Police around the world receive special education from a well-known European Union agency on the best way to monitor the iPhone and Apple devices in general, according to documents that was released Privacy International.
The files reveal that CEPOL, an EU law enforcement agency, instructed officers around the world, from Europe to Africa, on how to use malicious software and other tools. These tools can be used to access citizens' phones and monitor social networks. In some cases, the training was financed by EU funds and went to countries with a history of human rights violations, as reported by Privacy International.
Furious over previous covert surveillance initiatives rather than protecting people from it, Privacy International and other human rights groups are calling for immediate reform, demanding that hacking training money be diverted to more altruistic programs.
The revelations came days after the European Parliament announced plans to curb exports of espionage tools that could be used for human rights abuses.
European Parliament MEP Markéta Gregorová, who helped set up EU reforms covering surveillance tool exports, told Forbes:
"We have simply made it much more difficult to export cyber surveillance tools, and it is unacceptable that our own law enforcement agencies are training dictators to spy on their people them and to recommend indeed and monitoring software. This is unacceptable and incompatible with our values and actions for reform. "
