A European Parliament special committee has voted to temporarily ban the sale, acquisition and use of spyware. The surveillance technology industry is booming and EU countries and companies are on the frontline. The committee found that both Hungary and Poland had illegally used software to monitor journalists and opposition figures. The industry is murky and largely unregulated. Last year an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz found that a jet linked to an Israeli spyware tycoon had secretly flown surveillance hardware from Greece and Cyprus to Sudan. There they were given to General Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, who commands the RSF militia, which is currently wreaking havoc across the country of 40 million people.
