US Blacklists Sandvine for Censorship, Web Monitoring Abroad
- Commerce Department largely bans tech firm from US purchases
- Egypt was one of numerous countries where content was blocked
The US Commerce Department is adding computer networking company Sandvine Inc. to a blacklist that will effectively ban it from obtaining US technology, according to a government disclosure.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security made the determination to add Sandvine to its “Entity List” on the basis that the company had supplied equipment to the government of Egypt. Sandvine’s technology enabled “mass web-monitoring and censorship to block news as well as target political actors and human rights activists,” according to a notice made available Monday in the Federal Register. Such activities were “contrary to the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States,” the notice added.