Italian Firm Exits Syrian Monitoring Project, Repubblica Says

Area SpA, the Italian company that had been building an Internet surveillance system in Syria, is exiting the project, according to the newspaper la Repubblica, which cited a lawyer for the firm.

If completed, the system would have given Syrian President Bashar al-Assad’s regime the power to intercept, scan and catalog virtually every e-mail that flows through the country, Bloomberg News reported Nov. 4, citing a person familiar with the project and blueprints for the system.