European companies sold spyware to despots: media

The investigation focused on the Intellexa Alliance, a group of companies through which EIC said Predator software had been supplied to authoritarian states. — Photo by Philipp Katzenberger on Unsplash

PARIS: European companies sold powerful spyware to authoritarian regimes which have used it against dissenters, a group of investigative media said Thursday.

According to the probe – by European Investigative Collaborations (EIC) and spearheaded by the French site Mediapart and Germany's Der Spiegel weekly – European companies "supplied dictators cyber-surveillance tools for more than a decade", EIC said in a statement.