The Business of Spying: The Privatisation of Surveillance Technology Development – A Transatlantic Perspective

With governments in the European Union and the United States expanding their surveillance capabilities, there is an increased demand for better, faster, and cheaper surveillance technology, including software. However, not all agencies across the law enforcement, defence, and intelligence field who use such technology have the means to develop what they need in-house. Instead, they turn to public-private partnerships or adapt off-the-shelf technology to suit the specific needs of their respective agency. The risk of not developing one’s own tools is that the weapon you help develop can be sold to the highest bidder. This is no different for surveillance technology than it is for conventional weapons, despite embargoes or export licenses requirements for dual-use goods. This paper will specifically emphasise technology related to image analysis, including, but not limited to, facial recognition technology. This paper will investigate the different approaches to the development of technology for the law enforcement, defence, and intelligence sectors by making a comparative analysis of the procurement processes in the United States and that of European Union countries, such as France and the United Kingdom. By analysing procurement processes and the legislation that surrounds them, factors such as the relative size of the sectors and their budgets will surface as critical components in the decision to develop in-house or adapt off-the-shelf technology. Nevertheless, this paper will demonstrate that these factors are not always decisive. Under certain circumstances, as is the case when the technology needs to be used by a large group of people without much time for training, even relatively large players, with the budget to match, will choose for off-the-shelf technology, if the user-interface is more user-friendly, if the product has proven to be more versatile, or if the product that is off-the-shelf is easily customisable. This paper can therefor help increase the understanding of how to reduce of risk of loss of sensitive technology, by identifying the differences in the interaction between public and private actors in this field.