the Bangladesh police force and border guards. The paperwork details how nine officers from the country's Criminal Investigations Department were given the approval to travel to Singapore in February 2019 to receive training on UFED to allow them to unlock and extract data from mobile phones. It outlines how the Bangladeshi staff would ultimately qualify as Cellebrite Certified Operators and Cellebrite Certified Physical Analysts. The documents also say the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), a paramilitary force that has a well-documented record of abductions, torture and disappearances, would be trained on the usage of Cellebrite's hacking systems under an ongoing project that began in 2019 and is set to be completed in June 2021. The latest revelation that Bangladesh security services are being equipped with highly intrusive devices capable of accessing encrypted phones that contain private messages comes amid growing concerns over the country's human rights record. Mar 10, 2021