ETI Telecom or ETI was an IT company headquartered in

Nørresundby Nørresundby () is a city in Aalborg Municipality, north of Limfjorden, in Vendsyssel, in Denmark. The urban area has a population of 24,436 (1 January 2025). It is located just north of Aalborg, which lies south of Limfjorden. Statistically it ...

. The company was bought in 2010 for 1.2 billion DKK by British

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc is a British Multinational corporation, multinational Aerospace industry, aerospace, military technology, military and information security company, based in London. It is the largest manufacturer in Britain as of 2017. It is ...

(which, in 2019, was ranked the fourth-most profitable weapons company by

USA Today ''USA Today'' (often stylized in all caps) is an American daily middle-market newspaper and news broadcasting company. Founded by Al Neuharth in 1980 and launched on September 14, 1982, the newspaper operates from Gannett's corporate headq ...

in the world xcept in China, due to lacking data">China.html" ;"title="xcept in China">xcept in China, due to lacking datawith an annual profit of 1.1 billion USD). In 2012, SKAT (tax agency), SKAT accused the company of tax evasion, claiming it had failed to pay 104.6 million DKK. An investigation by BBC and

Dagbladet Information ''Information'' (), full name: ''Dagbladet Information'' (), is a Danish newspaper published Monday through Saturday. History and profile ''Dagbladet Information'' was established and published by the Danish resistance movement in 1943 during ...

in June 2017 revealed that BAE Systems has sold a surveillance system called Evident, produced by ETI Telecom, to the governments of

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in West Asia. Located in the centre of the Middle East, it covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries ...

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a federal elective monarchy made up of seven emirates, with Abu Dhabi serving as i ...

Qatar Qatar, officially the State of Qatar, is a country in West Asia. It occupies the Geography of Qatar, Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it shares Qatar–Saudi Arabia border, its sole land b ...

Oman Oman, officially the Sultanate of Oman, is a country located on the southeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in West Asia and the Middle East. It shares land borders with Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Yemen. Oman’s coastline ...

Morocco Morocco, officially the Kingdom of Morocco, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean Sea to the north and the Atlantic Ocean to the west, and has land borders with Algeria to Algeria–Morocc ...

and

Algeria Algeria, officially the People's Democratic Republic of Algeria, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered to Algeria–Tunisia border, the northeast by Tunisia; to Algeria–Libya border, the east by Libya; to Alger ...

. ETI also produced equipment for former

Tunisia Tunisia, officially the Republic of Tunisia, is a country in the Maghreb region of North Africa. It is bordered by Algeria to the west and southwest, Libya to the southeast, and the Mediterranean Sea to the north and east. Tunisia also shares m ...

n president

Zine El Abidine Ben Ali Zine El Abidine Ben Ali (Tunisian Arabic: , ; 3 September 1936 – 19 September 2019), commonly known as Ben Ali or Ezzine, was a Tunisian politician who served as the second President of Tunisia from 1987 to 2011. In that year, during the Tun ...

. An anonymous former employee at ETI told ''Information'': "With the system we built, one will be able to listen in on all forms of internet traffic. Do you wish to surveil an entire country? Is easily doable. One can see the precis locations of individuals based on phone activity. One can follow their route. Also, the company was far in the development of

voice recognition Voice recognition can refer to: * speaker recognition, determining ''who'' is speaking * speech recognition Speech recognition is an interdisciplinary subfield of computer science and computational linguistics that develops methodologies and te ...

. They could also decrypt things." As the buyer countries have a poor record of securing

human rights Human rights are universally recognized Morality, moral principles or Social norm, norms that establish standards of human behavior and are often protected by both Municipal law, national and international laws. These rights are considered ...

, the sale was criticized by groups such as

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says that it has more than ten million members a ...

and

Privacy International Privacy International (PI) is a UK-based registered charity that defends and promotes the right to privacy across the world. First formed in 1990, registered as a non-profit company in 2002 and as a charity in 2012, PI is based in London. Its ...

. During the Danish Business Authority's processing of the company's application to be allowed to export to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, it asked the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the ministry of foreign affairs (abbreviated as MFA or MOFA) is the highest government department exclusively or primarily responsible for the state's foreign policy and relations, diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral r ...

to assess whether there was a risk of the product being used for human rights violations, as required by EU law, to which the full response was, each time, "the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finds no reason to object to the attached application". A few months after these revelations, BAE Systems shut down their Danish branch, firing 160 employees.{{cite web, url=https://www.information.dk/indland/2017/09/vaabengigant-brugte-danmark-eksportere-overvaagning-diktaturer-flytter-0, title= Våbengigant brugte Danmark til at eksportere overvågning til diktaturer. Nu flytter den, first=Sebastian, last=Gjerding, first2=Lasse Skou, last2=Andersen, date=21 September 2017, access-date=8 December 2019, work=

References

Software companies of Denmark BAE Systems subsidiaries and divisions