Article
UAE: AWZ Ventures to sell surveillance technology to UAE; experts warn might be used to undermine human rights; incl. co. comment
"Stephen Harper involved in company looking to arrange sale of surveillance tech to UAE" 29 September 2021
Former prime minister Stephen Harper heads the advisory committee of a Toronto-based company now looking to facilitate the sale of cutting-edge surveillance technology to the United Arab Emirates — a country with a troubling human rights record.
AWZ Ventures finances Israeli surveillance technology systems, including facial recognition and crowd detection systems and services that deliver comprehensive information on individuals in real time.
"The sale of cyber surveillance technologies to a country like the UAE is inherently problematic from a human rights perspective,"Siena Anstis, senior legal adviser, Citizen Lab
"defensive security technologies which are designed so that they cannot be circumvented or reverse engineered for nefarious purposes."AWZ's co-founder and spokesperson Yaron Ashkenazi
"It gives big legitimation to not only this project but also to the human rights violations in the UAE."Eitay Mack, Israeli human rights lawyer