Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano reports that Italy's General Directorate for International Trade Policy has revoked Hacking Team's product export license, effectively banning it from selling software surveillance in countries outside the EU.
Hacking Team had a hard time last year when the company's server was hacked by hackers and all their data leaked online, including sensitive information, emails, internal software, logs, exploits, and the source code of the surveillance tool called RCS or remote control system.
Still, the company continued to sell its products after a quick update on the Galileo RCS platform.
Although everyone was already aware of what the Hacking Team is doing, the authorities never intervened to investigate the company's activities even when irrefutable evidence was revealed that the company was selling surveillance software in countries known for human rights abuses.
Legally, the company was covered, as it had obtained a special license to export the RCS platform on April 3, 2015. The license allowed them to sell surveillance software in 46 countries without requiring any kind of approval from the Italian authorities. Normally, approval would be necessary because of the sensitive natureς των δυνατοτήτων του λογισμικού.
Things changed suddenly last week when authorities suddenly decided to revoke the license without giving any explanation.
The license would be valid until April 30 2018. So now if Hacking Team wants to sell software, it should get approval for every sale by the Italian authorities.
The Hacking Team will now need a license to sell products in the following countries: Australia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Bolivia, Brazil, Canada, Switzerland, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Honduras Israel, India, Iraq, Kuwait, Kazakhstan, Lebanon, Morocco, Mongolia, Mexico, Malaysia, Nigeria, Oman, Peru, Philippines, Paraguay, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Africa , Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United States States of America, Uzbekistan and Vietnam.
Although the reason for revoking the license has not been announced, the Italian press suspects that it could be due to the recent arrest, torture, and murder of an Italian journalist in Egypt.
It seems that the Egyptian authorities may have used the Hacking Team's RCS platform to spy on Italian Giulio Regeni, who conducted a survey of the role of unions in the post-Mubarak era.
His family members claim that Regeni was killed by the Egyptian security forces.
