The Signals Intelligence Agency (SIA), formerly known as the National Electronic Security Authority (NESA), is the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

intelligence agency An intelligence agency is a government agency responsible for the collection, Intelligence analysis, analysis, and exploitation of information in support of law enforcement, national security, military, public safety, and foreign policy objective ...

. In response to alleged

cyber spying Cyber spying, or cyber espionage, is the act or practice of obtaining secrets and information without the permission and knowledge of the holder of the information from individuals, competitors, rivals, groups, governments and enemies for personal, ...

on opponents of Iran's best interests by the government of Iran during 2010 and 2011, the United States assisted the United Arab Emirates in late 2011 with establishing the

National Electronic Security Authority The Signals Intelligence Agency (SIA), formerly known as the National Electronic Security Authority (NESA), is the United Arab Emirates intelligence agency. In response to alleged cyber spying on opponents of Iran's best interests by the governmen ...

(NESA) which is the UAE's equivalent to the US

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

. Created in 2012 through a Federal Decree Law, one of its official objectives is to organize the protection of the

UAE The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia (The Middle East). It is located at th ...

's communications network and information systems.

Activities

In May 2014, the NESA launched Cyber Quest, a competition for school and university students. , CyberQuest is on its 5th edition. And it has several social media accounts that cover the competition including a Twitter account and Instagram Account. A January 2019 report by ''

Reuters Reuters ( ) is a news agency owned by Thomson Reuters Corporation. It employs around 2,500 journalists and 600 photojournalists in about 200 locations worldwide. Reuters is one of the largest news agencies in the world. The agency was estab ...

'' revealed that the agency participated in Project Raven, a confidential initiative to help the

surveil other governments, militants, and human rights activists. In 2014, Project Raven helped the SIA (NESA at the time) break up an

ISIS Isis (; ''Ēse''; ; Meroitic: ''Wos'' 'a''or ''Wusa''; Phoenician: 𐤀𐤎, romanized: ʾs) was a major goddess in ancient Egyptian religion whose worship spread throughout the Greco-Roman world. Isis was first mentioned in the Old Kingd ...

network in the

. In December 2019, ''The New York Times'' reported that the SIA or other Emirati intelligence services used

ToTok Totok is an Indonesian term of Javanese origin, used in Indonesia to refer to recent migrants of Arab, Chinese or European origins. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was popularised among colonists in Batavia, who initially coined ...

, a

messaging app Instant messaging (IM) technology is a type of online chat allowing real-time text transmission over the Internet or another computer network. Messages are typically transmitted between two or more parties, when each user inputs text and trigge ...

widely used by the Emirati public, to record all conversations, movements, relationships, appointments, sounds and images by the app's users.

References

Signals intelligence agencies United Arab Emirates federal entities National law enforcement agencies of the United Arab Emirates {{UAE-stub

Activities

See also

References