Israeli digital intelligence firm decides not to sell products to Bangladesh

Cellebrite, an Israel-based digital intelligence firm, has decided to halt sales to Bangladesh, stating its concern that the tools might lead to violation of human rights. According to recent reports by Haaretz, the longest-running newspaper of Israel, Cellebrite's "hardware was reportedly used by a paramilitary unit accused of extrajudicial killings, torture and disappearances of civilians and journalists."

Commenting on the decision, a Cellebrite spokesperson told the Israeli newspaper: "We pursue only those customers who we believe will act lawfully and not in a manner incompatible with privacy rights or human rights. Cellebrite does not sell to countries sanctioned by the U.S., EU, U.K. or Israeli governments or that are on the Financial Action Task Force blacklist. For example, we have chosen not to do business in Belarus, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Russia and Venezuela, apart from Bangladesh."

This move of "not selling" digital forensic tools to Bangladesh might have been prompted because the firm has decided to go public and these acts are ways to come clean. 

From the website of Cellebrite and several other industry websites, it is found that the hot selling product of the firm is Cellebrite UFED. This solution offers advanced methods of extraction, decoding, analysis and reporting of mobile data. It can perform extraction of physical, logical, file system and password of all data even they are deleted from a range of devices including feature phones, smartphones, portable GPS devices, tablets etc. 

Only a few days back, French nonprofit journalism group Forbidden Stories and human rights group Amnesty International broke the news that NSO Group, another Israeli Digital Intelligence Firm, helped Law Enforcing Agencies to spy on politicians, business executives, journalists, activists and human rights advocates with their 'Pegasus' spyware.