U.S. and Israeli companies are supplying sophisticated surveillance technology to Central Asian nations with records of widespread human rights abuses, giving state security services virtually unchecked power to monitor the communications of ordinary citizens, according to a new report by Privacy International.

...The report relies largely on confidential sources and documents, so the findings are difficult to independently verify. Efforts to reach representatives of the countries and some of the companies named in the report, including Verint and Netronome, were unsuccessful. Nice issued a statement: “NICE Systems sells its solutions only to nations with which the State of Israel allows trade relations. NICE is not in a position to provide additional comment on its relationships with actual or possible customers."...