Very little is known about this industry; it operates in the shadows by definition. It's similar to the trade in weapons technology or private intelligence. These firms, generally speaking, don't like to publicly disclose what they're doing or who their clients are, which makes public accountability and transparency very difficult. We at the Citizen Lab, along with several other organizations, have spent well over 10, close to 15, years investigating this industry using a variety of technical methods and forensic methods.
What we've found is that there's almost no international regulation around this industry; they're selling to any government client. Most of the governments, unfortunately, in the world are authoritarian or illiberal, and naturally, they're using this technology not in the ways we're hoping for it to be used here. They're using it to go after political opposition, civil society, journalists, activists and others. They're making millions of dollars doing so, and they obfuscate their corporate infrastructure from investigators like us.
This is a very serious global human rights and national security issue. All you need to do is look at the reactions at the most senior levels of the United States government. The Biden White House, the Department of Justice, the Department of State and the U.S. Department of Commerce have all come out and said effectively exactly what I'm saying to you right now. We are really asleep at the wheel on the threats raised by the global mercenary spyware industry, and we need to urgently correct that.