The Surveillance Market and Its Victims

In authoritarian countries throughout the Middle East and North Africa, Western surveillance tools have empowered repression, allowing leaders to intercept e-mails and text messages, and monitor the whereabouts of citizens through their cell phones. Armed with this information, police in many of these countries now routinely confront dissidents with records of their messages and movements during arrest and torture, according to a 10-month investigation by Bloomberg News.