ETI Telecom or ETI was an IT company headquartered in Nørresundby. The company was bought in 2010 for 1.2 billion DKK by British

BAE Systems BAE Systems plc (BAE) is a British multinational arms, security, and aerospace company based in London, England. It is the largest defence contractor in Europe, and ranked the seventh-largest in the world based on applicable 2021 revenues. ...

(which, in 2019, was ranked the fourth-most profitable weapons company by USA Today in the world xcept in China, due to lacking data">China.html" ;"title="xcept in China">xcept in China, due to lacking datawith an annual profit of 1.1 billion USD). In 2012, SKAT (tax agency), SKAT accused the company of tax evasion, claiming it had failed to pay 104.6 million DKK. An investigation by BBC and

Dagbladet Information ''Information'' (), full name: ''Dagbladet Information'' (), is a Danish newspaper published Monday through Saturday. History and profile ''Dagbladet Information'' was established and published by the Danish resistance movement in 1943 during ...

in June 2017 revealed that BAE Systems has sold a surveillance system called Evident, produced by ETI Telecom, to the governments of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Oman, Morocco and Algeria. ETI also produced equipment for former Tunisian president Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. An anonymous former employee at ETI told ''Information'': "With the system we built, one will be able to listen in on all forms of internet traffic. Do you wish to surveil an entire country? Is easily doable. One can see the precis locations of individuals based on phone activity. One can follow their route. Also, the company was far in the development of voice recognition. They could also decrypt things." As the buyer countries have a poor record of securing human rights, the sale was criticized by groups such as

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

and Privacy International. During the Danish Business Authority's processing of the company's application to be allowed to export to Saudi Arabia, Oman and Qatar, it asked the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs In many countries, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is the government department responsible for the state's diplomacy, bilateral, and multilateral relations affairs as well as for providing support for a country's citizens who are abroad. The entit ...

to assess whether there was a risk of the product being used for human rights violations, as required by EU law, to which the full response was, each time, "the Ministry of Foreign Affairs finds no reason to object to the attached application". A few months after these revelations, BAE Systems shut down their Danish branch, firing 160 employees.{{cite web, url=https://www.information.dk/indland/2017/09/vaabengigant-brugte-danmark-eksportere-overvaagning-diktaturer-flytter-0, title= Våbengigant brugte Danmark til at eksportere overvågning til diktaturer. Nu flytter den, first=Sebastian, last=Gjerding, first2=Lasse Skou, last2=Andersen, date=21 September 2017, access-date=8 December 2019, work=

References

Software companies of Denmark BAE Systems subsidiaries and divisions